PC Cyborg F.L.Y. 5 Stick

An outstanding flight stick. The ability to adjust the stick's length and fwd/backward slant is great. The buttons on the stick can also be positioned for the most comfortable position. All movements seem crisp and smooth. The Cyborg X has capabilities I haven't explored yet such as the ability to program the buttons. The only curiosity I've found is while flying jets on map CLEAN SWEEP in BF2 the #2 button does not always release bombs cleanly. Sometimes there is a lag between button press and bomb release and other times only one or two bombs out of five will release. But in all fairness I'm not sure that this isn't a function of the game rather than a stick problem. Works great in MS Flight Sim X. Update: Problem with button#2 became worse and the button finally came apart from the flight stick. Replacement by Amazon was almost immediate. No hassle, no cost. Important note: The stick must be assembled by screwing on to the base. It can be overtightened which caused my POV button to function in only one direction. Loosening resolved the problem.

This is a decent stick. It's highly adjustable and fits well in the hand. I don't like the lack of a separate throttle but it isn't a huge deal because it is still hands-on. But it's weak. I am a very soft person on my stick with the buttons, and managed to break a button I don't even use for firing missiles (view-center is what I had it programmed to). However, this was easily fixed by setting some glue on it and letting it sit for a half hour. Feels like new. ...which should tell you something. But the stick works well and is very comfortable in the hand with a LOT of features (over a dozen buttons, 8-way hat, wheel). My wheel was not put on centered and I'm not sure it even works to be honest, but I never use it so I never bothered with warranty. If you're a casual gamer, this stick is fine though it may not be worth $60... just get a $30 stick or upgrade to a Saitek X52. But for the flight-sim enthusiast, you will find the hours breaking down this comfortable, good-looking, feature-packed, cheap-plastic stick.

UPDATE: I have really tried. I started out with a review of a 3 because the axles of the stick had huge slop areas when I got it, and resulted in about an initial 40% dead-zone allocation to prevent any craft from spazzing out and said that it was adjustable but that was just about all it had going for it. Let me explain what kind of horrible mistake this company made by selling this pile of crap right quick before I move on. The joystick was a test buy. I'd had a lot of friends that mulled back and forth between "Mad Catz" is better and "Razer" is better. So I figured, before I go all out, I'd buy something from MadCatz and something from Razer. So I got the MadCatz FLY Stick 5, and the Razer Orbweaver gaming pad. I was so horrified at the quality of the joystick, I bough a full set of Razer products and then hated the company for not offering joysticks to replace this pile of crap. When I say I bought the full set, we're talking deathstalker ultimate, oraborus mouse, headset, Vespula, the works -- in total, ole MadCatz gained $60.00, like $40.00 profit, and ole Razer? well they got a nice little $720.00 sum, and likely profited $250 of that. And there in lies Mad Catz grave error. A few months back, I lowered that rating to a 2. The #2 button popped off and the deadzones increased to around 60%. I'm just fed the hell up at this point as well and order a Thrustmaster HOTAS to replace this steaming pile of crap. And then I have the company send me a PM wanting to know if I would want a replacement (an amazon message sent some 5 months ago) and was SOOO tempted to send them a video, in reply, of me smashing this joystick on a brick with the subject, "No, I don't want another steaming pile of crap". You see, I'm not going to waste my time to simply have them replace this crap with more crap. It makes no difference how many times it is replaced, THIS JOYSTICK IS UTTER, STEAMING, CRAP. I don't ever want another joystick like this. The point of a video game is to provide entertainment. Trust me when I tell you, it is not possible with this joystick. Its not a joystick, its a trollstick. But I'll continue to explain why. You see, if button 2 falling off wasn't bad enough, the worst part about it was repairing it with some plastic epoxy, I was able to restore functionality to that button. But here is the kicker and that bad part, the button felt a LOT more solid AFTER I fixed it than out of the box. Imagine that, a jimmy rigged fix is more of a solid construction than the original manufactured item. You can't make this crap up! Ok, so then the other button (the one on the other side of the 2) it comes off, I fix that one as well. And, you got it, it works better and feels more sturdy. *sigh* So, the last straw was the trim switch you hear folks talking about. I used that in Elite Dangerous as a weapon group cycling "button". However, you would "click" down on the button once, but the joystick may register 0 clicks, or hell, it might even register 20. Like a box of chocolates, you NEVER knew wtf you would get with that button. This prompted me to coin a new word, just for this joystick, "Click and Pray". Before ditching this Joystick I put a grand total of about 17 gaming hours on this Joystick and its not like I was as pissed as I am recounting the stress this Joystick put me through while playing Elite Dangerous, and I wasn't even PVPing, this joystick just seems to melt in your hand, sorry for the chocolate references. But you know, you don't expect Chocolate to last very long, a joystick for $60.00, no, it better give me a little more than a year or more than a $3.00 mouse. But what gets this product a rating of 1 today is the sheer comparison of a CHEAPER joystick with included (but detatchable throttle console), has better construction quality, better materials, more buttons, and more precision on its sensors than the con artists at MadCatz could dream of. This newer joystick now feels like a $500.00 rig in comparison. And that prompted me to realize just how badly I had been conned out of $60.00 when this new Joystick was only $40 with a quality that just has no comparison. If there is a joystick on the market that I would dub "Worlds Worst Joystick", Mad Catz, you get a 9999999 out of 10. You can't possibly get any worse without breaking the damn law. It is definitively impossible. This company did indeed do one thing positive. I'll never stress again over a Mad Catz product because I will refuse to allow one in my house. TL:DR: This is the most despicable, pathetic excuse for a $60 joystick I have ever had the misfortune to lay eyes upon. I hope someone finds trade or commerce laws that will burn the hell out of these guys because I'll be damned if they don't deserve every burn they'll get from resulting law suits, I mean that too, this joystick isn't a one-of-a kind defective batch, read the reviews. I kicked myself in the rear hard for not doing exactly what I just asked you to do. And you know what, for the life of me, I can't understand how anyone having this joystick over a week can rate it more than 3 stars because I just don't buy that they were so incredibly lucky they happened to find some batch that was intended for the developers or investors of the company. I say this because there is no way the buttons didn't pop off or show a LOT of play in a demonstration without additional fortification to that little 1mm strip of flexiplastic that holds the button and provides all the pivot and bares 1/2 of the press pressure. Seriously, that's how bad it is.. 1mm. From what I can tell of the positive reviews, these people rated this joystick right out of the box without plugging it in or have only ever had this joystick and doesn't realize how incredibly low quality it is. When you get 40% slop while the stick is centered, most companies consider this defective, but read the instruction manual, not Mad Catz! They consider 80% slop defective!

