Before I put my thoughts on the units, I will say that I'm not a long-time pilot. I've played a fair amount of IL2, although I've never really gone for online dogfights as I've not had great kit, thus been at a disadvange and taken too many shots from my six to make it a pleasurable experience. I've played Wings of Prey but despite it being quite pretty, I didn't enjoy the game too much. A few years back I used to play F-22 Raptor. In short, I'm not a massively-experienced flyer so please take this into account before forming your own judgement.
1. Out-of-the-box coolnessWhen you unbox a product, you get a feeling. Some items have a presence. In this instance, the Warthog wins - hands down. It's massively heavier than the X65F and I was taken aback at just how much heavier. Mounting the stick (which is almost as heavy as your average dumbell) on the base, just felt like quality. The throttle made me squeal with giddy excitement with all those switches and buttons.
In contrast, the X65F looked good and like it could do a job but when you put them side-by-side the Warthog is like a natural leader, when you have a captain in a football team and just by standing there, the presence puts him infront of everyone else.
2. Hand comfortI don't have particularly big hands. It's never really been a problem; at least until I got the X65F and its gargantuan stick. It's certainly comfortable. I'd not doubt that but to be able to utilise all the hats on the stick would need someone of such massive, sausage-fingers I can't even imagine how it got through
Saitek's ergonimics test. Was their chief-tester Nikolai Valuev? The construction is good, a hard metal and this does score points for the stick.
Meanwhile the Warthog has come from a real-world background. If you got in an A-10, you would have this stick in front of you. This means the manufacturers have had hundreds if not thousands of hands using it before it originally got put in the cockpit of a muti-million dollar aircraft. In the heat of the battle, you don't want your pilots getting all confused and fumbling around because the buttons are in the wrong place. All this means that it's been tested and tried so a wide range of hand sizes will have been taken into account. Thus, the Warthog boasts a very useable stick and all of the buttons are all within (reasonably) easy reach, even the top hat, unlike the X65F which needs two hands or a hands-off-stick approach, which therefore makes it no-longer a
HOTAS.
Now the throttles. In terms of sheer comfort, the X65F is very comfortable. The buttons over the back are, for me, a little easier to control. The larger top gives, again for me, a comfier resting position. This isn't to say the Warthog's is uncomfortable, it's just not as comfortable.
3. SetupFor what it's worth, the setup on the Warthog was easier, just two USB cables and a stick to attach to a base.
The X65F needed the extra boxes adding and there are three cables from the throttle, one to go to the mode display box, one to the stick and one to the PC. Personally, the extra cabling looks a little untidy. Not a fan.
4. Just-turned-it-on coolnessI don't know if it's just me but Saiteks have always been a bit like a Botox-ridden, duck-faced porn star: similar "functionality" as any other product but there's too much done to the aesthetics and it's got out of hand. Think lights, colours and trying to look more expensive than it actually is (like the X52) - but it's fine if you're into that kind of thing. The X65F was quite a surprise for me in that a lot of the
Saitek "Botox" wasn't there. The extra panel was there but that is genuinely functional. There's the light from the stick and that's it. Yes, acceptable.
In almost stark contrast, with a hint of hypocracy, the Warthog's stick had no lights but the throttle has a swathe of words lit up all over the panel. While these are technically lights, the lit words are cool. I know, I know having just said that too many lights was a bad thing but this has been done with style and purpose and as a result isn't over-bearing.
5. First fiddleOn the X65F, the safe switch with the red button underneath is cool. I know it's tacky and bordering on Botox but there really is something awesome about having your master arm/eject in there. I can't help but give this setup a bonus point for appealing to the inner child in me. Buttons, hats and the mini-stick are quite easily reachable.
The throttle on the X65F loses a lot of points. It's stiff when cold as the grease prefers a warm(-er) room. You can adjust it with a screwdriver or use force to loosen it. Even after doing that, the unit still needs securing to your desk/pit. In a dogfight, this thing will slip and slide, no question.
The Warthog's throttle has the tensioner, which I preferred to be a little stiffer to give a great feel of feedback. I can't ever imagine a situation where the unit would move when altered the throttle. Surely it's too heavy!
However, the sticks are where there is a real dichotomy in functionality. The
Saitek is force sensing and it takes a while to get used to but once you do, it's a very nice function. I got to really enjoy it and found it to be a real boon. Switching between the force sensitivity modes (of which there are four) is also handy.
The Warthog is traditional. It moves and affects the game action in accordance with relative movement. Having used force sensing, going back to movement is hard. I prefer the force sensing in terms of actual functionality. Personal opinion, I genuinely would give the nod to the X65F for this.
6. Small print for the WarthogYou basically HAVE to buy pedals. It has no rudder functionality whatsoever. You will have to bind it to some part of the throttle, which is just madness. So in real terms after paying £250~, you'll need to buy pedals which then brings your total to £300+.
7. Small print for the X65FI had no end of trouble with the calibration of the X65F. If I left the stick idle, deadzones set and went to watch the first half of a football match, I would come back to find the centre-point was over to the left. Moving the stick changed the centering, too. I tried two different units. Same problem. I went through
Saitek's support and they advised to only really use force modes 2 and 3, which basically renders 1 and 4 useless. Effectively, you have to be constantly moving the stick around and applying pressure. Even then you don't have full confidence in what you're telling the computer is actually what is happening.
With the stick, you can fix it to your desk, use the Velcro pads or whatever then you'll have no issue with it turning or coming away from your desk. This is fine if you have a pit but if it's just on your desk temporarily while playing then you'll have problems.
7. SummaryThe Warthog is the better stick, with all the "quirks" (read: design faults) of the X65F taken into account, by a country mile. Spend the extra £20-30 and try and get some pedals. Save yourself the time, effort, hassle and disappointment and
AVOID THE SAITEK X65F. Better force-sensing joysticks will be made in the future and I can nearly guarantee it won't be made by
Saitek.
Buy a Warthog:
- If you want a good, solid stick and probably what is as good as it gets
- If you accept you will basically need to buy pedals if you don't have them
- If you want a joystick with thousands (if not millions) of dollars in R&D behind it
- If you want what is the better joystick
Buy an X65F:
- If you aren't flying helicopters
- If you can fix the stick and throttle to your pit/desk
- You have hands the size of shovels
- You can deal with the crazy calibration of it
- You are mental
All above thoughts are my own and a personal opinion, if you have different ones, congratulations - this doesn't automatically make mine wrong. Debate with me by all means but don't argue.