ORIGINAL: JettPilot
I got a HiTec digital servo for another project I am building and it was horrible [:'(] I put it on the elevator channel of my current plane and it worked, by design it is very rough and grindy sounding compared to my JR digital servos (obvously lower quality), I was a bit dissapointed but for the money I could live with it... I put it on the Throttle channel of the same plane and it would not work at all, or just jerk around sometimes [X(]. I put my JR digital back on that channel and it was perfect. This is top of the line JR setup I have been flying for years, and never a single glitch, but the HiTec servo glitches, doesnt work etc [:@]. I started to read the forums and read about a lot of crashed planes due to HiTec digital servos doing weird stuff [X(]
MY JR digitals cost 120 each, overpriced but they work PERFECTLY. I really wanted to use the Hitecs for 50 bucks, but I will save 70 bucks on a servo and crash my airplane, I will NEVER buy another digital Hitech servo, they are just to squirrely and unreliable.
Everyone has their own opinion. It’s unfortunate you've experienced a problem with a Hitec digital. These kinds of problems are not uncommon of any product. You may simply have a defective servo, an installation problem or short coming that causes the servo to act erratically. In some cases there are OEM compatibility conundrums that become apparent when different technologies are mixed. Hitec Programmable servos control signal line is bi-directional, an electrical noise problem maybe present and not realized of other digital servos. For instance many of the so called problems of Hitec servos has been traced to low quality servo connectors, extensions and wyes which contribute to electrical losses on resistance.
Some of us have owned hundreds of Hitec digitals with nary a problem. To suggest that the product line is squirrelly and unreliable is a huge misstatement IMO. After all your experience is but of one inexpensive sport digital and heresy of forum readings. Hitec sells more digital servos than all the other manufacturers combined, they can't be all that bad.
If you're going to compare digitals you might want to compare like products against one another. Your $120.00 JR servo is a premium coreless digital servo, not an inexpensive sport 3-pole cored motor digital servo. Your $120.00 JR servo is almost comparable to an HS-5955TG premium digital. Your $120.00/$50.00 comparison would be akin to an apple and orange. If you want to compare a JR sport digital (811) to a Hitec metal geared sport digital (5645) you'll be close, less the anemic power of the 811 comparatively.
The metal gear-train of the 5925/5945's has been well proven by many modelers to be as smooth if not more so and hold up to the rigors of giant scale models far better than its JR counterparts (8400 series).
How are you guys determining which is a smoother servo? Are you manually cycling them through end-points? You realize this a not a good thing to do, right? In any event Hitec metal gears are comprised of an Alumilite alloy mixture; in some cases you'll find an imperfection or miss-match which often goes unnoticed after a little flight time. The new Hitec super Titanium geared servos are the strongest, smoothest and not to mention tightest on the market at this time.