I honestly am not so sure that JL Cooper is a standard in broadcast, at least not on the audio side of things. My hunch tells me you should skip this brand. And the model you talked about has no displays that indicate what parameter it’s controlling. To me that’s really not that great, honestly.
As for controlling plugins I still think it’s faster (for me) to use the trackball.
But anyway, other people have more in depth knowledge about controlling instruments than me so I probably shouldn’t say much more.