Hardware Review: Saitek Cyborg Evo Wireless Joystick
Fully Adjustable & Programmable PC Flight Stick By Bruce Pechman, The Muscleman of Technology

www.mrbicep.com

November, 2004
A Stick with Tricks Wireless technology is all the rage these days. Theres one nice advantage wireless peripherals have as it relates to gaming: with each passing generation, the expertise of these device makers matures. Such is the case with Saiteks brand new Cyborg Evo Wireless Joystick. How so you may ask? What if I told you can get 50 hours of game play on one single AA alkaline battery? After ten minutes of no activity, the stick will power down and the red battery indicator LED will switch off. If the LED is flashing red it means less than 10% of juice remainsget ready to pop a new battery in. In fact the Cyborg Evo Wireless includes idle and standby modes which may give you up to 75 hoursand up to 12 months standby time on one single battery! Saitek includes two AA alkaline batteries in the box to get you jump-started right away (even though it only requires one). Using the recently approved 2.4GHz spectrum, youll get a whopping 30 foot range! Keep in mind this is also a fully customizable stick because you simply loosen the knurled industrial machine screws to adjust the hand/thumb rest height, angle of pitch for the programmable fire buttons, and tilt preference of the head assembly (left, center, or right). Saitek should have called the Evo Wireless the Burger King Stick because you can trick it out and have it anyway you like! The Cyborg Evo Wireless is a four-axis, 11-button stick with lever throttle, eight-way Hat Switch, and a 3D Twist Rudder control lever on the handle. I will not bore you with the gory details, but this stick has it all. Here is a quick expanded rundown: Rapid fire trigger, 5 programmable fire buttons, 8-way POV (point of view) hat switch, 3D twist handle control, lever throttle, 2 shift buttons, as well as 4 programmable buttons on base (2 left, 2 right). The included advanced programming software called Saitek Smart Technology (SST) allows for quick and easy customization and programming of buttons
and sequencesthe shift keys allow you to accomplish double programmable commands for maximum flexibility (see screen shot below).
Saitek SST Software Profile Editor
Another aspect I really appreciate about this stick is the easy set-up and intelligently designed USB wireless receiver. Just plug the receiver into any available USB port install the software, and youre ready for take off. Speaking of taking off, I really need to take more flying lessons. The private instructor in MS Flight Simulator 2004 told me the only thing Id be fit to fly is a hot-air balloon; and my plane had more body roll than Noahs Ark! By the way, the base of the stick slickly stores the USB wireless receiver and the battery compartment is tooless for quick and easy battery replacement. This is the best wireless joystick I have had the pleasure to use and the design is simply spot on! This fully adjustable and programmable wireless Joystick retails for $59.99 and comes backed by a Saitek 2 year warranty. To learn more about the Saitek Cyborg Evo Wireless Joystick or any of Saiteks other quality products, visit www.saitekusa.com. Reviewed on Alienware Area 51 Desktop.

Globetechnology: Saitek Cyborg EVO Wireless

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Saitek Cyborg EVO Wireless
By IAN JOHNSON Globe and Mail Update

UPDATED AT 8:32 AM EST

Product Rating

Wednesday, Nov 24, 2004

The Rating System
The Good: Extremely customizable stick, with moveable grips and buttons; excellent wireless system; efficient power management and needs only one battery; smooth controls. The Bad: Moving the stick doesn't wake it back up from sleep mode, you must hit a trigger button; stick must be manually calibrated before each gaming session. The Verdict: A solidly designed ambidextrous stick that performs as well as a wired joystick, and it's extremely customizable. Reviewed on: Hewlett-Packard Media Center m380n Photosmart 3 GHz Pentium 4 PC with 1GB of RAM, DVD and DVD-recordable drives, a seven-way media reader, TV-input/PVR capability, Maxtor 120GB IDE and 250GB SATA hard disks running at 7200 RPM, an HP F1703 LCD panel, a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 video card, and Windows XP Media Center Edition. Also available for: Windows 98 through XP Professional
REVIEW: Saitek released its Cyborg Evo joystick about a year ago, and it's still one of the most featureladen and customizable PC game controllers on the market. The company has upped the ante with the Saitek Cyborg EVO wireless - the same general stick as the original EVO, but without the wires.
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041105.gtevowirelessnov5/BNPrint/AtPlay/. 11/30/2004

