Saitek X52 Pro Flight System Controller

I am a long time flight sim enthusiast. I used to be the type who would always look for a better joystick on the market; that is until one day I purchased myself an X52 joystick from Saitek. This joystick was excellent, and it lasted me several great years of flying and fighting in combat sims. Recently however, I started to want an upgrade because my old x52 was beginning to wear after 7 years of use. I finally bit the bullet and purchased the x52 pro. First impressions: My first impression out of the box was that the joystick was exactly the same as the X52... I thought this was strange. I then pulled all the packaging away and realized that this x52 pro was a whole new world compared to the regular x52. Further inspection: Upon further inspection of the joystick I found that the same features that made the x52 great were still there; You had the toggle switches on the joystick along with the famous pinkie button and the protected fire button up top. Along with that you also had the multiple POV hats on the joystick. I really enjoyed the new button texture of the toggle switches, it gave me a better ability to feel the switch as I was attempting to use it. The biggest improvement I noticed among everything else was the increased spring tension of the joystick. No longer would I have to worry about my joystick floating about when I wasn't touching it. The throttle still had its many great features including the thumb stick for the mouse as well as the button that acts as a mouse button. The throttle Quad: Moving onto the throttle quadrant I noticed the same great shape and layout that the old x52 had, however I started to notice several difference. The first difference I noticed is that they removed the three buttons below the mini screen and replaced them with two buttons that are also scroll wheels; this gave the ability to have two extra axi's of control on the throttle quadrant. Moving on I also noticed that they made the slider sensitivity greater, that way you could move the thing with much more precision. As I continued to look at the details I also noticed that the throttle part of it had a much stronger tension to it, which is nice for when you want to find that sweet spot in your fighter; Saitek also kept the tension adjuster on the throttle for those of us who don't like the extra tension. Most of all, I really enjoyed the new texture they have on the potentiometers on the throttle; instead of the normal rubber grips from the old x52 they now have a more easily gripped plastic ridge feel to them. Now if my finger tips get sweaty during combat I can be guaranteed that my fingers will not slip off of my potentiometers. I think the best feature of the throttle is that they have added lights to the part of the throttle that tells you the throttle position. This way you can see the numbers. More of a minor detail of the throttle is that they have added a stopwatch basically into the screen display part. There is a start/stop button along with a reset button. I still do not see a benefit of this feature but it has limited use in my combat sims. I can now time my flights to and from a target for example. The joystick: The joystick held all of its details from the x52. Different textures give the x52 pro a better look than its predecessor. The mode selector wheel still exists in the same great location, although it no longer has the old rubber grips. You can still adjust the lower part of the joystick up and down for your hand size to give you a better grip of the joystick. Overall the most noticeable difference is the spring tension. It is much greater which gives you much better accuracy in your sims. Overall construction: Overall the construction of the joystick has stayed the same with the layout of the buttons and the style of the joystick; however, the joystick has gained many new parts made out of a harder plastic and even some metal parts for better durability. I see no problems with my joystick breaking on me unless I was to throw it against the wall. Minor details: Among the more minor details of the joystick we have the new color of the lights. Honestly I find the green lights to be very attractive to the joystick, however, the sheer brightness of the new lights causes some distraction while I am trying to use the joystick. There is also the addition of the protected button on the joystick having two different light colors for which mode its in. If it is protected it is a green color while if it is unprotected it turns red. That is nice to have, just in case you forget that you have unprotected the button. Overall score: Personally, I enjoy all details of the x52 pro; most of all I enjoy the new spring tension as it gives me greater flying accuracy in my sims. The joystick has a real sturdy feel to it. I would give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars if possible, but since I cant I will give it 5 stars instead.

I purchased the X52 Pro at the beginning of my DCS A-10C Warthog obsession (WARNING: AVOID THIS IF YOU WANT TO HAVE ANY SORT OF SOCIAL LIFE) as I needed a decent HOTAS but wasn’t ready to drop $500 on the Thrustmaster (at this point). There are a lot of mixed reviews of the X52 Pro, so I wanted to give my 2 cents. Build Quality: The X52 Pro is overall a well built Hotas. The rubberized finish has a great hand feel and makes me feel like I’m an actual pilot. The switches all work well and give you a nice positive feedback. The action of the stick and throttle is very smooth, and is adjustable on the throttle side. It is a little light, so I recommend using the enclosed suction cups. Buttons: This thing has buttons like whoa. Obviously, when compared to the Thrustmaster it is a little lacking as the Thrustmaster throttle has the actual labeled switches as they appear in the A-10C. This being said, you can map this bad boy however you please. If you are playing DCS A-10C, I recommend looking up a map made by a user named JackBauer, as it is a near perfect mapping Software / Drivers: So, the downloaded driver from Saitek’s website is totally broken (in my experience). With is loaded, the stick WOULD not center, no matter what setting I changed anywhere. What I did was to uninstall that driver, and allow Windows 7 to find a default driver, which worked perfectly. The Madcat profile editing software works fine and is totally necessary. Overall: This stick is a good option if you are getting your feet wet in DCS or FSX or ROF or COD or XPlane, or whatever. The price point is attractive, and you get a product which is totally worth the money. My plan is to spend the entire summer indoors mastering the A-10C, avoiding all social contact, except with my friend who will also be playing DCS with me, and who I will only speak to over Teamspeak. At that point, I might upgrade to the Thrustmaster, but who knows.

