To the outsider looking in the world of sim racing is nothing short of insane. Take a game, such as Rennsport or Assetto Corsa and it costs say $50 give or take. Then pair that with a PC steering wheel that can often cost north of $1000 (that’s just the wheel rim, you still need the base to put it on, say another $500, then pedals, then some form of rig to attach it to) and you are looking at something more than ‘gaming’ you are looking at a hobby.
As with all hobbies, there is a cost, and often the more serious you are about it, the quicker and higher that shoots up. For years Fanatec has been the king when it comes to racing sim gear – the go-to brand. You would see F1 drivers playing with Fanatec wheels in sims and branding around race tracks but something new is happening.
Firstly Fanatec is in a mess financially. Corsair may or may not be picking up the brand, and secondly, companies such as Moza Racing have appeared on the scene and started turning the screw when it comes to prices, cutting into the profits of the companies that until recently had the track all to themselves.
Moza snobbery
There has still been a little snobbery around Moza – its wheels are cheaper, it doesn’t feel as quite as good, and the buttons aren’t as clicky. Fine, pay hundreds of dollars more than you need to, but chances are you are merely kidding yourself. You aren’t Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton. Not yet anyway.
Now, with the launch of the Vision GS wheel, Moza is applying more pressure on the rest of the market. It’s a flagship product for the Chinese company and it comes in at $750 which is still an awful lot of money, but it’s (inexplicably) still an awful lot less than the competition, and you know what, it’s bloody good too.
Yes, you can probably, side by side say you can see where some pricing decisions have been made to get this down to $750 but if the paddles were fractionally better and it had a Mercedes license should that equate to such a huge difference in price. We both know the answer deep down.
So for the money here you get the Vision GS wheel, you still need to pair ir with a wheelbase – we went with the Moza Racing R9 here and pedals – now pedals is perhaps where Moza is behind the most, but that is a tale for a different day because this wheel goes down as a marker to the opposition.
As you can see from the photos it’s a GT-style wheel, 310mm in diameter (which is actually quite large). We will get to the showpiece screen in the center shortly, bear with me, but the whole thing is more akin to what you may see on a concept car at this stage rather than a standard road vehicle. I have no problem with that. The look of the Vision GS may be divisive, but I really like it. There are enough buttons on there to keep the more ardent input-mapper happy and, and this bit I really like, they are all unmarked unlike on some of Moza’s other offerings.
My brain does not like it if I map a button to something other than what its legend says. If I change Radio to the DRS button my neural pathways hate me so here I do not have to contend with that. A sheet of stickers is included (as well as tweezers to apply them) so you can label up the (backlit) buttons to your liking. Okay so for this money stickers sounds like a cheap option, but it works surprisingly well although how long they will last we, as yet, do not know. You can at least map your necessary inputs to places that make sense to you.
Speaking of inputs, because of the shape and style of the wheel, all of the buttons are just a fraction too far away from where I would like them to be from an ergonomic viewpoint. Everything seemed just a little bit of a contortion to get there. Part of that will be down to the individual hand, but it is also not enough to make me spend twice as much for buttons an inch further north. As serious as most sim racers take their hobby, it’s still a game at the end of the day.
The last Moza wheel I looked at was part of the entry-level R3 bundle and comparing the shifter paddles here is like night and day. There is still a bit of travel in there but they do not flex and give off a satisfying click when hit. There is also a secondary analog paddle here underneath that can be mapped alongside two buttons that sit, almost hidden on the rear of the wheel and align with the fourth finger on each hand. These are actually pretty useful if you map them to something like activating DRS.
As well as the buttons we have three multi-position switches, two thumbsticks for looking around and the like, and two blue anodized aluminum thumb wheels, the latter of which are just recessed a little too much for me and therefore more awkward to use than they could be, but this is nit-picking.
Right, we have put it off long enough, what about the screen in the middle? Well, spoiler alert, I really like it. It’s actually a monitor that has touch controls and swiping up and down gives different-looking dashes or speedometers, while swiping across gives options and variants. The really clever bit, although I am not sure it works as well as Moza would like, and may well get better with software updates, is the fact that the display rotates itself to stay pointing the correct way up, regardless of how you throw the wheel around. There is ever so slightly a lag here and if you watch videos you might think that would annoy you, but in reality, when you are playing you aren’t starting at that screen anyway so you don’t ever notice it.
It does let you glance down to check on things though and the fact that if you are halfway through a corner when you need some information your brain doesn’t have to compute flipping the image over is clever. For the sake of everybody as well, if you don’t like this feature you can turn it off and the display will simply rotate in line with the wheel rim.
Rear Vision
In terms of connection the Vision GS has the usual Moza quick-release mechanism for connecting it to its wheelbases and this remains one of the best examples of the tech in the market.
I have seen a few over-zealous complaints about the buttons rattling, just a little when the wheel is under high pressure from the DD base, but I either didn’t notice it, or mine doesn’t do that. Of course, I was running it on an R9 base and it is possible it is more prevalent if you use more powerful bases.
Conclusion
So who is the Moza Racing Vision GS wheel for then? You still need to be cash flush to be interested but if you balk at the price of gear from other sim manufacturers and you want a cool-looking wheel that is so far ahead of the entry-level stuff it’s unreal the Vision GS is perfect. As addictive as the hobby can be, if you have this mounted, I at least can’t see myself clamoring with a need to upgrade any time soon. Of course, there may be different use cases, if you drive F1 or even trucks and so on it may not perfectly fit your wants and needs but generally, it will work amazingly for everything you throw at it and then some.
The central display is a real eye-catcher and the backlit buttons really do provide a futuristic race feel with the composite carbon fiber faceplate adding the the vibe. The wheel itself feels nice, the stitching doesn’t get in the way and it is possibly the wheel with the least amount of flex in it that I have ever used. It feels super durable.
If there is an elephant in the room it is over the ergonomics. Button placement could be better and the shape of the wheel itself means your hands need to conform into a slightly unusual position. The latter didn’t bother me though and I really enjoyed racing with the Vision GS.
Moza Racing is rapidly becoming one of my favorite sim companies, mainly because it is trying to bring simming (car and flight) to a wider audience who, until now may have been priced out of the good stuff. That’s quickly changing, and while $750 is a lot to drop, if you are in the market for a proper wheel it’s better to spend that and put the money you have saved into a decent base and pedals. Recommended.
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