I personally would not trust USB for more than a few channels of real time transfer unless you have tested the results with a specific set of gear. The USB buss can get jammed up crating audio problems.

The reason might be is that Yamaha and Steinberg take audio drivers seriously and spend money developing them. Allen & Heath is a hardware company, not software, so they just use generic off the shelf drivers. They build great mixers that are not not audio interfaces. 
With the exception of the true multi track mixer/interfaces, the intent of the USB port on a mixer is for playback of tunes on a break and for a quick and easy board mix recording. So really 16/44.1 is good enough for 98% of the folks who will use this feature.  
 
The USB port is an option, it costs money to add it in, it cost even more money to write good audio drivers for it, The manufactures are forced to comply because now a days people expect that feature. 
It's certainly handy for live bands, but because of the pour drivers those mixers are sub par for use in a studio.
 
 

I accept your prejudice, and thats ok, but not your facts..:)
 
The Behringer XR series connects a controller via wifi or ethernet.. no docking station.
 
You can use a $49 android tablet..or a $500 iPad, or a $2000 PC/laptop via Ethernet, or can use that last smartphone you had, for free...at my last count i have 3 devices currently unused that can be dedicated to a mixer.. as they are all useless and worthless for anything else...and being connected via wifi,  they can be left screen on and powered.
 
The FX on digital mixers are simply light years ahead of what comes on an "analog" mixer, (that has digital FX anyway).. imagine a 4 band fully parametric EQ per channel.. that alone is worth the money in a live situation... So, for $250 the XR12 is simply light years ahead of anything else available... (and, I am not necessarily a Behringer fan, simply stating the obvious here).
 

Cactus Music
 
And on the subject of new fangled gizmo digital mixers, What happens to all these iPad dependent mixers when your iPad dies 5 years from now and they become hard to find as time and technology moves onward? And some don't charge your device when docked? I find my iPad or phone batteries die pretty fast if I ask it to do to much and the screen is on. The life expectancy of an iPad is about 2 years ,, so your $299 digital mixer needs a $500 iPad..I think I'll stick to digital mixers that are 100% stand alone. If they have the iPad option that is then cool, but not cool if dependent.
 

Point taken, I have used a Yamaha 01v since 1996 or so so I'm certainly aware of the huge advantages of digital over analog. And there are many digital mixer that still have 100% control without an outboard tablet device. 
I just picked up an iPhone 4 for $50 just to use with a obsolete Akai Synthstation 25 
http://www.akaipro.com/product/synthstation25
 
The synth will be only partially useful the day the worlds supply of iPhone 4's is depleted. So my point is my Yamaha 01V still works, It will continue to work for I expect anoth 5 or 10 years. But all this new gear that is dependent on the currant line of hand held devices will become obsolete in possible a short time frame.
 
I myself am actually thinking about A Behringer X Air xr12  for my solo act just to get the programmable effects.
But I like my gear to last more than 5 years so I'm reluctant.
 
anybody notice that Mackie just released a small digital mixer that is also device dependent.   
http://mackie.com/products/prodx-series
 
For the money its sadly missing a lot of ins and outs. 

I had an O2R. I really worked up my chops on that thing. The bad part was that only one channel could be adjusted at once. The good thing was being able to save and recall EQ settings. The cool thing was 16 flying faders, and 32 with the "Flip" one gets used too after a while. Automated mixing was fast on that interface.
 
The reason I no longer use was the IO and word clock issues (And VHS tapes) of the day. I was using ADATs with optical to and from the O2R. Back then the clock was taken from the first ADAT of the batch. The loss of quality from the mixture of early bad 18 bit converters and a low quality word clock with no color digital mixing really made things hard to get it sounding right. I added to the problem by using high quality colorless preamps....Grace, Avalon.
 
Years of fighting digital mixing has shown me: 
#1 Digital is great for surgical precision, but lacks color. In some cases (soft synth), just allowing the signal to go into analog and back makes it sound like it's supposed to before mixing. Even the digital processes are tuned through an analog monitor of some kind.
 
#2 Track and mix through a single continuous system. A single word clock master must run the entire system. If you have two sets of converters that sound better each running from it's internals.....deal with it, you can't have everything. Many devices only work well using the internal clock. Using an external clock can (not always) cost the quality of the digital processing it does. In general, get a master and run from it, or try to run from the A/D converters. Computers also like to be in charge.....there in lies the rub.
 
Digital vs Analog. In general, Up to a point, I want as much analog as I can afford. The point is the tape machine. Digital recording is better than analog. Other than that, I prefer analog EQ, Compression, Effects (Outboard), mixing, to the effects inside the computer.....on average. The cost of time, space, and price go up really really fast for small gains. The bottom line is, the quality is better with analog.

elegentdrum
 The bottom line is, the quality is better with analog.

Change that to "High End Analog" and you'll be closer to the truth. There is pour quality analog gear that is easily outdone by mediocre digital. 
 
Mostly what digital offers over analog is a lot of on board processing. 
This topic is about using a mixer for studio recording which has entirely different needs than live sound. We don't really need the processing power of a digital mixer in a studio because we already have all that in our DAW.
Analog is certainly doing well in studios these day's.  
 For live sound you are further ahead with a digital board because those processors are more or less essential to pro sound.
 There's no limit in what you can stuff inside a little digital box. The equivalent processors in analog would be unwieldy to move around. Pro Live Audio is almost all digital desks now for this reason. Scene recall is has also become essential for live.   But those desks are not the consumer models  we talk about around here. We are talking $$$.
 
 

So I went with the Behringer UFX1204USB. Great features and worked great with Windows 7. However, I just bought a new LpTp running windows 10 and apparently there are no Behringer drivers for it. They can be installed and run in compatibility mode.

How about the Soundcraft Signature 12 MTK? Lots of features for $450.
 
There are a lot of great choices that I think in the end you'll like whichever one you land on.  I'm impressed with the Soundcraft, Allen & Heath and Yamaha preamps I've worked with - although the preamps in those mixers may or may not differ from their next tier up products.  I do have a lot of first hand experience with all of those brands. Very impressed with anything that has Yamaha's D-Pres housed inside.
 
 
EDIT>>  Should have read the last post before sending this one. All the best with your choice. Keep us in the loop for info on this mixer.

1-1/2 yrs of use and overall the UFX1204 is a pretty awesome little mixer/multitrack interface. At first the drivers had some issues but lately haven't had any hickups with them.
 
I use it for DAW activity and the onboard sound for system default and other audio players, which is plugged into the mixer's 1st 2 channels so I can hear everything through the mixer. It has 2 main outputs which is handy for A/B comparisons or routing some channels thru outboard processors while keeping others dry.
 
The only thing wrong with it is the headphone volume pot is scratchy and crazy loud. With Main Fader at -0- I have to keep the headphones between the first tick mark and 0 or they'll blow my eardrums. Don't know what's up with that.

Thanks for the update on what you bought. I'm still gun-shy of Behringer as the 3 things I bought all are broken now. Our Behringer mixer died at a gig a week ago, Main outputs are gone. Aux still works, 
So, 
Just ordered a Soundcraft Signature 10. It had exactly what we needed and no more. 
Small footprint, 6 XLR, 2 Aux, effects with control, Compressors on vocals, Hi Z on guitars. and USB for the laptop backing tracks. 
Only one thing missing is no RCA output to make board mix recordings. I'm hoping I can figure out how to use the USB for playback AND recording at the same time.