Buying a racing wheel

Hi people I'm a crazy-person* and I'm therefore entertaining the thought of owning a proper racing wheel, pedals, shifter, the whole shebang, I already have a SRW-S1 Steering Wheel that has been working fine and doesn't take up much space. But the lack of force feedback and foot pedals are leaving me wanting more. I play most racing games: F1 series, Dirt, Race 7, Asseto Corsa etc.

My question to the lunatics* in the giant bomb community is:

What should I look for in a wheel other than price?

Is Logitech still the way to go?

Are the newer wheels much better than older?

*Jeffs words not mine.

Edit: This should have been in the iRacing board but I guess some thing broke :(

When you say you want a shifter, I assume you mean a full H-shifter with clutch? I also assume you only want this for PC use.

I have a Logitech Driving Force GT which has been fantastic for my first experience with Force Feedback, but the plastic pedals and lack of a clutch and H-shifter is bumming me out. As much as I love racing with the flappy paddles I wish I had the option to use a full gearbox.

I think the Logitech wheels are still solid unless you want to go crazy and get some Fanatec nonsense. Especially if you care about your wallet. Right now if I were to buy a wheel I'd get a Logitech G27. Leather wheel, H-shifter and (sort of) metal pedals. The pedals are nowhere near the quality you'd get from Fanatec, but that's because you're not paying hundreds of dollars for a wheel and then hundreds more for pedals separately! You can even find G27s on eBay going for half the RRP. I bought my Driving Force GT off eBay and it's worked no problems at all.

Mandatory posting of this video

But if you do really want a wheel (they're fun), get the G27 if it's within your budget. It's a fantastic piece of kit.

cheap: Driving Force Pro

good: G27, T300RS

expensive: Fanatec Clubsport, T500RS

ridiculous: Accuforce

Get the G27

I have both the t500rs (bolted to an Openwheeler seat with a TH8A H Shifter) and a stock TX 458 Italia. If you are really going in on sim racing and have the dough--the T500rs I'd the best in the expensive but not ridiculous category (roughly 550 USD). The G27 is a fine wheel as well...half the price but only compatible with PC and PS3, no PS4 support. G27 wheel is also cheaper made, especially the pedals when compared to the T500rs. Thrustmaster TX ecosystem is fantastic and modular--I have the attachable F1 wheel.

Honestly, anything less than the G27 or T300rs is not going to be worth your time unless you are looking to just casually toy around with some sim racing.

I've got a DFGT and love it - Don't really need anything more expensive and it's got a 900 degree wheel and full FFB.

However, Logitech have left the gaming peripheral market so if you want something high-end going forward I'd look at Thrustmaster, Fanatec etc.

DFGT, G27 or T300, those would be my recommendations for entry level wheel depending on your budget. If you want to use it on console, take note that Thrustmaster has separate versions of T300 for PS4 and Xbox and they are not cross-compatible (licencing restrictions, I would guess)

I'm currently using G27 and had a G25 before, but been looking into T300 GTE because it's belt driven and my biggest issue with Logitech wheels have been the annoying rattle from gear driven FFB. You may lose little bit of precision with belt-driven FFB but after trying out Fanatec CSW on a rally-rig, it's worth it for me.

I have bought Driving force GT and later on upgraded to G27 but im not impressed by either and mainly plays with controller. The thing is with a controller you know its not real and you are just holding a subtitute for a wheel in your hands so you are ok with how it handles and its shortcommings. When i lay my hands on a wheel it kind of initialy feels ok but as soon as i start driving its like "wtf is this twitching piece of thit in my hands that looks like a wheel but are as responsive as an ATM machine running windows 95". Also you are physicly able to do fast motions with the wheel but the delay and miss sync before it happens in game is more noticable than ever. Maybe im playing with real bad settings and thats it but im not having a great time with those wheels. I have also only played games like Gran Turismo and F1 with wheel so it maybe gets better with more true simulators like project cars and iracing.

I've got fanatec csr (that forza one) and I'm loving it. The belt driven FFB is great. I've never tried a gear driven one but I've heard there's a very noticeable difference. Anywho, the only thing I was worried about with my CSR wheel was those nubs on the inside of the wheel getting in the way with variety of grips, but they're actually not in the way at all. People say "if you use 10-&-2 position you'll not like it," but when I use that position with the wheel the nubs are still not in the way. The nubs feel natural in any position (yes natural even in 10-2) and they actually make the wheel easier to maneuver. Also, the "plastic seem" is not even noticable...

So if this wheel is on your list, definitely don't let the nubs turn you off, they're fan freaking tastic and I love them in every position. Also, the plastic part of the wheel isn't even noticable when I'm driving. That's way overblown on some boards I've run across. This wheel is fan freakin tastic.

All depends on your budget. Logitech everything comes in the box, but fanatec you'll have to buy pedals separate. I've had a fanatec turbo S with clubsport pedals for years now and it's awesome. Before that I had a Driving Force GT and the biggest difference I noticed was the pedals. I'd say which ever you get try to get one with metal pedals cus the plastic ones always felt like they would break at some point.

@rethla: To me that sounds like an issue with either settings or the game, but unfortunately very common. With steering wheel, any kind of lag becomes painfully obvious and some games are worse than others, Live For Speed (you can download the demo and try it out) and iRacing seem to have the most direct response where as Codemasters titles have noticeable lag which make it difficult to drive and require significant amount of tweaking just to make it bearable. Also, vsync-delay is really noticeable with steering wheel, so it's best to turn it off. With Gran Turismo, your issue may just be the TV, mine is decent but it's still pretty laggy even with post-processing at minimum and steering corrections in GT6 usually lead to tank-slappers because of that.

Thanks for all the replies Duders, I think I'll start by checking local listings for a Logitech G27. I'm currently running 2 fan made programs to have all the functions of my current set-up, so something that's natively supported will be nice for a change.