The 5 Best Flight Simulator Yokes to Buy in 2024
31 August 2021 | Updated on February 05, 2024
The best flight simulators use realistic controls to make the experience as immersive and authentic as possible. Flight simulator yokes are one of the best ways to improve your virtual flying experience. (together with a set of rudder pedals and a throttle quadrant)
The market currently offers many different great flight simulator yoke options. Brands such as Logitech, CH Products and recently Honeycomb have created some very nice products to help you get the most out of your virtual flying.
Why Use a Flight Simulator Yoke
People might argue it doesn’t matter whether you use a joystick or yoke with your flight simulator, as you will never get the real feeling of flying a plane. Although that might be the case in some way, we believe a flight simulator yoke still offers plenty of added value when using a flight simulator as a training aid.
If you are flying a plane with a yoke, like a Cessna, Piper Tomahawk etc, a yoke will give you a more accurate and realistic experience while practicing in the simulator. Flying with a yoke and stick both require different movements and if you use the one similar to what you fly with in real life, it will only help you enhance the experience and give your training more value.
For my own flight training, where I flew a yoke-equipped Piper Tomahawk, I found using a flight simulator yoke to be a great way to make my virtual flying experience more realistic and closer to my real-life flight training. I’m convinced it helped speed up my flight training.
The 4 Best Flight Simulator Yokes in 2024
Now, let’s dive in! Below, we have listed the 4 most popular and top-rated flight simulator yokes, ranging from older widely used models, to brand new flight simulator yokes featuring the latest technologies.
We’ve also included a full buying guide below.
1. Logitech Pro Flight Yoke
$169.99 $199.95
The Logitech Pro Flight Yoke (formerly built by Saitek) is probably one of the most popular and widely-used flight simulator yokes available today. It offers a beautiful design, and a separate throttle quadrant that’s extendable for use with multi-engine aircraft.
The Yoke offers a realistic feeling and has a nice LED display for showing and interacting with convenient flight timers.
I personally use and love the Logitech Yoke my home flight simulator. It’s great because it resembles the yoke-fitted aircraft I flew during my real-world flight training, a Piper PA-38 Tomahawk.
2. Honeycomb Alpha Flight Sim Yoke
$279.99 $299.99
The Honeycomb Alpha Yoke is one of the newer models on the market today. It features rotating switches on the yoke, as well as a full switch panel to control anything from avionics to lights.
What’s cool about this yoke? Not only does it feature lots of realistic switches, there’s also adjustable cockpit backlighting built-in!
All these extra features do come at a price, with the Honeycomb yoke being the most ‘expensive’ on in this list. We haven’t had a chance to try it ourselves, but looking at some YouTube videos and reviews, it does seem very promising!
If you’re not quite sure whether to go for the Honeycomb Alpha or Logitech Pro Flight yoke, we have written a separate comparison article about the main differences and which one you should pick, which you can read here.
3. CH Products Yoke
$87.30 $149.00
Another company that makes great flight simulator hardware is CH Products. Their Eclipse Yoke with built-in engine controls levers can a great substitute for Saitek’s Yoke and throttle quadrant. Its six analog 10-bit axes give you control over aileron, elevator, propeller pitch, fuel mixture, throttle, and rudder movement, and the colored knobs for throttle, prop, and mixture let you fly with ease and confidence.
CH Products has been building yokes long before many other players on the market. You might get the impression their product design is a little outdated, but they still perform very well and are an affordable option.
This standard CH Products Yoke is the most affordable one on this list.
4. CH Products Eclipse Yoke
$224.93 $249.95
The Eclipse Yoke is the more advanced model of the older CH Products Yoke.
The main differences you can easily notice are the increased number of buttons on the yoke, as well as the two programmable fingertip paddles, which were most likely added as rudder pedals substitutes.
Also, the engine control levers are now color-coded, to more closely match the real deal.
5. Thrustmaster TCA Yoke Boeing Edition
$399.99
Recently, Thrustmaster launched a Boeing 787-replica yoke, the Thrustmaster TCA Yoke Boeing Edition. If you love virtual flying the Boeing, this kit is certainly an excellent choice to make your simulator experience as real as possible!
What to Look for When Buying a Flight Simulator Yoke in 2024
When buying a flight simulator yoke, there are a few things you should consider and look out for. Let’s look at each of them in detail.
Functionality
First of all, you should consider what functionalities the yoke should have. The most common functions are a throttle quadrant and customizable buttons and switches on the yoke and base.
You can find many different levels of functionality in flight sim hardware on the market today. A simple yoke with only base functions might be exactly what you are looking for, whereas a yoke with programmable buttons and engine throttles might be perfect if you want a more realistic experience.
Some yokes also have additional functions, such as a built-in display with timer, realistic switches, trim wheel, and more.
Quality
Next, you should assess the quality of both the yoke itself and the included hardware, such as base controls and throttle quadrants.
If you prefer your controls to be very realistic, go for a yoke that has a more sturdy look and feel, realistic switches or knobs and weighty levers.
On the other hand, if you are okay with less realism and a lower price, a full plastic yoke may do the job just as well for you.
Price
How much money are you willing to spend?
The prices of flight sim hardware vary enormously from one product to another. You can find cheap yokes that will do the job, while for just a few dollars more you may get something with all the bells and whistles. Some of the higher-end products are also very pricey, but if they give you the most realistic experience and help you build your flight sim cockpit, then it may be worth it in the long run.
Compatibility
Choose a yoke that is compatible with the simulator software of your choice. This is very important, as a yoke that is not compatible with your sim software will be quite useless..
Also, if you are planning to build a custom simulator cockpit system in which all parts will work together seamlessly, choose hardware that can be easily integrated into it. The Logitech flight simulator product line offers some great integration between the different components, such as yoke, throttle quadrants and instruments.
Ease of Use
Finally, consider how easy it will be to set up and use your new flight simulator hardware.
If you are looking for something basic that will work out of the box, go for a yoke with pre-configured functions.
However, if you prefer to have maximum control over your setup and plan on programming all buttons yourself, choose a more customizable model.
Also, some flight simulator yokes may be difficult to set up on thick desktops. Therefore, if you have a heavy desk or thick tabletop, make sure you buy a yoke with an adjustable clamp to accommodate for this eventuality.
Conclusion
As you can see in the list above, there are pretty much only 4 great options when it comes to flight simulator yokes, and only 2 fairly new products: the Logitech Pro Flight and Honeycomb Alpha.
If you’re interested in either one of those two modern options, we highly recommend checking out our comparison article of the Logitech Pro Flight vs Honeycomb Alpha yoke here:
We personally used and love the Logitech Pro Flight Yoke System with the throttle quadrant. So we can assure you this is a great, fairly inexpensive option if you want to buy a flight simulator yoke.
However, if you have a little extra budget to spend, the Honeycomb Alpha Yoke is a more modern, technologically advanced option that offers high quality and a great realistic flight simulator experience.
If you’re on a tight budget, the older CH Products yokes are still a great option as well.
Happy (virtual) flying!