I bought this for use with Elite Dangerous. In one word INSANITY!. This is the coolest thing I have ever owned!!!!! PROS: 1. Unparalleled level of flight control and accuracy!!! I was using a game pad for Elite Dangerous prior to this and it was barley usable, cumbersome at best. I was always bumping into things. However using the x52 Pro I have more control than I ever felt was possible! It's insane! I really feel like I am piloting something. I can zoom thru the tightest spaces with full confidence, and I own dogfights now. With the x52 I am in full control! 2. Very Sturdy High Quality Construction. This feels like a real piece of equipment and not a toy. I am very impressed with the design and quality of the materials used. 3. Fully Customizable. At first I could not easily press all the buttons on the Flight Stick, a quick twist of the screw adjuster and I was able to adjust the base to fit my hand size. I can now easily reach all the buttons without having to remove my hands. You can also customize the colors of each button from Green, Red and Amber. 4. Tons of VERY WELL PLACED Buttons! It can seem a little overwhelming at first but you will quickly appreciate the intelligent placement and amount of buttons, switches, hats, and sliders this thing has. The throttle has a built in mouse stick. One can use to access all the in-game menus and functions (minus chat) without ever needing to use my mouse of keyboard. The joystick on the throttle is very useful for vertical and horizontal thrusters. CONS: 1. The LCD screen on the throttle is cool, but not very usable. At least I have not found much of a use for it other than to display the time. CONCLUSION: I would recommend this to anyone who is serious about flight simulation. This is literally the coolest part of my gaming rig. I recommend using 3 displays with Nvidia Physx Surround, and a Tracker IR for a fully immersive experience!

The x52 Pro is a nice piece of hardware that feels solid when used. It does have a few things I don't like such as the "afterburner" detents near its 0% and 100% throttle. I would really like a way to disable them without having to open up the throttle housing. On both the throttle and joystick the buttons feel solid and work crisply and the LEDs make it look really aggressive. The MFD on the throttle is pretty useless. It tells you what profile you have loaded, the time and date, and what mode the stick is in. You can program 2 other timezones for kicks and gigs. Overall the hardware is good. Not great, but good. Now comes the sole reason I am giving this a 1 star review, the software. My setup right now is a 2012 Apple MBP that I run Windows 7 64bit on to play various games. I have constantly had issues with Saitek's SST software and drivers since day 1 to the point that each use is a gamble as to whether the joystick is going to work. The one game I bought this setup for is DCS A-10C. If you know what it is, you know that you absolutely NEED a HOTAS setup because of the amount of functions you need to access quickly during the game. In my case, I use a profile to map out my setup but because the SST software is garbage my stick will freeze (all the buttons stop working) and the Profiler software will freeze as well forcing me to restart my computer and trying again. The drivers are also awful, making your PC randomly BSOD (well documented across the web) and the best part is Saitek has done NOTHING to fix this in the last 2 years. Be prepared for generic answers from them that just keep shifting the blame to you instead of being smart and updating their extremely buggy software and drivers. The issues are so bad I can't go 15 minutes ingame without having my stick freeze. I have tried multiple versions of both SST and driver software and have tried multiple profiles, even making my own and its always the same issues over and over. Heck, I have lost a good 6-8 hours of my life trying to fix these issues. Too bad Saitek codes about as well as a 10 year old because this setup could be really nice. If all you need is a joystick and wont install the SST software, the stick is nice. If you want to take full advantage of what the setup SHOULD offer, then look somewhere else. I guess I'll be buying Thrustmaster's Warthog HOTAS setup because I know it works on my pc and everyone else's just like it should with or without the TARGET software.