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The EVO, which sells for a suggested price of $59.95 (U.S.), is made for serious gamers who spend a LOT of time playing games that require a joystick. The original Cyborgs came with a tool that allowed you to customize the handle size, move the throttle and palm rest to make them more comfortable, and change the angle of the stick's head so that the buttons on it would be in perfect reach for your specific finger size. For the EVO line, the company scrapped the adjustment tool and added high-quality metal worm gears instead a massive improvement. Turning the brushed-steel knobs will tilt the head unit to the left or right, and towards the front or rear as well. This allows you to angle the thumb buttons from side to side and up or down to suit your hand size. The worm gears are easy to adjust, even while playing a game. I really, really liked the design it's simple but effective in terms of tailoring the stick to suit you perfectly, and changes are easy to make. If your hand starts to cramp during an intense dog-fighting session, you just give the wheels a couple of turns and change the shape of the stick to give your hand muscles a break. The EVO's throttle is a wide flap centred at the back of the stick's base, so that you can adjust it with either hand. The throttle has a comfortable degree of resistance just enough so that you won't over- or under-correct when you're in a hurry, and you won't change the setting if you brush it accidentally. The Evo has an adjustable handrest that flares out from the bottom of the stick. It's held in place by a removable screw with a large head that looks like one of the worm-gear wheels. There are two rows of four holes for the screw, arranged vertically with a row down each side of the stick, so that you can adjust the handrest to accommodate different hand sizes. Saitek also gets big points because the handrest can be set up for right- or left-handed users, unlike most joysticks that are moulded for one hand only (part of the reason for Saitek's centralized throttle design). The stick twists to the left and right on its base, too a must-have feature for flight-sim enthusiasts, because it can be programmed to control the rudder or tail rotor on aircraft. I put it through its paces on games such as Battlefield Vietnam, and it performed beautifully for piloting both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. The trigger button has a quick-reacting return spring, and gives an audible click every time you fire. I found the travel slightly long if you have to click really fast for a quick burst of fire, but that also means you're in no danger of firing accidentally as your hands tense up on the stick during a dogfight. On the top of the joystick is an eight-way HAT switch that can be programmed to control views out the cockpit or as a set of buttons to activate things on your aircraft. To either side of the HAT is a round programmable thumb button. Below the top of the stick is a sort of small shelf with three flat buttons for your thumb. Using the worm gears, this shelf can be tilted up or down to fit the size and angle of your thumb. The only problem I encountered here was that the buttons are fairly narrow. Trying to hit the centre button, I frequently keyed the right-hand button as well because I caught the edge of it with my thumb. If you have large hands, the shelf of buttons may be hard to operate properly. The selection I've listed is already more buttons than you'll find on most joysticks, but it doesn't end there. Down either side of the base are rows of three more programmable buttons, two of which can be set up to work as shift keys to double the functions of the buttons on the stick. All the buttons can be programmed using software that Saitek bundles with the EVO Wireless. Installation of the software takes a couple of minutes, and both the programmable features and the USB drivers are solid. You do have to calibrate the stick before each gaming session, though. The rudder control and throttle were particularly prone to starting up with an inaccurate setting. It was a minor issue and easy to deal with, but still annoying. The analogue stick has a large silver return spring that's exposed where the stick enters the base a design used on most of Saitek's latest joysticks. The return spring is strong, bringing the stick quickly and snugly back to its centre position when you ease up on it, and yet the travel is smooth in all directions with just the right amount of resistance. The tracking is precise once you've set it up, although you sometimes have to recalibrate the centrepoint if you remove and then reinstall the stick, as I mentioned. The base of the EVO Wireless is wide enough to make it nice and stable on the desktop, but not so large that you can't play with it on your lap if you choose. The wireless system is truly excellent. It uses 2.4 GHz technology and has a roughly 30-foot range. It worked flawlessly during my testing, with no lag or interference problems. But that sort of performance is what you'd expect from a modern wireless peripheral. What you

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might not expect is the size of the receiver. Instead of a hockey-puck-like receiver at the end of a trailing USB cable, the EVO has a really neat system. It's receiver is a tiny USB dongle about the size and shape of a small USB Flash drive. Install the software drivers, plug it in, and you're ready to go. A nice touch: The receiver slides into a holder in the bottom of the stick when it's not being used, so there's no danger of losing it. The power management system is well designed, too. Wireless joysticks are notorious for eating batteries, but Saitek has done a great job optimizing the EVO's power consumption. It needs only a single AA battery, and will get up to 50 hours of use out of each one. As far as I'm aware, it's the most power-efficient wireless stick on the market at the moment. There's one issue with the power-management system, though. It turns the power off after a minute or so on inactivity, which is a great feature. But the EVO Wireless doesn't wake itself up automatically when you move the stick - you have to hit the trigger button to get the power to come back on. I would often start a takeoff roll, then find nothing happening when I pulled back on the stick. I'd have to quickly hit the fire button to activate the joystick. Thankfully, the EVO wakes up almost instantly, so you can usually recover in situations like this. And if you're mindful of preflight checks, a red LED does come on at the top of the stick when it's active. Overall, the Saitek Cyborg EVO wireless is a great stick. Other than making sure the stick is awake before starting your game, it's a solid piece of gaming hardware that performs as well as any wired joystick. The hardware is excellent, the materials give it a high-quality feel, the software is solid and the number of control options goes beyond what most flight-fans will ever need. On top of that, one-size-fits-all joysticks can't hope to compete with the comfort of this stick once you tweak it to match your hand size. Top marks all around.
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