Well, if you'er on a budget and have ten cars or less the DX3S would make a nice choose. I haven't held the radio in my hand, so I can't give you the quality of it. But I can say the DX3R is smoother than my DX3.0, and much lighter. DX3R and DX3S only use four batteries, to the normal eight most radios use. The DX3R has a 5.5 refresh rate, DX3S has 11.1 refresh rate. That won't matter if your bashing, but it make all the difference in racing.