Thrustmaster Boeing Yoke - is it worth $500?

the flight sim industry has enjoyed a number of new peripherals in its lineup over the last few years which has been great to see given how static it was honeycomb aeronautical burst onto the seam with its honeycomb alpha yoke and it followed this up very quickly with its bravo throttle quadrant but some of the more established players have been innovating too and thrustmaster continues its licensed lineup with the new boeing yoke this replicates the unique yoke motion found on boeing airliners where the yoke rocks backwards and forwards through a pivot point on the floor instead of the linear forwards and backwards motion that you find on a standard yoke this is not a cheap product retailing of 500 so is it worth your hard-earned cash or should you go with one of the competition [Music] so included in the pack is the yoke of course itself alongside a three axis throttle quadrant the yoke itself is enclosed in plastic but don't let this fool you the internal structure of this device is 100 metal the build quality is very high there was no noticeable flexing or creaking and whilst the external plastic is good it doesn't quite hold a flame to the very high quality plastic found on honeycomb's alpha yoke that includes a rugged rubberized texture where the boeing yoke plastic is very smooth and whilst it feels very good quality it falls slightly short of the competition the pendulum design really is excellent indeed frankly thrustmaster or boeing or both have pulled off a master stroke with this design it feels extraordinarily sturdy it's very smooth and genuinely was an absolute pleasure to use it's substantially different in its mechanism from other yokes the rotation on the yoke is excellent as well and both the rotation and the push-pull mechanism have a nice amount of resistance to them it's smooth throughout its range and whilst it doesn't quite rotate the full 180 degrees given that this is designed for airliners rather than general aviation aircraft where you wouldn't want to turn that aggressively anyway it works well and it certainly has a greater range of motion than you would find in the logitech yoke the tension on the pendulum rocking system can be adjusted simply remove a couple of hex screws remove a small plastic panel and the mechanism itself is revealed much like the pendulum system on its pedals it uses springs to create the tension they include an additional spring in the box which you can add for greater resistance or you can remove a spring if you want a slightly lighter feel i personally liked the increased tension that came with the additional spring it made the yoke feel weighty and robust and i really can't overstate just how excellent this yoke feels within vr it definitely deepened the immersion for me i've spoken many times before about how things like haptic vests and accessories such as table tennis paddles really can deepen your immersion into the game that you're playing and i include this yoke in that statement it really did make me feel like i was flying a large heavy aircraft it made me more deliberate precise and careful in my control inputs and the increasing tension as you further deflect the control surfaces at times made me reduce the amount of input that i was putting in the quality of the controls really tricked me into thinking i was holding the real thing rather than a table-mounted yoke and they've included some nice foam at the extremities of the rocking mechanism to dampen any impact on the yoke when you're pushing it forward and pulling it back it includes a really nice array of buttons and the buttons on the yoke itself all felt very high quality and premium it includes two momentary rocker switches on each side so four in total that's perfect for elevator and rudder trim you can choose to use both of these on each side for that or you can elect to use just one and then use the other inputs for other controls it's got a trigger on each side which has got a really satisfying amount of tension and a very satisfying click a momentary button on each side again again feeling very premium with a satisfying click on the left hand side an eight-way hat and on the right-hand side a thumb stick both of which felt fantastic three buttons also on the front as well as the x-box button on the left hand side and this device natively out of the box includes xbox support all of these buttons felt like they would last standing up to many cycles of input but clearly time will be the judge here they've included a landing gear control which i think may have been modeled on the 787 dreamliner gear lever but if i'm honest this switch feels completely out of place on this yoke it really does feel cheap it's clearly a toggle switch with some plastic attached to it and it's frankly not a particularly good toggle switch there's a lot of play and movement and wobble in it the clunk when you move it up and down isn't particularly satisfying and you can see the metal of the switch it clearly needed to be recessed slightly further back into the device and it needed a larger handle given just how good thrustmaster or pendula designs they really could have provided a substantially better gear lever than this fortunately it is the exception but i really am at a loss as to why it doesn't meet the same high standards as every other switch on the yoke i'm very pleased with the mounting mechanism it really does create a secure connection on your desk you don't have to clamp it down particularly hard in order to achieve that can also accommodate a very thick desk i've got a kitchen countertop and it accommodated that no problem at all again just speaking volumes to how well built the structure of the yoke is it really felt very sturdy on the desk indeed and it's a small thing but it's an important thing i think someone had the good sense to make sure that if you set the yoke on a flat surface it would actually stand up straight the way