I purchased a Saitek Cyborg X joystick (the name has since been changed to Mad Cats F.L.Y. Stick for PC - though I'm told it also works with Apple computers)for use with the excellent IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 combat flight sim, also purchased from Amazon.com. It's a great joystick, with only a few small shortcomings. First the good stuff--there are a total of 12 programmable buttons, a programmable rotating trim wheel just below the weapon switches, a rudder control operated by twisting the stick, and a dual throttle lever that can be locked for single engine use. There is an eight-position hat switch in the middle of the four weapon switches at the top of the stick, and two LED's that illuminate the weapon switches, hat switch and trim wheel from above. On top of all the controls, the Cyborg X is highly adjustable. The top head including the trigger and weapon switches can tilt fore and aft, the length of the stick can be adjusted with the push of a button, and the stick itself can be adjusted fore and aft. A tabbed hex key used for most of the adjustments stows in one of the three joystick supports. As for smoothness and ease of use, I really like the way Saitek centers this joystick. A spring seats a shallow cone-shaped disk inside another cone when the stick is at center. When the joystick is moved off of center, this makes for very smooth action in all axes, unlike the joysticks used in radio control transmitters. There is about five degrees of slop evident in the stick when it is centered though, due to play between the screw adapter the stick attaches to and the joystick base arm. (The joystick comes disconnected from the base as packaged.) It wouldn't hurt if the manufacturing tolerances were a little tighter here. All this adjustability comes at a slight price. When you press any of the four weapons switches, the top of the joystick flexes, making them feel somewhat imprecise. The weapons switches also don't close as crisply as the trigger switch does. The last fault I found with it is that, when pushing the joystick far forward, the base can tip forward too. This is because while there is a base leg to the rear of the stick, there are none forward. The two front base legs are mounted laterally. These are minor quibbles. The Saitek Cyborg X is the best joystick I've ever bought. Update: After a few years I did have some problems with wires being pulled off of their solder tabs inside the joystick, and two wires broke as well. The wiring inside my Saitek joystick is extremely thin. I don't know if this has been fixed since I bought mine or not. I was able to solder the loose wires back on, and fix the broken wires as well. But I may rewire the joystick with thicker braided wiring in the future if I continue to have problems. It makes no sense to me that Saitek used such tiny wires, since they flex when the joystick is moved. The rest of the joystick is well made.

