Twelve months. Four tracks. Two crashes hard enough to kill a lesser ESC. Here's the real word on the RX8 Gen4 after a season of actual racing.
Tekin's put out four generations of the RX8 at this point, and each has moved the needle a little. Gen4 is the first one that feels like the team asked racers what they actually wanted, instead of chasing a spec sheet.
Pros
- Programming via the HEX handheld is faster than any phone app. You will use the handheld.
- Cooling fan stays quiet even under sustained A-main loads
- Telemetry pipes cleanly into common dataloggers without a protocol adapter
- Survived two full-send walls without so much as a reset
Cons
- Plug-and-play "out of the box" setup is too conservative — expect to re-time
- Price is 20% higher than Gen3 at launch
- Telemetry Bluetooth connection drops if the phone is more than 15 feet away — fine for pit, bad for a fly-around
Verdict
If you're racing 1/8 and you're serious about it, this is the ESC to have. The price stings, but spread across a season it works out to pennies per run — and the support from Tekin's team is the best in the industry. You will get replies to support emails. On weekends.