Design

Stay put!

The first thing I liked about the ED3D is the solid feel of the base. It's heavy enough that frantic directional changes won't make the unit slip and slide all over the place. The last time I used a non-forcefeedback joystick this heavy and solid was well over a decade ago, with the old NES Advantage joystick. So why is this feature so important? In a lot of games, you still need to access the keyboard for other controls. The last thing you want is to have to keep your left hand on the joystick at all times to stop it from sliding around. Having a heavy base frees up your off hand to access the other important buttons you need on the keyboard.

That's a heavy base!

Stick feel

One of the other noticeable aspects of the ED3D is the stiffness of the joystick. It's not accurate to say that one level of stiffness is better than another - it's all a matter of personal preference. The ED3D features a bit more resistance than I'm used to, but I found that the added stiffness improved my precision a lot over the old CH Flightstick Pro that I have. Fatigue after extended playtime could be one disadvantage of added resistance, but I didn't find that to be a problem in this case. One other thing worth noting: there's a good deal less throw on the ED3D (distance from center to edge) than on the sticks that I've used in the past. I notice I flail around a lot less with the Logitech stick than I did with my old Flightstick.

See the plastic jutting out on the stick? You can rest your hand on it. A nice touch!

Buttons

Two of the seven buttons are on the base of the joystick at top left. The other five, including the trigger, are located on the stick itself, with the right thumb having access to four of them. These four are broken up into pairs arranged like a switch, on either side of the hat. That makes them ideal for use as weapon changers, one for guns and one for missiles. The trigger had a good springy feel to it, but I thought the thumb buttons could have used a bit more travel distance.

The button arrangement up top

Front view

Twist handle

I should preface this by saying that I've never been a fan of the twist handle. For those of you who don't know what this is, basically a joystick with a twist handle allows you to grab the stick and twist it as another possible motion. In theory, this is useful for flight sim games, (rudder), space sim games (rolling your fighter), or in mech games, (torso twist). The problem is that I always find myself accidentally twisting the handle when I don't want to. It happened with the old Microsoft Sidewinder joysticks and I find myself doing it again with this joystick. I was hoping the ED3D would have a very stiff mechanism for this, but it doesn't. I've started to train myself not to do this, but I still would have preferred a much stiffer resistance on the twist mechanism.

What Logitech included instead was a twist handle locking mechanism. At the base of the stick, there's a plastic screw that you can turn which locks the twist handle in place. How ingenious! I tried locking the twist handle and it works very well. I do have a beef with this though, and it's the fact that Logitech chose to use a plastic instead of a metal screw. It would be all too easy to strip that little plastic screw by locking and unlocking it several times over the life of the joystick. A metal screw or a mechanical switch might have been a much better choice.