Great concept - great look - good price... horrible execution. Maybe you'll get one that works, maybe not. But even if you do, the base is waaaay to light to want to use for any real gaming. Push even slightly on the stick in any direction and the thing will tip over if you aren't making some sort of effort to hold it down. And that's IF you get a good one. Here's what happened to me: 1) Even with a big dead zone set, mine was almost constantly sending random signals of some kind such that the game I was playing couldn't really be played properly. (It was a space simulator where as soon as you touch the controls after you activate a super-speed mode it will immediately drop you back to normal speed, meaning I could almost never stay in super-speed mode even if I got up and walked across the room... but it was entirely random.) 2) Another two times the z-axis on the stick handle itself (rudder to most of you playing flight simulators) just locked into rudder-all-the-way-to-the-left mode even though I had barely turned it and immediately let go. (It wasn't physically stuck, it was apparently emotionally stuck.) So my spaceship sat there and spun and spun and spun until I finally unplugged the joystick. And even with all that, and being too light, it STILL seemed like a pretty nice piece of equipment and I was tempted to blame myself and see if there was some way I should be changing settings, drivers I could be updating, new firmware to download.... something? And then... 3) It just started failing to be recognized by any computer on any speed of USB port. Just as an FYI, I've been a professional IT guy for 22 years. I have an entire office full of systems of various ages, hardware styles, and operating system. I tried it on 4 different systems. All 4 systems identified it as a 'hardware problem with the device you plugged in.' The manufacturer's driver software couldn't recognize there was one of their devices even attached. USB 1, 2, and 3 ports all did the same thing. It. Just. Died... after maybe 3 hours total use. And of those 3 hours, not one second was even spent in any sort of intense combat action. The stick was used exclusively in the intro stages of the game.... so very light use... and I mean VERY light use. The equivalent of having your transmission fall out because you backed down your driveway a few times. So. I gave it 2 stars, even after all that, because I'm assuming they don't all break after 3 hours, and I was still reasonably impressed with the seeming quality and features of the tangible, external parts of the controller. Apparently they just need to up the price of the device by $20 and put higher quality logic components in it and add some weight. And maybe yours will last more than 3 hours. Good luck! And no, I haven't figured out what else to get yet. I don't take flight and space sim games seriously enough to want to drop $400-$500 on something AMAZING... but as you can tell, I'm not going to be satisfied with cheap junk. I'm still looking for something 1/2 way in between, and that's what the most frustrating part of this is: I thought I'd already found it. Now I don't know what to buy. I can guarantee this, it won't be anything made by these guys.

Shipping: Shipping was great. I actually got it in exactly 48 hours via UPS. Packaging: When you first get the device, it will be easy to set up ( I won't spoil the assembly for you if you haven't seen it before ). I was really impressed with the packaging for starters. Software: I installed the drivers ; quick and easy. I didn't install anything additional but that's up to you. I'm using a iMac (2008) with windows vista ( not sure anymore what level ). Hardware: I use this stick with Flight Simulator X. At first the stick was uncomfortable for my hand. I had to adjust it , which it then became a perfect fit. If you're worried about force feedback, don't. My logitech stick's FF motor died after maybe a year of use. The spring which hold it center and provides a force is good enough. What I was most excited about but a tad bit disappointed by was the throttle ( more so with FS X than the stick it self ) . It's a dual throttle which can also become single throttle isn't able to control individual engines. They both control all engines whether or not you use one or both. There is also a button that will join the two throttles. You also have lot of options when it comes to buttons. I actually have less use for my keyboard now that I can put those commands on the stick. There are 10 number keys, a "shift" key , a trigger and dual throttles. The book says you can assign them to commands such as the trim and different engines but you'll have to play around with that in the game you're using it with. The base can be folded and be put behind your monitor if you have a flat screen LCD monitor to save space. The over all texture and stainless steal of the device is very smooth. There is a light under the hat switch which can become distracting at times when you push the stick forward during flight. The light for some reason is very intense on that angle so don't look directly into it. Another thing is when you're pushing the stick forward, the base lifts up. I personally do not mind when flying because the only time I'm really pushing the stick forward is when I'm landing. Even then, I don't even push that hard for the stick to really lift. I only notice that when I'm flying freehand. It might bother some but it's fine with me. Final: I would suggest this to anyone who is interested in an adjustable stick, great over all feel and style. Of course there are more advanced sticks around but this certainly is worth the buy for what it offers. Good: Easy to instal drivers Great feel ( texture ) Adjustable Great Style Lots of buttons Space saver Bad: Intense blue light Lifts when pushing stick forward

I really wanted to rate this one higher. Some have complained about it tipping over forwards, but it's easy enough to clip down or use a piece of velcro ( http://www.amazon.com/2-Inch-Plastic-Clamp-4-Pieces/dp/B0081A46WO/ref=sr_1_1 works perfectly). I really like the button configuration, with two small exceptions. The '6' button (furthest forward of the 4 on the side of the base) is pretty much inaccessible when the throttle is all the way back, and the 'shift' button isn't easily reached with either hand. It's really just '14' button, though, so you can use any button as a 'shift' button (I used '10', one of the two on the front). The base folds up for storage, and it's very adjustable. Height and tilt of both the whole stick and the top section can all be adjusted until it fits like a glove. However, my reason for 3 stars is the internal wiring. I've seen quite a few similar reports, but after only 3 days, one of the tiny (I believe 30ga) wires broke loose right where it attaches to the board at the base of the stick mount causing the x-rotation to be locked all the way to the left. There are dozens of these wires, and inside they're secured with tape and hot glue. The broken one (along with 2 others) were pulled too tight, so it was only a matter of time before normal use would pop them loose. I fixed this easily with a soldering iron and adjusted all 3 for a bit more slack, but I don't expect the average user to be willing to do this. If you're lucky, it'll break during the return period, but they really should beef up the wiring a little bit or use ribbon cables.

It was nice at first but after the second week the Z rotation broke (rudders) with out warning. So I was forced to map those keys on my keyboard. Was doing fine after that for about another 2 weeks but then the Button 3 snapped off. The actual button can still work but the Button 3 Key just snapped off. So now I must jimmy rig this until I find a better product. All in all this is a piece of junk and I would not recommend this to anybody. The asking price for this is nuts considering it will fall apart within the first month of purchase. I was not abusing this in any way just normal use.