I tried a Helix for a couple of hours yesterday. I was amazed by how easy it was to use, how quickly I was able to start and complete really usable sounds, and adored how it's manufactured.
The few patches I made sounded killer at a low volume and perfect at high volume. The overall feel of the patches were again, surprising.
The display was beautiful. Again, very intuitive and easy to manipulate. There's a Tonestack button by the screen was my best friend. As I was creating patches I was able to immediately bounce back and make subtle corrections. The Axefx always got tricky for me in this regard. As I wander down the Fractal Rabbit hole I sometimes got lost and over-edited sounds. Of course I got better at it and made the sounds I wanted with my axe, but nonetheless ...
The joystick seemed a bit weird to use because it seemed hyper sensitive but I got the hang of it soon enough.
In closing, I got what I expected from this thread. A lot of bullshit and assumptions with a few worthwhile statements that ended up with butt hurt. Line6 has always been pretty useless to me and actually caused me to hate modelers. The Axefx has changed the way I view music and tone quality forever, and I'm grateful as hell for it. But the truth is, the Helix is a great piece of gear and has completely changed my personal opinion of L6. This is a killer piece of gear that is easy as hell to use, has almost zero learning curve, is accurately priced, and can survive a fall off a roof.
Guitar gear defensiveness and blind loyalty is absurd. Allow companies to improve why doncha? Fractal has created one hell of product and other companies have obviously taken note and have begun to compete. Very very well too.