Hoyt REDWRX Carbon RX-5 Review

Editors' review

The REDWRX Carbon RX-5 is the bow where Hoyt stopped iterating and rebuilt the engine. Carbon was old news by 2021 - the RX-4 already wrapped a hollow carbon-tube riser around aluminum caps - so the story here is not the material but the all-new HBX Cam, the first clean-sheet eccentric Hoyt had fielded since the cam-and-a-half era, and what it does to the way the bow holds at full draw. Owners who had shot every RedWRX since the Carbon Defiant kept circling back to one thing: the back wall. Where earlier RedWRX bows met the wall with a faint sponginess, the RX-5 hits a defined stop and stays there, your choice of 80% or 85% let-off. Hoyt wrapped that engine in the upgrades the RX-4 had been missing - a built-in Picatinny sight rail, an Integrate dovetail rest mount, redesigned Limb Shox and Shock Pods, and a Short Stop stabilizer thrown in the box - and aimed the package at the hunter who counts ounces and wants a carbon riser that stays warm in a December stand. Hoyt marketed it, with a straight face, as "the G.O.A.T." This is the compact 30-inch carbon hunter for the archer who already wants carbon and wants a real wall behind it.

Finish

At launch the RX-5 carried Hoyt's 2021 hunting palette: a solid Black Out alongside Realtree Edge, Kuiu Verde 2.0, and Gore OptiFade in both Elevated II and Subalpine - a camo slate aimed squarely at the Western and open-country hunter. Hoyt also offered Signature Series treatments for buyers who follow those names: a Bone Collector build carrying Michael Waddell's graphics and a Keep Hammering build with Cameron Hanes' branding on an Under Armour Forest All Season riser. Owners shooting the bow on camera singled out the riser colors - a forest green that "looks freaking killer," a returning Buckskin, and Wilderness - as part of why the bow photographs as well as it shoots. The coating is the same textured finish across colors, only the pattern changing, and it held up clean in hands-on use. Black Out is the timeless pick for a hunter who plans to hang their own accessories and wants the riser to disappear behind them, while the OptiFade and Kuiu builds target the spot-and-stalk hunter living in open terrain. That breadth of patterns runs wider than most carbon hunting bows of the era carried.

Riser

The RX-5 is built on Hoyt's Carbon Technology riser - a hollow carbon-tube structure, the same family that defined the REDWRX line, capped and bonded with aluminum rather than the full one-piece carbon Hoyt would introduce a year later on the RX-7. What carbon buys here is two things owners feel in the field: the tube stays warm to the touch when the temperature drops, conducting cold far slower than aluminum, so it never goes ice-cold against bare fingers on a long sit; and it carries the strength-to-weight that lets a 30-inch hunting bow come in at 4.4 pounds. For 2021 the riser picked up a redesigned In-Line accessory system that is the real practical upgrade over the RX-4. A Picatinny rail - the same accessory mounting standard used on AR-platform firearms - is machined into the front of the riser so the sight bolts on in-line and front-of-center; a QAD Integrate dovetail on the back docks a compatible rest tight to the riser for quicker, more rigid setup; and an optimized lower stabilizer location drops the center of gravity. The cutout looks close to the RX-4's, but the mounting hardware is a generation newer. Two Shock Pod locations near the limb pockets soak up residual vibration after the shot.

Grip

The RX-5 wears the REDWRX XACT grip, and for 2021 Hoyt dropped the adjustable side-plate grip some shooters had cooled on - owners described that adjustable unit as added weight they never really used - in favor of a fixed grip molded direct to the riser. The payoff is a clean, repeatable hand position: shooters report the grip "fills really good in the hand," and a bare RX-5 will stand upright on its own rather than wanting to fall out of the palm, the tell of a low-torque connection. There is no left-right windage adjustment as on Hoyt's target side-plate grips, but for a hunting bow the direct-to-riser link is the more consistent choice, and it is the grip more than one long-time RedWRX owner called the favorite Hoyt has made. The profile is comfortable through the shot and centers pressure in the meat of the palm, which matters on a light carbon bow where any palm torque shows up downrange. Most owners leave it exactly as it ships.

Limbs

The RX-5 runs Hoyt's split, past-parallel limbs in machined metal pockets - the proven interface behind the brand's flagship hunters and a big reason these bows tune predictably and hold tune across seasons. Past-parallel geometry points the limb tips away from each other at the shot so their forces cancel, part of why the bow finishes quiet and dead in the hand. For 2021 Hoyt stiffened the limb pockets, adding internal spacers after finding that a 70-pound bow backed down to 63 or 64 pounds let the limbs shift enough to introduce vibration; the more rigid pocket holds them in place and keeps the shot clean across the draw-weight range. Draw weight spans the full hunting spread in 30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 55-65, 60-70, and 70-80 pound modules, so a smaller-framed or short-draw hunter can sit at the bottom while a backcountry hunter chasing kinetic energy runs the 80-pound top end - one platform that fits most of the hunting world. Hoyt's limited lifetime warranty covers the limbs, pockets, and cams to the original owner.

