It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally happened. Following the Logi PLAY event, Logitech has revealed the G PRO Wheel and G PRO Pedals for sim racing, its first foray into a direct drive ecosystem.
G923 users have been begging for a ‘DD’ offering from the legendary Swiss-based outfit, and that day has finally arrived. Plus, it just so happens to beat rival Thrustmaster to the punch.
This 11Nm wheelbase is hoping to tickle the fancy of esports athletes across the globe, something its existing line of ‘PRO’ mice, keyboards, and headsets already do. The main question is, do these new products live up to the ‘PRO’ name, and will we see them in the hands of professional sim racers come the next Le Mans Virtual Series, for example?
First up, Logitech hasn’t exactly re-invented the wheel per se, but it has redesigned the tried-and-tested layout used from the G923 backwards.
The face buttons have now been split across the top of the rim, and the D-pad has been replaced with a small, tactile joystick. The L2 and R2 buttons (or LT and RT on the Xbox variant) have been moved to a more thumb-able spot towards the edges, and the Options/Share buttons are now located alongside two encoders towards the base of the wheel.
The rear paddles are now of a magnetic actuation variety, meaning their tactility and longevity has greatly improved, and both sound and feel practically perfect.
In addition, the PRO wheel now features two customisable analogue paddles for anything from dual-clutch usage, to assigning throttle and brake inputs for accessibility purposes.
Logitech has reportedly spent a lot of time researching with real drivers and sim racers to establish the best input positioning for this new rim, and apart from the new lower-left encoder being in a slightly awkward position (I feel if it mirroring the lower right encoder would have been better), it’s a pretty inoffensive, practical rim.
Onto the base, this humungous plastic beast isn’t going to go unnoticed.
The black, logo-emblazoned exterior is going to stand out on either your desk or your sim rig, as while you have mounting threads on the underside of the base, a ‘PRO’-badged cover pops out on the front, allowing you to attach the included desk mount if you so wish.
The extra surface area on this base compared to the likes of the – admittedly less forceful – Fanatec CSL DD and MOZA R5 means when desk-mounted, it’s incredibly stable. Just don’t crank it to its max 11Nm of torque, unless you wish to see the contents of your desk tumbling to the floor…
Since this PRO base isn’t subscribing to the aluminium heatsink body akin to the aforementioned Fanatec and Moza devices, within the plastic exterior lies a single fan.
However, unlike other actively-cooled wheel bases throwing in a tiny, loud fan, Logitech has catered for this cooling solution by having a large mesh intake on the front of the wheel base, with an exhaust mesh (which houses the fan) on the back.
In our usage, at no point did the fan make any audible noise, which will keep anti-decibel enthusiasts at bay.
The new quick-release system devised by Logitech is remarkably simple to use, and not too dissimilar from Fanatec’s own design, allowing you to remove the steering wheel from the base with little fuss.
While no additional wheel rims are available as of yet – nor has there been any official word despite our pestering – it’s glaringly obvious that more rims will arrive in the future.
The base also features a small OLED display, which allows you to change a plethora of settings on the fly. From torque levels to TRUEFORCE levels, degrees of rotation, force feedback dampening and even your platform compatibility.
More features such as customising the colours of your rev lights are available when plugging the PRO base into a PC and using G Hub, but you still have the ability to change the vast majority of the same features and build profiles on the fly – particularly helpful for console users. It’s a genuinely fantastic, and remarkably easy-to-use inclusion.
Regarding the pedals, Logitech has been using the same basic design for aeons now, and while they’re not at all a bad set to use, they were very much due an overhaul.
The new PRO pedals are a breath of fresh air for a number of reasons, not just the fact they’re finally including a 100kg load cell on the brake.
The solid plastic and aluminium construction looks spectacular, and the experience all the way from installing, adjusting and actually using these pedals has been meticulously thought through.
First of all, the ability to remove unwanted pedals (like the clutch pedal I barely ever touch) is a godsend. Furthermore, the underside of the pedal base features measurement markings from the centre outwards, meaning getting your pedals equally spaced is a breeze.
If you’re planning on using these pedals on the floor, they feature multiple rubber feet to keep things in place, but the inclusion of a load cell definitely leads to harder pressure and subsequent sliding. Definitely worth pushing them up against a wall.
If not, mounting to a rig or cockpit is easy enough, though the removable pedals do individually feature underside threading, so mounting them as-is or in an inverted manner is entirely possible.
Logitech knows how much the community enjoy its products, and also how much they like to mod them. From open-wheel replacement rims for the G923 to giving the existing brake pedal a bit more resistance, the G PRO Pedals lean into that flexibility, not shy away from it.
Extra springs and elastomers are present in the box, and thanks to a large shroud around the pedal’s spring section, popping them out to change things up doesn’t result in broken nails, fingers, or pedals.
Connectivity has been simplified and (somewhat) modernised too, with the wheel base featuring a USB A hub on the back and not the bottom, so faffing with cables before mounting the base is a thing of the past.
The pedals connect to the base via a simple USB A connector, meaning the pedals can also be used entirely independently on a PC without having to dig out a different cable. Independent use on a console is not possible however, you must connect them via the base – which is what we’re used to anyway.
While the design, build quality and user experience so far have been practically immaculate, there is one glaring issue. While not game-breaking in the slightest, having Micro USB be the default connector on a 2022 PRO-grade product is a joke. I would love to know why this decision was made, especially since Logitech’s most recent G and MX releases revolve around USB C.
Anywho, once everything is plugged in, using the G PRO wheel and pedals is a fantastic experience. We used it on both a desk and a Next Level Racing Wheel Stand 2.0, and it was exactly what we expected.
Crisp, immediate feedback, a great feeling and response on the pedals, and thanks to it being Logitech, the compatibility was without question. Across Gran Turismo 7, Assetto Corsa Competizione and KartKraft, to quote Todd Howard: “It just works.”
The ability to pause the game, flick open the onboard menu on the OLED display and tweak settings as you see fit, only for them to kick in immediately takes all of the grunt work out of using a direct drive base.
The Logitech mentality of plug-and-play works even here and can be more encouraged with older games since you can make the PRO base appear as a G923 if it disagrees with older titles.
Priced at £849 £999 (€1,099/$999), the PRO Wheel isn’t going up against the likes of the aforementioned Fanatec CSL DD or MOZA R5 in some ways, mainly because it tops out at 11Nm of torque. However, while Logitech feels this is the right amount of torque to offer, we rarely pushed ours beyond 5.5Nm in our usage.
If you’re in the market for a base that can top out at that level, the G PRO is a cracking shout. However, if Logitech released a slightly weaker version (at 5 or 6Nm for example) in the future, priced a little cheaper, it would be an easy sell to a much wider audience. While we appreciate there’s a quick release, more details on the potential steering wheel ecosystem wouldn’t go amiss, either.
As for the pedals, we’re besotted with them. The new design, build quality, customisability and even the fact they exist makes us extremely happy. Being priced at £299 (389€/$349) makes things even better.
If you’re not fully sold on the wheel since you’re already rocking a G923, but really want some new pedals, the company has confirmed an adaptor will be released in 2023 to make the PRO pedals compatible with previous Logitech wheels, and likewise making the Driving Force shifter compatible with the PRO Wheel base.
Logitech’s first foray into direct drive has been wildly successful in our opinion. A well-thought-out, built, and supported product, with a bright future ahead of it. We can’t wait to see what new rims, accessories and hopeful variants will arrive in the coming years.
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