ok so this has been bugging me for weeks. im trying to pick between these two and every youtube video i watch just makes it worse because they never fly the same spots or do the same maneuvers so i cant really compare. my main gripes with my current quad (old rooster build, nothing special) are that the tune feels loose on fast direction changes and the video feed gets noisy whenever i push throttle hard which im pretty sure is the vtx getting interference from the esc.

the evoque seems to have better motor quality out of the box at least based on what people say about the xing2s. the explorer looks lighter which i assume means snappier but im not sure if that translates to actual feel or if its just a spec sheet thing. anyone gone from one to the other or at least flown both. also does either of them come with a decent capacitor already installed or is that still a mod you have to do yourself on these prebuilts

had an evoque for about 8 months, sold it recently to fund something else but i can say the tune was genuinely usable from the factory for freestyle. not perfect, i ended up reducing master multiplier a little and tweaking the rpm filter notch frequencies once i had a sense of the motors, but it wasnt fighting me. the cap situation -- mine came with a small one already on the esc but i replaced it with a 1000uf 35v low esr one pretty early just out of habit. video quality improved noticeably after that which kind of confirms your theory about your current build.

havent flown the explorer personally so cant do a direct comarison but the weight difference on paper is like 20-30g which in a 5inch you can feel but its not night and day. more noticeable in tight technical spots than open freestyle

the capacitor thing -- yeah basically every prebuilt ive seen you should just plan to add a proper cap regardless of what they ship with, some have them some dont and even when they do its usually undersized. takes like 10 minutes and makes a real difference especially with high kv motors