Eccentric System

The HBX Cam is the headline of the RX-5 and the first clean-sheet engine Hoyt had built since the cam-and-a-half system that ran the RX line for years. It is a Tri-Track cam - three string tracks - on a binary platform, which means the top split yoke is gone entirely, replaced by a main string and two control cables that keep the two identical cams in time. That change matters in practice: with no outboard yoke to stretch, a little string creep shifts timing rather than throwing off cam lean and left-right tear, so a tuned RX-5 stays tuned longer, and tuning itself is done by swapping spacers to shift the cam left or right - Mathews-style - instead of twisting yokes. One cam size covers the whole lineup through two non-overlapping modules across the 25-30 inch draw range, with no speed penalty at any setting. The cam carries a 342 fps IBO rating (IBO being the industry-standard chronograph rating at 30 inches, 70 pounds, and a 350-grain arrow), and real-world numbers track sensibly below it: at 70 pounds and a 30-inch draw a 352-grain arrow ran 334 fps, a 440-grain 302 fps, a 485-grain 290 fps, and a heavy 508-grain hunting shaft 277 fps, while a separate session clocked 301 fps with a 440-grain arrow. The cam stays impressively efficient at shorter draws - a 28-inch setting gives up only a handful of feet per second on the same heavy shafts, which opens real speed to short-draw hunters. Let-off is shooter-selectable between 80% and 85% (let-off being the share of peak weight your holding weight drops to at full draw) by sliding a draw stop in or out of each module - no module swap, a one-screw change that lets a Western hunter drop to the 80% many states require. The back wall the system delivers is the part owners remember: solid and defined with no give at either let-off setting, where earlier RedWRX walls felt faintly spongy even in perfect tune.

Draw Cycle/Shootability

What owners keep returning to after shooting the RX-5 is how the bow holds, not just how it draws - though the draw is the smoothest part of the resume too. The front end builds without a hard hump and rolls into the wall rather than dumping over it, so you can point the bow at the target and pull straight back without a fight, exactly what a hunter wants when a buck takes its time stepping into the lane. Then it hits that back wall - defined, repeatable, with no late-draw squish - and more than one long-time RedWRX owner called it the single biggest difference between this bow and the Hoyts that came before it, one likening its firmness to a Bowtech wall while the draw stayed smoother than a Bowtech's. The valley is deep enough to settle into and hold without the bow creeping forward. Post-shot is where the carbon and the redesigned damping earn their keep: the bow settles quickly to a single thump rather than the lingering waviness earlier carbon Hoyts left in the hand, and one shop that had shot every RedWRX since the Defiant called it the least vibration they had ever felt in a carbon bow. It is fair to note the other side - at 4.4 pounds the RX-5 is not the featherweight some expect from carbon, and a couple of owners found it fairly quiet rather than silent - but the included Short Stop stabilizer and the front-of-center riser balance settle the bow steady at full draw and tame most of what remains. Get the draw-length module dialed at a shop and this is a bow you can hold comfortably through a long, cold sit.

Usage Scenarios

The RX-5 is built for the serious bowhunter who counts ounces and wants a forgiving hold, and its compact 30-inch axle-to-axle frame is the through-line. Picture a Western elk hunter packing in to high country: the carbon riser stays warm in the hand at a frozen dawn, the 80-pound top module drives a 500-grain shaft with enough kinetic energy to reach the far lung at the end of a long stalk, and the one-screw drop to 80% let-off keeps the bow legal in states that cap it there. Drop into a tight whitetail treestand and the short axle-to-axle threads the lane between branches a 34-inch bow fights, while the solid back wall and quick-settling shot keep a close deer from jumping the string from 20 yards up. For the spot-and-stalk mule deer hunter ranging across a canyon, the flat speed of a 352-grain arrow at 334 fps tightens pin gaps and the In-Line balance holds the sight steady at full draw. The 30-to-80 pound draw-weight span and 25-to-30 inch draw range let one platform fit a smaller-framed hunter at 50 pounds or a powerlifter at 80. It can moonlight as a 3D bow for shooters who like a fast arrow and a firm wall, though a target archer who wants a longer riser and a deeper parking valley will be happier on a dedicated target platform - and a hunter who needs 31 or 32 inches of draw, or simply wants a longer, steadier-aiming bar, should look to the RX-5 Ultra instead.

