Saitek X52 - Flight Control System review

Saitek has been making gaming peripherals for quite some time now and has gained a lot of popularity with its Cyborg range of joysticks. However, for anyone serious about flight simulators, the Saitek X45 is one of the most affordable setups on the market and has been for a very long time – so long in fact that it has now been superseded by the X52, which is the most feature rich joystick I have ever tested.

The X52 isn’t the most advanced flight control system around, although considering that it costs well under £100, it offers a great combination of features and value.

The box that the X52 comes in wasn’t quite as large as I expected it to be, but this is mainly due to clever packaging. Once opened you’re greeted by an instruction booklet, a driver CD, a bag with rubber suction cups, a small cable and the joystick and throttle control. The suction cups can be attached at the bottom of the joystick and throttle for extra grip, but both controllers have rubber feet that stick quite well to most surfaces.

The Joystick looks similar to that of the X45, but gone is the blue base and orange lights and the new aluminium and black base looks a lot more stylish and follows with the current trend, all the lights are now blue. There’s a multitude of buttons and the main trigger button now has a two stage operation, which means that you can arm your missiles by pressing in inwards slightly and then fire them by pressing it all the way in. There’s also what’s known as a pinkie switch, and both of these triggers are made of aluminium.

The remaining buttons on the shaft of the joystick are controlled by your thumb - there are three buttons labelled a, b and c which are all within easy reach. There is one final button here, but it’s hidden behind a safety flap – the flap needs to be flicked upwards to reveal the button and this can be used for dropping your payload at the bombing target for example.

There are also two eight-way hat switches and a mode switch – I’ll explain more about this later. At the base of the joystick are three two-way switches that are user programmable.

The joystick is spring loaded and moves smoothly in the X and Y axis and it can also be twisted, which is mainly used as rudder control in flight games, but you can also use this for tasks like twisting the torso of your robot in Mechwarrior type games. If you don’t like this feature, you can disable it.

Talking of adjustments, the hand rest can be adjusted upwards and downwards depending on the size of your hand and it can even be tilted at a slight angle to make it as comfortable as possible to hold. This is done by loosening a thumb screw at the front of the joystick, adjusting the hand rest to a comfortable position and retightening the screw.

The joystick is attached to the throttle controller by what looks like a PS2 extension cable – the cable is about a metre long. The throttle controller then connects to your PC via USB. This is where the X52 differs from the X45, as it has a built in LCD display with blue backlight.

The throttle controller has been given a major overhaul in terms of looks and features compared to the X45. Although there are only really three buttons on the throttle, it has a lot more features than you’d think. There is an eight-way hat switch here as well as two rotary controllers, a scroll wheel, a slide switch, but most impressively it has a built-in mouse.

OK, so it’s not a real mouse, but it is a small joystick that allows you to control the mouse pointer and it has a button next to it that works just like the left button on a mouse. The previously mentioned scroll wheel can be pressed inwards to act as the right mouse button. This way you don’t need to find your mouse in order to make changes to your game settings, or even just to get a new game started. It takes a little while to get used to, but overall it’s a very cool feature that I've not seen on any other joysticks.