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Another advantage of the EQ6-R over the lower cost EQ6 and the EQ5 variants is the drive system. The stepper motors that drive the mounts run far too fast to drive the mount, so they have two stages of reduction drive. The cheaper EQ6 versions have a reduction gearbox which drives the worm gear, and the worm drives a ring gear which is what drives the axis. The EQ6-R and the AZEQ6 have a pulley and belt reduction drive between the stepper motors and the worm gear, the AZEQ5 may have a belt as well.
The advantage of the belt drive is that the reduction gearboxes tend to introduce much more complex periodic error into the RA drive which while it can be done, is harder to guide out. But they can also introduce backlash which is difficult to get rid of. That does not matter much in RA but in declination it can make guiding tricky and less effective.
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