Saitek X52

The Saitek X52 is the steal of the century. Amazon.com sells this combo for ~$115-130, depending on whether or not it's on sale. For the price, the buyer gets arguably the best throttle on the market, and a solid stick. Trim wheels are a god-send, it's impossible to go back.

Far and away the best feature of the X52 is its ergonomics. Though the base of stick and throttle are made of typically light, hard plastic, there is aluminum trim on it for... well, for show. A lot of the X52 is for show, right down to the blue LED buttons.

However, the joystick and throttle are comfortably shaped and both include a soft, black rubbery substance that is remarkably adept at absorbing sweat. The joystick has an adjustable hand rest for users with various hand sizes. All buttons are readily accessible - even the pinky switch slides up and down with the hand rest. The throttle is a rolling rather than sliding style, and has adjustable resistance. Inside the throttle are detents for idle and afterburners, but they're not disruptive.

Multiplayer

The artifact

The joystick includes a two-stage trigger and pinky switch on the stick itself, with two 8-way hat switches and four buttons on the top, including one with a safety switch - all manipulated with the thumb. Also on the top is the mode switch, which permits the player to switch his stick between three modes on the fly, all of which can reveal extra programmed options if the player has set them up so. Finally, there are three toggle switches at the base of the stick, though we haven't found much of a use for them since they are not reachable unless either hand abandons the stick or throttle.

The left hand rests comfortably on the throttle and the thumb naturally gravitates towards the lower trim wheel, while the forefinger slides easily to the upper trim wheel. There's another 8-way hat on the forward edge of the throttle, as well as the scroll wheel/second mouse button. The thumb controls the primary mouse button, mouse emulator, sensitivity slider, clutch button (to switch programming files) and another button. There's one more button for the forefinger, on top of the top trim wheel. There's also a multi-function display that can show the time, a timer, and identifies the programming file the player has selected.