Personally, when I hear Honeycomb, I think of ice cream—and then the consequences my lactose intolerant-self would have to face were I to indulge. However, for flight sim fans, there’s only Honeycomb Aeronautical—and lucky for them, they’ve just dropped a brand new gamepad.
The Echo Aviation Controller is specifically geared towards playing flight simulators on PC, and is already readying for a mid-December 2025 takeoff. Rather than saddling yourself with heaps of specialist hardware, this pad attempts to, according to the press release, “cram a cockpit into a controller.” Perhaps a gift idea for the geek in your life that got really into Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?
I mean, all that functionality scrunched up into a gamepad footprint does make the Echo Aviation Controller look like an arcane instrument. However, all those improbably placed knobs and dials allow players to simultaneously control the “pitch, roll, yaw, throttle, trim and core aircraft systems.” Talk about a packed flight.
Pitch and roll is tied to the precision thumbstick, allowing you to finetune full elevator and aileron inputs. There are also four integrated Throttle Levers plus a Trim Wheel, and all of these are independently assignable too. That means there’s no need to eject from the Echo Aviation Controller if you want to hop from a single-engine to a multi-engine aircraft.
To me, such a wealth of inputs is a little intimidating. I bet some would pay good money to see what this particular menu-loving RPG fan does in a hectic flight sim session, but speaking of dough, let’s talk price. The Echo Aviation Controller will cost $150 / € 150 / £130 when it lands this December.
That’s an unsurprising price point given how obviously this bit of kit has set its sights on the enthusiast crowd—all those specialised bobbins were bound to cost a pretty penny. While it’s on the pricier side, it’s far from the most expensive PC controller we’ve seen; in our best PC controllers guide, that would be the $200 and uber responsive Razer Wolverine V3 Pro 8K. Still, not even that has a Trim Wheel.
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