I purchased this controller to replace my Cyborg X joystick which had gone bad. The new controller has a TON of features, is well supported in the various flight sims that I've tried it with and is easy to program with the included "Smart" software that allows users to create their own custom configuration files. I have a high end Digital Storm gaming rig with an Asus Z87C motherboard running a 6 core over clocked Intel processor with 64bit Windows 7 and 16gb of memory and 2 x GTX 770 4gb SLIed graphics cards. This motherboard provides 8 USB 2.0, 4 USB 3.0 and 2 SATA ports. This controller will not work with that combination at least not with out making some rather important changes.. The driver actually hangs your entire computer during installation. In my case I was able to work around the issue by disabling the USB 3.0 controller in bios by turning off the xHCI option. I confirmed the issue by testing the installation against my older 64 bit windows 7 system that only has USB 2.0 ports. My internet research into this problem indicates that many others have had similar problems with hangs during installation and have resolved this issue by turning off xHCI in the registry file or by not installing the drivers or using any of the software from Saitek. If you encounter similar problems, one easy test that can help you to confirm if you have a bad controller or system is to boot the system into safe mode + network and then try the installation there. If this works than chances are very good that the controller is ok and that there is some problem with either driver interaction or the USB ports on your system. BTW, after confirming it worked using the same method myself, I tried one installation with all of the USB drivers and devices removed and still had the same hang condition after the driver starts installing. In all cases once the system hung, the only way I found to recover was to power down the box. PS - if you are having this issue, don't try booting with this device connected, it will hang your system after the welcome prompt. I give this controller high marks for the quality of the hardware and all of the options it provides Including being able to set almost all of the critical buttons to one of three different colors and thing the controller is offered at a reasonable price point for what you are getting. This controller offers similar features to controllers 2 and 3 times the price point and is a good first investment for those of you getting into flight sims. That said I do wish Saitek had done a little extra testing against some of the more modern systems that have a mix of 2.0 and 3.0 USB ports and for that reason have taken away one star. One other note, don't bother installing the drivers that come on the enclosed DVD. They are very old and don't allow you to change the colors on the major buttons as noted above. The latest drivers and software are available for download at [...]. Start there instead of using the CD.

After reading all the talk online about this having issues with Windows 10, or with USB 3.0 specifically intel's z97 chipset (supposedly doesn't work with any of the USB ports for that chipset), I was pretty worried after I ordered that I would have to disable USB 3.0 in my bios, or get a separate USB card for the controller to work properly with out massively screwing up my system. I was pleasantly surprised with the ease of install and use... I downloaded the latest drivers from the Saitek website, for Windows 10 x64, began the setup, when it told me to plug in the controller, shockingly, I did :-O, and it worked perfectly. I did not attempt to use any of the USB 3.0 ports on my computer, instead opting for 1 of the 2 USB 1.1/2.0 ports, but even that wasn't supposed to work since I have a z97 chipset, and no other USB controllers in my system... But there it was, working beautifully. As to the controller itself, it's great! I have been dying to get a new one for years and years, ever since I had been unable to use my Microsoft Sidewinder precision pro (unfortunately it was one of the first versions with a game port connector, but no USB support even with adapter) in my TIE Fighter and XvT days. So this has been quite an upgrade from that. Everything seems to be intuitively placed, and easy to access and use. The sheer amount of buttons, sliders, dials, switches could be overwhelming when trying to remember which every one does, but the more you use, the easier it is to remember. The only thing I'm not sure about yet is the pinky button on the Stick, I like it, I use it, but my hand isn't the most comfortable while not using it, because I don't have any good place to put my pinky finger, small sacrifice, and not worth a star removal, because I do still use it, so it is still useful. I like the tension amount on the stick, and it is adjustable on the throttle, so no qualms with that. I also do like that, even without the software, just the driver installed, I still have control of all of the lighting and various settings of the stick itself. I haven't tried that actual software for it yet, just messed with some of the settings in game controllers in Windows control panel, and really, for me that's enough... If you have multiple profiles you use for different, or even the same games, that's where the software will come in for you.