that they've orientated the clamps and the bottom of the yoke means it sits nicely which is not something i can say about the alpha yoke when it's got its clamps attached on the bottom they've included a tablet mounting bracket with some nice foam padding on the top this really is an excellent addition if you're using an ipad app as an example to provide you with your cockpit displays or if you're looking at flight charts landing plates stuff like that to really nice addition and again with the good sense that you can remove that bracket if you want to include it in a larger overall sim pit there's a couple of sliders on the bottom these can be used as thrust levers i frankly i'd expect if you're forking out this sort of cash you're going to have either the included throttle quadrant with the yoke or you're going to have a separate third-party device so these can be reassigned to different axes one big miss in my opinion was the absence of a clipboard style mounting mechanism on the front of the yoke it has a molded plastic design which teases at this indeed i've seen some youtubers even believe it has a clip mounting but this is solid plastic it doesn't move at all it would have been nice to have been able to have mounted checklists or landing plates something like that it's certainly not a deal breaker it's easily overcome with some blue tack but it just feels like a bit of a miss and a shame nonetheless now on to the throttle quadrant and this appears to have derived some inspiration from the bravo throttle quadrant from honeycomb it has detachable levers and this allows you to swap around the orientation of the throttle levers the flap levers and the air brake and whilst i get the principle here i'm not sure about the execution the throttle axis movement itself is very very smooth but the absence of tension control is very notable here they lack the resistance enjoyed by the yoke it just doesn't feel as robust and why three axes why do i have to choose between speed brakes or the flap lever and the very notable absence of any detents which you found on their airbus licensed lineup this would have been great for speed brakes and flaps you can purchase an additional quadrant for four engine configurations but you end up with this ridiculously unrealistically and unwieldy large throttle quadrant where you can't actually fit all four thrust levers in one hand it makes it very very difficult to control the inclusion of reverse thrust levers here is nice to see will be it they do feel a little bit flimsy the quadrant feels a bit like a toy it's just not up to the same standard of the yoke the push buttons feel a bit cheap it's like this product was developed by a different team there's a noticeable springiness in the thrust levers at its extremities and the clamping mechanism isn't anywhere near as good as on the yoke it does include a multi-select rotary switch but this really did feel very cheap and toy-like the rotary switch which sits on top of this is a little bit better now thrustmaster are releasing a standalone version of this device which is going to retail for about 100 less you can buy the additional quadrant as well for four engine configuration that's another 150 dollars on top of the 500 price tag for the yoke and throttle combi frankly you'd be better off waiting until march when they release a standalone yoke which is going to retail at 400 saving the hundred dollars off of the combi pack plus the 150 dollars from the additional throttle quadrant taking that 250 dollars and putting that towards the 280 bravo throttle quadrant which includes tension control an excellent six axes throttle quadrant a great feeling gear lever warning indicators switches a flap lever and a set of general aviation throttles to boot the standalone yoke won't be released until march so there is a bit of a weight but this throttle just doesn't warrant the additional hundred dollars asking price the yoke the yoke is excellent frankly it's a thing of beauty it's got a solid metal construction that goes all of the way through to the handles on the yoke and you really really can feel that when you're using it the mechanism is frankly amongst the best i have used and if you opt for large boeing aircraft typically in your sim then i actually do think at 400 given just how well it's built it's good value for money but if you fly more general aviation aircraft the honeycomb alpha yolk's going to remain the better choice so i'm going to score the yoke and the throttle separately and the yoke is definitely getting a full 5 out of 5 stars despite my niggles over the gear lever it really is very well made it's got a really innovative pendulum design in it it just feels like an excellent premium product that really deepens your immersion into the sim the throttle is going to get two out of five stars it feels cheaply made a bit toy like it just didn't receive the same love and care that the yolk did the combined product therefore i would give more weight to the yolk as this is four-fifths of the cost but the throttle really does drag it back it would get three out of five stars so my recommendation is wait until march get yourself the standalone boeing yolk which is an excellent product and great value of 400 and combine that with the excellent bravo throttle quadrant from honeycomb aeronautical so there we go guys as always i hope you're very well wherever in the world you are stay safe in the skies and i will see you in my next one [Music] foreign

Channel: Virtual Reality Pilot

Views: 92,590

Keywords: boeing yoke, boeing yoke and throttle, thrustmaster tca boeing yoke and throttle, new thrustmaster boeing yoke, thrustmaster boeing yoke pack, thrustmaster boeing yoke and throttle, thrustmaster tca quadrant boeing edition, thrustmaster yoke review, thrustmaster yoke and throttle, thrustmaster yoke boeing, thrustmaster yoke xbox series x

Id: P0PYskMIumE

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 09 2022