Versions

The REDWRX Carbon RX-5 is the compact, standard 30-inch, 6.25-inch-brace model, and it was a single-year flagship: it debuted for 2021 at a $1,699 launch MSRP and was replaced by the Carbon RX-7 for 2022, which introduced Hoyt's first 100% carbon riser. There are no package SKUs to choose between - buyers configure the bow through peak draw weight (30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 55-65, 60-70, or 70-80 pounds), draw-length module, hand, and finish, and every RX-5 ships with the Short Stop 2.25-inch stabilizer in the box. The real decision inside the platform is the standard RX-5 versus the separate REDWRX Carbon RX-5 Ultra - a longer 34-inch axle-to-axle bow with a 7-inch brace, 334 fps, a 27-to-32 inch draw range, and 4.6 pounds of mass, built on the same HBX cam and hollow-carbon riser. The standard RX-5 is the compact, lighter, faster one; the Ultra is the longer, more forgiving one for taller draws and steadier aiming. Same engine, same carbon-flagship tier - the choice is geometry, not price.

Hoyt REDWRX Carbon RX-5 vs Mathews VXR 28, PSE EVO NXT 31

Bow	Hoyt REDWRX Carbon RX-5	Mathews VXR 28	PSE EVO NXT 31
Version	2021	2021	2020
Picture
Brace Height	6.25 "	6 "	6.5 "
AtA Length	30 "	28 "	30.5 "
Draw Length	25 " - 30 "	25.5 " - 30 "	25 " - 30.5 "
Draw Weight	30 lbs - 80 lbs	50 lbs - 75 lbs	40 lbs - 80 lbs
IBO Speed	342 fps	344 fps	321 fps - 329 fps
Weight	4.4 lbs	4.44 lbs	4.3 lbs
Let-Off	80% or 85%	80% or 85%	80% - 90%
Where to buy Best prices online	$714.99 to $1800 Compare prices	$625.99 to $2500 Compare prices	$575 to $1000 Compare prices
	compare more bows

A RX-5 buyer cross-shops the 2021 compact-flagship field, and two aluminum rivals come up most. The Mathews VXR 28 is the direct compact match: a 28-inch, 6-inch-brace, 344 fps aluminum bow at 4.44 pounds with the same 80/85% let-off and a narrower 50-to-75 pound draw-weight range, and it launched at $1,099 - roughly $600 under the carbon Hoyt. The PSE EVO NXT 31 plays the forgiveness-and-adjustability card: a slightly longer 30.5-inch axle-to-axle bow with a more relaxed 6.5-inch brace, a 25-to-30.5 inch draw range, 40-to-80 pound draw weight, and 4.3 pounds of mass, built around PSE's Evolve cam whose let-off adjusts across an unusually wide 80-to-90% band, and it also launched at $1,099. The PSE trades top-end speed - 321 to 329 fps IBO against the RX-5's 342 - for a higher-let-off hold and a roomier brace that flatters form, while the Mathews answers with its renowned dead-in-hand silence. Against both, the carbon RX-5's case is the riser: it stays warm in cold hands where aluminum goes ice-cold, carries a back wall owners rate among the firmest in the class, and pairs the faster 342 fps rating with a wider 30-pound draw-weight floor. The decision comes down to priorities: the Hoyt REDWRX Carbon RX-5 for the hunter who wants a compact carbon rig with a defined wall and will pay the carbon premium, the Mathews VXR 28 for the buyer who wants a quiet compact flagship in aluminum for hundreds less, and the PSE EVO NXT 31 for the shooter who values a forgiving brace and a high-let-off hold over outright speed.

Summary

The Hoyt REDWRX Carbon RX-5, launched at $1,699 for 2021, was the year Hoyt stopped refining the REDWRX formula and rebuilt its engine. The all-new HBX Cam - a Tri-Track binary that finally retired the old split-yoke layout - gave this compact 30-inch carbon hunter the one thing earlier RedWRX bows lacked: a solid, defined back wall that owners who had shot every carbon Hoyt since the Defiant rate as the bow's standout trait. Around it sits a 342 fps IBO rating that translates to real hunting-arrow speeds in the 270-to-302 fps band for 440-to-508 grain shafts, a selectable 80/85% let-off you change with one screw, a hollow-carbon riser that stays warm in a December stand, and the In-Line sight, Integrate rest, and included Short Stop stabilizer the RX-4 never had. The honest trade-offs are a 4.4-pound mass that is light but not the featherweight some expect from carbon, and a shot that is quiet rather than silent - both tamed by the included damping and stabilizer. Studying how owners describe it, the through-line is that wall: this is a carbon bow you settle into and hold, not one you fight. An excellent bow for the serious backcountry and treestand hunter who wants a compact carbon rig with a forgiving hold and already knows carbon is the goal. Buyers who want that same engine in a longer, steadier-aiming frame should look at the REDWRX Carbon RX-5 Ultra, while those who would trade carbon for renowned silence and a lower price should also consider the Mathews VXR 28.