The current situation around the world has had at least one highlight: online racing becoming a fully fledged, beautifully broadcast sport. Between F1 2019, rFactor and iRacing we’ve seen professionals from a range of big name series including F1, Indycar and Australian Supercars taking to their simulators and racing with as much determination as if it was the real thing. It’s been great to watch, and has seen the number of players taking to the track increase in the last few weeks. But all of these pros have one big thing in common – none of them are sat on their sofa using a controller. If you want a serious race, you need a wheel. There’s a lot of choice, and a wide range of quality, but with the Logitech G920 (which works on the Xbox and PC, PS4 players have the similar G29 available) you’re certainly getting something very decent, but does it really warrant the price tag that’s in excess of £250?
Having tested the wheel and pedals on games such as Project Cars 2 and Assetto Corsa there are some pretty easy conclusions to draw without looking too deep into the finer points of the G920. The first thing you notice is how sturdy this feels, and how well it’s all been put together. The wheel is chunky and gives a stronger grip than some other, lower priced wheels. The gear paddles behind the wheel give a satisfying click, and have enough resistance to make sure you don’t accidentally catch them and try to pull away from a hairpin in 4th gear. The pedals have some great weight behind them as well, letting you really get a feel for what’s beneath your feet, with the brake pedal being a particularly interesting feature (I’ll discuss that later in the review). In short, the wheel feels like something that you’ve spent a decent amount of money on, and the full 900° rotation (which can be reduced to suit your own needs) means you’ve got the option for some truly realistic driving ahead of you.
Put a few laps in, and you’ll start to get the feel of the force feedback as well, which can be tweaked again for your own comfort and has a range from “I don’t want force feedback” all the way up to “shouldn’t my arms still be attached?”. Feeling the difference in resistance between a grippy racetrack, a tricky gravelly rally stage and a rain-soaked street circuit is pretty amazing, with the resistance changing and the feeling through the wheel adapting perfectly to what you’re trying to drive on. Grinding along the side of another car feels like it should, getting thumped by an over-zealous first corner idiot leaves you with the aches to remind yourself of what happened, and that damaged wheel suddenly becomes far more than just a bit of damage slowing you down. It’ll even help you get a feel for when your tyres are starting to fade away a bit, with the grip clearly starting to drop as you feel the car sliding that little bit more. But being able to change this is great; if you want an easy ride without much by way of feedback then you can, but if you want that fight, if you want to wrestle your car round Spa for an hour and be left exhausted, then you can do that. It’ll certainly make that last lap overtake feel all the sweeter.
There are all of the necessary buttons on the face of the steering wheel too, mimicking the Xbox controller buttons. This can all be customised as well, and are in easy thumb reach of your wheel grip, so changing brake balance, having a quick look behind you or activating DRS is painless and doesn’t need you to take your eyes off the road to find that elusive button to flash your lights at someone.
But we haven’t spoken much about the pedals yet. These professional looking metal pedals feel great, with all three pedals (including clutch) all present and waiting for your feet to get involved. The accelerator and clutch are easy to get the hang of, with a good smooth range of movement making it easy to get off the line without wheelspin, and making throttle control an absolute doddle. But it’s the brake pedal that feels totally different to others I’ve tried before now. In a bid to make the brake pedal more realistic, Logitech have really beefed it up, and to get full brake force you really need to put some beef behind your left foot, so much so that even the spikes beneath the pedal unit aren’t strong enough to stop the pedals trying to scuttle away from you in protest. If you’re willing to experiment a bit by tying string round your chair legs and attach it to the pedal unit, or setting yourself up with a proper racing seat and stand that will hold them more securely in place then you’ll be fine, but I found I had to reduce the braking sensitivity. I just couldn’t brake at 100% without pushing them back along the carpet away from me. I can see what Logitech were trying to do, and the concept of a more resistant, realistic brake pedal is great, but it’s really reserved for those players who have got the right setup to prevent that extra level of movement. With the sensitivity dropped a bit I could easily use the pedals without them moving, but that’s definitely something to look out for it you try the G920 and wonder why you’re not slowing down much.
So as an overall package the G920 is an excellent wheel, that in my opinion certainly justifies its price tag. The pedals take some getting used to, with that brake pedal really testing your patience when it comes to finding the right setting, but apart from that there’s very little to criticise. It works wonderfully well with a range of racing titles, has some brilliant force feedback which genuinely helps your racing, and feels like you’re holding premium piece of kit. It’s easy to recommend, and makes you very excited to see just what they’ll come up with in their next iteration of this series of wheels.
Reviewed on PC
Have one for the ps4 gotta getting back to playing regular games it’s kind of hard to do this wheel is the real deal