Logitech G923 Teardown, Review & G29/G920 Comparison - IS IT WORTH IT?

hey guys will here so logitech created quite a stir in the sim racing community a few days ago when they announced their not so brand new g923 racing wheel so there's been a couple of things that have been coming up over the last few days and we did a deep dive video talking about the technology behind their new true force force feedback engine a couple of days ago so i'd encourage you guys to check that video out before watching this one because a lot of the details around the theory and stuff like that is covered in a lot more detail in that video than we'll cover in this video this is going to be much more about the hardware and the overall driving experience so yeah two things that people have been talking about a lot over the last few days first of all the lack of physical change in the appearance of the unit compared to the previous versions of the wheels so in fact it's not only just the previous version the g29 and g920 which came out five years ago now looks pretty much identical to those but in fact if you go back three generations to the g25 which actually came out on my birthday back in 2006. so almost 14 years ago most of the design the pedals and the back shell of the wheel itself hasn't changed at all in terms of physical appearance at least since you know right back in 2006. so an interesting little decision there by logitech to keep things looking the same externally at least so yeah that has taken quite a few people including myself by surprise but the thing that people have been talking about most of all is the price increase over the previous generations so dating all the way back to the g25 when that originally came out the pricing has always been around about the 500 australian mark retail at least and you've been able to pick these up for closer to about the 350 dollar mark if you were in the right place at the right time obviously with the pandemic recently pricing has gone absolutely through the roof and we've seen people selling these for absolutely ridiculously high pricing but generally speaking regular retail has been around the 500 australian market but with the new g923 wheels we are now looking at a retail price of quite a lot more than that at 800 australian dollars so that raises a few questions in terms of value for money not only is it a reasonable upgrade from the g920 and the g29s as it should be for the additional increase in price but in fact is it even good value for money when compared to other products that fall around that same price range so at the 800 australian mark you know we're starting to compare this now to products like the belt driven thrust master wheels as well as fanatics more entry-level csl elite range so we're going to be unpacking all those things in detail in today's video and i will provide timestamps for you guys below as well that might want to skip through various sections now originally i was expecting it to be quite some time before i could actually get my hands on this wheel but i just wanted to give a quick shout out to dan from logitech here in australia who actually saw the video we did a couple of days ago talking about the theory and actually reached out to me and it turns out he only lives about 20 minutes away from my house so he came out in the pouring rain on friday and delivered both of these to me to test out for you guys so big thank you to dan but another really interesting thing that's happened in the last few days as well is logitech's global product manager for simulation richard neville actually reached out to me as well on reddit of all places and it turns out he's actually really active within the community there answering a lot of people's questions and he was actually kind enough to spend a bit of time with me tonight right before filming this to actually go through a lot of these questions that i've seen coming up so what i wanted to do first of all before we dive into taking the clothes off these guys and going for a drive and all those sorts of things is actually approach some of those questions with him head on that i know you guys have been wondering about so first of all let's address true force technology i know one of the questions that you guys have been really wondering about is will it be possible to upgrade the firmware in the older g29 and g920 to make it true force compatible now with the physical designs being very similar between the new wheels and the older versions you might think that that's possible but i actually asked him this question what i said to him was will a firmware update allow true force to work with other wheels i assume that there are physical hardware changes as far as the usb interface is concerned and it would take more than just a firmware upgrade to enable the faster sample rates that make true force possible but it'd be good to officially confirm this and his answer was yeah it's definitely not possible to add it to the older wheels for exactly the reasons you say we've implemented a closed loop electronic system as opposed to the open loop that we had on the older wheels and beefed up the motor driver as well plus we've had to increase the memory on the processor to handle everything as well now importantly there when we're talking about a motor driver we're not talking about the software drivers that you install on your pc we're talking about the control board that actually drives the motor electronically so interprets all the signals that are received by the usb interface and then tells the motor what to do so i just wanted to clarify that first of all and then i went on to ask him more about the hardware so i said while we're on the subject of motors are there any additional motors for handling the subtle vibrations that are now possible through true force or is it or is all the new force feedback transmitted through the same dual motor system that we had previously on the g29 and g920 and other motors themselves identical to the previous versions and his answer there was there are no additional motors it's exactly the same motors as we used in the g29 and g920 the improved motor drive that we were just talking about is what enables us to do the new true force force feedback so we can produce all of the extra frequencies so then i went on to ask him are you able to share the actual peak and holding torque figures for the wheel and he answered the peak torque is the same as it was before at about 2.2 newton meters so he didn't actually tell me what the holding torque is but there you go right from the horse's mouth the motors that they're using in the g923 are identical to the motors that we used in the g920 and g29 previously now we will take the clothes off these in just a minute and have a look at the gear set to see whether those are identical as well but i'm not expecting to see any physical differences between the wheels other than the control boards that are actually driving the motors themselves but there are some physical differences in the pedal themselves particularly around the brakes so we will have a look at that as well and i do have my trusty old logitech g920 here as well so we will do some direct comparisons both with the wheel as well as the pedals so as i said before we will have time stamps throughout the video so you can skip ahead now just before we move on there is one more comment that i've seen popping up a lot that i want to address as well that is a lot of people have been saying that the g923 is a bit of a cash grab to uh to coincide with the release of the next generation consoles people are saying they're forcing me to pay you know a large percentage more for the