I am a techno geek. I am interested in the radio. I can't wait until it is released by tower hobbies. Has anyone seen one of these?

Hello we have done an unboxing of this radio looks great feels great

check out our yu tube page PM HobbyCraft cheers

I got mine about a week ago. It is awesome. I did buy a Fellowes WriteRight Universal 13 Inch Screen Protector 2-Pack from Walmart and cut out a screen protector on my Brother Scan N Cut 2. I also bought a GM racing GM-GENIUS 120R +T PRO V2 Telemetry ESC. Setting it up was pretty easy. It probably took more time to figure out the menu navigation more than anything. The instructions are not very good and so adjusting the ESC settings from your transmitter is a figure it out your self test. I have bound it to some of the old GR-4 receivers I had bound to my X-8N. My old GR-4 receivers have not had firmware updates and they seem to work perfectly with my X-8E.

How are the mechanics of the wheel and the trigger? The x-8n trigger could not be called masterpiece of mechanical design...

In general, it is better than the X-8N. The trigger where you pull back on with your finger for throttle is probably 50% to 60% wider than the X-8N. It also has some molded in straight knurling to help keep you finger on it. The brake hoop section that you press against for brakes is identical to the X-8N. Pulling back on throttle the trigger feels much better, brakes feel the same. The steering wheel feels a bit better, but I don't know if that is because of a design change or because of wear and tear from use on my X-8N (I have done a lot of driving and racing with my X-8N). On my X-8N I did have to tear the radio apart and add some washers to the throttle trigger assembly. After about 8 months of use the throttle trigger would flop around a bit at neutral on my X-8N. For whatever reason the mechanism could move back and forth 1.5mm/.0625" or so on the pin that the trigger pivoted on. That slop was designed in to the mechanism on the X-8N which surprised me. I added washers to fix the problem. At this point I am not going to tear my X-8E apart to see if they fixed that. After I run my X-8E for a few months if the trigger does not develop slop at neutral I will know they fixed that issue.
They have also added in some built in molded grips to the radio that make it a bit more comfortable in the hand. I still wrap the grips on all my radios with tennis racket tape because my hands sweat when I race. They have added two customizable menu short cut keys. Accessing the telemetry data is faster because of the short cut key. There is also direct access to changing what model memory you are running from the main screen. I would say it’s a bit faster to navigate some functions than the X-8N. When reassigning some of the trim switches and the rotary dial you cannot adjust certain parameters in the negative direction. On the X-8N you can assign steering exponential to the rotary dial. You can dial a negative value or a positive value. If you try this on the X-8E you can only get positive values. It will let you decrease the value, but you can only adjust from 0% to +100%. When you observe how exponential works this is not a issue for me. A positive value on the X-8E makes the steering less responsive close to neutral which is what I like. I did cut out a custom touch screen protector because I felt the thin plastic one it came with will not stand up for long term use. I spend the summer racing 1/8 scale off road outdoors and so you get a lot of dust and dirt on your fingers that can easily scratch touch screens.