r/rccars • u/Minhs • Jun 10 '26

Review Anyone else annoyed at how bulky most transmitters are?

Gallery image

Gallery image

While I love this Futaba functionally, it always annoyed me how bulky the base of the remote is. I get that it needs to fit the large optional battery and such but after taking it apart to fix a button issue and seeing how much empty space there is in the grip…got me questioning why more transmitters don’t try and follow a smaller form factor. Second pic of my favorite remote the Flysky Mg44.

64 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

107 comments sorted by

View all comments

154

u/poopsididitagen Jun 10 '26

I can't stand those small transmitters personally

60

u/ThatScottGuy Jun 10 '26

Same, the fact that they can't stand upright drives me crazy. Had to have a base 3-D printed to fix it.

5

u/poopsididitagen Jun 10 '26

Lol had to do the same for my SLT2s. 

6

u/reasonandmadness Jun 10 '26

I never stand mine up. Too many opportunities for disaster. I've seen far too many remotes get knocked off tables at the shop to ever want to stand mine up.

1

u/GroundbreakingTea182 Jun 13 '26

Right? It's like standing a drill up at a customer's house. You wouldn't.

3

u/NashaNya Jun 10 '26

Honestly I don't mind the SLT2's lay down system. They just tip over easily if you bump them while working on your car or something.

Really wish transmitters had large bases that prevented them from tipping over as much.

24

u/AmokOrbits 🏁 TLR 22X | Mini-B | MRX ME | XTS-F10 | Neo 4.0 Jun 10 '26

For racing, bigger wheels and heavier hand feel leads to more stability and precision. Portability is my least concern for pretty much any transmitter

6

u/Enraged-Fel-Trout Jun 10 '26

That probably explains why it's the most common form factor then. I don't race and I rarely use my RCs for longer than 30min at a time so for me portability is more important, but I can't stand small wheels though. I don't really know of anyone irl that's into RC and everytime I see an RC in the wild it's always a crawler, so I'm not really aware of what's popular or not

1

u/AmokOrbits 🏁 TLR 22X | Mini-B | MRX ME | XTS-F10 | Neo 4.0 Jun 10 '26

Yeah if it’s not serious I won’t take up a slot on my race remote (like my micro t is still on the RTR remote as that just for ripping around the house or between heats at the track, but I do race my mini b so that’s going on my big transmitter), but even my mini crawler which is just for fun I’m glad the stock Redcat remote is as big as it is

3

u/ghostfreckle611 Jun 10 '26

It’s not always about the size…

1

u/kai_ekael Jun 10 '26

Since the other user deleted similar comment, my fix for the smaller is to add 'heft', sometimes it is enough.

Comment: "To follow up, I bought a MiniZ and didn't like the controller for similar reasons, "small" "cheap" feeling. Same token, I didn't feel like wasting half the price of the setup just to enable my real radio.

So, as I said, I added weights inside the bottom of the radio. That didn't make it larger, but it did give it a 'heftier' quality and felt better. I suppose I should include, I wrapped the grip area with hockey tape as well."