The design looks pretty good but, most people just look at the superficial stuff. Sure, the number and types of switches are certainly important but, for me, the internals are even more important.
For instance, someone said the hat switch looks the same as the hat on a different stick. That's immaterial as what's important is how it's made inside which can be completely different even though the hat itself looks identical. Of course this also works in the opposite direction, two apparently different hats can be exactly the same inside. This has been one of Saitek's problems, the hat switches, from the X45 to X52pro are all the same design inside even though they look different and I've had several fail. That's not a real big problem for me since I switched to TIR and don't use the hats for views, consequently they last much longer, but this is a terrible design flaw for others who do use the hat for views and the micro switches cannot be easily replaced.
Personally, I like the light touch of the dual spring X52pro which is better than the single spring X52. The problem I have with the stick itself has been mentioned by others. The cup and cone system, even with the metal cone of the X52, has too much slop in the center and over time this has gotten worse. There are two things that contribute to it and that's too much play between the cone and shaft of the stick, and too much play in the plastic gimbals. Neither of these can be easily fixed unless you're willing to have someone turn you a slightly thicker metal tube to replace the existing one or find a way to shim it. Neither of these appear practical.
What I'm looking forward to is seeing the inside of this new Logitech as it's the only way to tell how well it's really made. I'd like to see a good, heavy duty gimbals system, preferably with metal bearing surfaces and the ability to mechanically adjust it to accommodate wear over time. Adjustable stick tension would be great, perhaps this can be adjusted using the FFB software? A good multiple detent system for the throttle like the X52's. The throttle detents are nice in that you can program the stick so that pushing forward past the forward detent actives WEP and pulling back past the aft detente shuts the engine down (this is the way many modern jets select afterburner and engine shut down). This is intuitive and saves buttons for other uses although during an intense fight I sometimes pull back too hard to go to idle and accidentally shut the engine down. I suppose that hearing the engine shut down sounds weird to whoever I'm fighting but it doesn't really affect the fight because the engine starts as soon as I push the throttle forward.
Anyway, I don't think I'll be taking one for the team on this given Logitec's exceptionally poor track record of throw-away sticks but I certainly look forward to someone else taking the dive.
If, for instance, all of the stick forces including centering and dead band is controlled by FFB software, there is a lot of potential for fine tuning this stick and who knows, maybe they've really got something.
