It has arrived in the stores and I wanted to take a look at it because it’s flat and includes so many components (check out the manual). At first sight it makes your builds very easy but there are of course downsides.

TBS Elite Bundle
Elite Bundle Parts
ESC Extension Board
TBS Colibri FC Top
TBS Colibri FC Bottom
TBS PDB Top
TBS PDB Bottom
Isolation Board
1.45cm
4.9cm
6cm
TBS Elite Bundle

What’s great about the bundle (first sight)?

  • It includes pretty much everything you’ll need. PDB with current sensor + VTX with OSD and of course the FC Colibri Race 2.0.
  • It is very nicely designed with a very flat form factor of 1.45cm height (the top of the white connectors). It nicely fits into the ImpulseRC Alien 5″ frame.
  • You can integrate Crossfire easily and get a very compact long range system which can be configured over OSD (PIDs, VTX, camera).

What’s NOT great (first sight)?

  • The ESC extension board is placed pretty high in the tower so the ESC wires have to be placed high in the air which will cause trouble while flying. The chance of hanging on trees with wires soldered that high are pretty damn high. You can’t decide to move components up and down. So you can’t move the ESC board to the bottom. The ESC board has to be soldered to the FC.
  • TBS used MPU6500 gyro, which is known to be rather noisy when compared to MPU6000. This may cause trouble when tuning the kwad.
  • The price seems very high. USD130 is too much for FC (normally ~USD30), OSD (normally ~CHF5), PDB (normally ~CHF10) and VTX (normally ~USD35) and the components normally cost about USD80 all together. I think USD100 would be a great deal for the bundle.
  • I don’t get why TBS is including that strange/uncommon SMA connector. For my ImpulseRC Alien build (and pretty much every other build) I will need standard right angled SMA or RP-SMA connector.
  • I have no idea whether the UFL connector on the VTX will hold. It popped out in my hands and I did not even pull on it. I suggest to use a bit of hot glue to secure it.

Now it’s about to wait for the other kwad components to arrive.