ORIGINAL: Crabstick
they may be cheaper. but in my opinion, the Trex is a Far superior machine, my friend bought his honeybee for 500$ nzd, came with a brushless outrunner with about a 20amp esc 1500mah 3s lipo, Rx and servos.
The battery lasts about 20-30 cycles, the servos are rubbish - lots of slop and fail randomly, the rx is a glitchy dog... the outrunner looks ok, but the esc doesnt look like it would cope with many stabs of the collective, also the plastic frame is very weak compared to a 450xl plastic frame
so basically what you are left with is a bare heli and an outrunner, so realistically you NEED to upgrade to the CNC head just to make it fly nice(which over in NZ you cant buy off the shelf anywhere)
a plastic Trex will fly fine with no upgrades... I have never seen anyone fly an Esky heli at a club field, heaps of - trex , hdx450 etc ...
i put esky in the same basket as walkera.. maybe a notch or two better quality..
not trying to start a flame war just stating facts
All the parts you mentioned, don't come on a T-Rex. Only LiPo & BL motor & ESC are options and they aren't considered to be the greatest either . So if you buy a T-Rex and you buy a E-Sky chassis and add the same equipment, you still come out on top with an E-Sky in the price category. As a matter of fact, its known for the Align LiPo battery to be garbage anyway because they bubble. The manual is only slightly better IMO than the ESKy manual. For what its worth, you buy a bare chassis and you install your electrics and radio equipment and go from there.