Ordering: 5 of 5 Direct from Amazon, arrived 2 business days after placing the order. The retail box is OK, with just egg shell cardboard for internal support, the oversized shipping box with airpacks was probably necessary. The Pro comes with one DVD (.html manual, drivers and Flight Simulator X demo) and a single page, multi-lanquage instruction sheet. Printed instructions stop at plug in and load the DVD to install the drivers. Appearance: 5 of 5 Aesthetically superior to the X52 IMHO. And many other brands as well, this is a serious piece of peripheral, it just plain looks like it means business, unlike most of the splashy silver competitors. Function: 4 of 5 Its a great stick, spring tension is consistant throughout the full motion range, although force is somewhat light. Not for lefties. Mode change knob might be easier for one-handing if it were on the left instead of the right side of the column, I find myself letting go of the joy handle to twist for a mode change. Toggle buttons at the base of the stick aren't the ancient mechanical potentiometer trimmers- up on the left toggle changes the viewpoint in the FSX demo, out of the box. Throttle MFD display is angled, easier to see than the X52. MFD has a clock, push the wheel and it turns into a stopwatch timer. Switching force for the wheel button is light, quite easy to button when one only wants to wheel. Throttle handle has a button style mouse, works as well as the mouse button on some laptop keyboards. At about 80% throttle the force to pass the military/afterburner detent is severe, dialing down the adjustment helps some. If you are into rudder control, the handle twists for Z rotation, or pull out the small tab at the base of the handle for twist lockdown and/or usage with separate rudder pedals. However, with a strong twist there is still about a 20% Z rotation even with the lockout set. Bump up the deadzone or ensure ZRot is disabled if not in use, perhaps a sensor lockout instead would work better here. Software: 1 of 5 This is where we fall short, especially if your new PC came with Vista. The programming SW is on the supplied DVD, but go straight to the Saitek web site and grab the latest drivers and profile editor if/when available. Dialups beware, driver + editor downloads are up to 20+Mb depending on the OS. Latest Vista drivers recognize the device and installed, but the the lack of programming SW and profiles for Vista is a bust. The latest driver adds on/off/color control for each individual LED, very nice, but the control panel settings stay with the PC, not a game profile, best as I can determine. There is also an SDK for programming the MFD, requires MS Visual Studio CC++. The FSX demo has a few small maps and five aircraft, including the twitchy helicopter- not the Bell. Only single engine choice is an ultralight but 65m/110k per hour airborn still beats a drive any day ;) and after about fifteen minutes or so the screen will blank and the demo exits. A big caveat with the lack of profile editing software, files created for the X52 aren't compatible with the Pro. Nor will the Vista drivers recognize a Pro file created on XP. Until Vista-capable editor is released and/or Saitek posts more Pro-version profiles, the inability to customize is severe. The iMFD plugin for FSX seems to have either the same X52 vs. X52Pro issue or maybe an OS .exe glitch. In XP SP2, a double click only results in an error dialog box. The demo output program in the SDK loads and runs, and has LED controls similar to the Vista control panel LED tab, except the button labels in the dialog box never change with the state. But keep an eye on the support web site, this would item would be a 5 when the software is online, check the file dates from Saitek (DDMMYY). Software versions tested: XPHome 32bit driver 5.2.0.22 filedate 171006, editor 4.3.4.17, filedate 191206. Vista 32bit driver 6.0.2.123 filedate 300107, editor NA.

This is hands-down the best, all-around gaming joystick on the market. A $1.00 pack of Velcro and you can't go wrong. I'll start with the cons. I bought this for Elite Dangerous and Flight Simulator X Steam Edition. For Elite Dangerous the little mouse stick is not recognized as a joystick. That deeply saddened me because I wanted a way to control my lateral and vertical thrust with a little more precision in FA off mode. The only way to turn this into a joystick is effectively to turn it into a hat-switch (by binding the directions to a directional button on your keyboard. For as much room as this device consumes on your desk, I truly expected there to be one or two USB slots so you could expand your Stiatek inventory without having to run more USB hubs (such as the control panels, instrument panels, and rudder pedals). The 'precision' slider on top of the throttle is anything but precise (no matter where it is, there is a lot of "slop" in where the slider reports the position. The slider itself has no free-play so it seems well built, just some really bad sensors. If you use the regedit hack to turn your mouse into a joystick, this is the axis I would recommend you over-write. The pros.... The photo does not give this joystick justice, for instance, the buttons (mostly) are back-lit, even the switch buttons at the bottom of the Joystick. You have three colors you can assign, Magneto, Red, and Green. The LCD display is also back-lit, however it did not have any plugins with Elite Dangerous (though its not very often that I want to look away from the monitor). The throttle is very precise, the rotary axes are very precise. The rudder axis is also very precise, and the x-y axes are just insane. While the stick does not advertise it, I do believe this stick uses HEART technology even though it is not advertised (as it should be). Last but not least the buttons on both the throttle and stick are very well made, the hat switches are all metal, the buttons are plastic but there is near-zero slop, yet they aren't so tight you have to use a hammer to get it to register. The pinky trigger is a very awkward button placement, but still well-made (I guess it will grow on me ;) ). Overall, I challenge you to find a better well-made joystick with this much functionality.