g923 over the g920 for next-gen console compatibility so i just wanted to draw your attention to a tweet on the logitech g twitter page the other day saying good news sim races each version of the g923 racing wheel and pedals is compatible with either xbox one or playstation 4 so it does have backward compatibility the new wheels and our current generation wheels will also work with the xbox series x g923 and g920 or playstation 5 g923 and g29 pending final sie product approval so it looks like at least at this point that uh two things there so the previous generation wheels the g920 and the g29 will be compatible with ps5 and xbox series x but also i was able to confirm with our local product manager at least here in australia the g920 and g29 are going to continue concurrently with the g923 as well so this isn't a forced replacement so to speak you can still buy the older generation wheels and they will still be compatible with the next generation consoles pending that sie approval as per the tweet so i just want to clarify that for you guys as well before we move on so as i always try to do i've included some links in the description below to where you can pick up this product uh those links might not be available at the time of launching this video simply because i am releasing this before the product is actually on shelves but if you do want to help support the channel those links will be a fantastic way that you can do that but anyway that is enough rambling for now so let's unpack these wheels in more detail and figure out whether they are worth the increased asking price so i'm not going to bother with a full unboxing here simply because it is a pretty plain and simple box you open it up all you have inside is the wheel the pedals and then the power supply which you can see here we'll have a look at that in more detail in just a moment and then a few little bits of pamphlets and stuff we've got a logitech g booklet we've got a logitech g sticker we've got a play seat little brochure as well and then our important safety and compliance and warranty pamphlet and that is literally all that is inside the box now also just to clarify for you guys there isn't a shifter included so if you do need a shifter you will be up for the extra money to buy the driving force shifter separately as well okay so in front of us here we have the g923s obviously the xbox version the playstation version then we have a last generation g920 here for comparison reasons so the only thing that i've modded here from stock is the front plate here which we have our boosted media logo normally it looks exactly the same as this for the xbox version and with a playstation logo on it for the playstation version interestingly with the g923 it's still got the g logo on it even for the playstation version so just one little thing to notice there but look there are a few subtle but important differences between the new generation and last generation so let's just go over them all one by one we'll start off with the things that are the same and there are quite a few of them so we've got a 280 millimeter diameter wheel in all three cases and then in terms of the wheel thickness 28 millimeters it does vary a little bit throughout the diameter of the wheel or the circumference of the wheel i should say a little bit skinny here and here and here a little bit thicker there but you know it's it's about 28.3 millimeters now while we are on the subject of the wheel room itself the same leather material and it smells exactly the same that was one of the things i loved about the g27 g920 is you still had that smell of pure rich leather coming from the wheel years and years later my g27 still smelt like leather you know 10 years after i bought it which was pretty impressive but it is exactly the same leather what they have done however is improved the quality of the stitching now i've never had a problem on any of my logitech wheels with the stitching but i'm assuming that there was a reason why they've done that but there's one thing to note there the stitching quality has definitely improved and it's a smoother overall finish as well another subtle difference is we now have a led rpm gauge on both the playstation and the xbox versions as well whereas previously with the g920 and the g29 that was only on the playstation version or the g29 not on the g920 and then you'll also notice we now have the 24-way rotary dials as well as the enter and plus and minus switches on both versions of the wheel again with the previous g920 those were not present only on the playstation version that dial was read on the previous playstation version too so other than that externally as far as the wheels go there are no other physical differences between them only just cosmetic changes like the blue strip around the top now as opposed to the previous brushed aluminium look and the paddles on the back of the wheel are now powder coated black instead of the raw brushed aluminium that we had previously otherwise absolutely identical so we'll just move the playstation version aside for the moment and have a closer look at the two xbox versions side by side just want to point out a couple of other little tiny things here too one of the other changes that we will be taking a look at once we're all hooked up on the pc is the new dual clutch system as well but i can tell you mechanically it's still just micro switches in the paddles as i suspected and they feel exactly the same same amount of travel on both and no difference at all so let's just quickly spin them both around as well and you can see there again mechanically identical g logo on the newer model logitech g logo on the older one and if we flip them upside down as well just for the sake of completeness all of the input and output interfacing is exactly the same as well so you can see there on the underside we've got a serial port for our pedals we've got another serial port for our shifter no handbrake input which is one bone that i am going to pick with logistic i really would have liked to have seen the option of a handbrake accessory i think that that is definitely a missed opportunity on their part it would have been seemingly very very easy to implement and it would have been another accessory that they could have sold alongside this and something that people have been asking for for quite a long time so a little bit disappointed to see that missed opportunity now one more thing i just want to point out quickly on the back here as well is the diameter for the hub on the rear is the same between the two as well so 75 millimeters or 74.2 millimeters yep 74.5 mil around 75 millimeters now the reason why i'm pointing this out is because it means it is still compatible with those magnetic shifter mods that we reviewed previously on the channel and these are honestly an absolute game changer for these wheels i know it sounds silly but it really does make a huge difference so i would recommend checking out the video that we did reviewing these link is in the description below for you guys but same diameter so it is compatible across both wheels as well now just moving the wheels off to the side for a moment here one thing that logitech have mentioned previously we mentioned it earlier on in the video is that they have beefed up their driver circuitry or the driver board for the motors themselves so i thought we might see an increased capacity power supply but if we have a look at the two power supplies here side by side the one on the left this one is the g920 power supply the one on the right is the new one that came with the g923 and we can see on both of those the output is identical 24 volts at 1.75 amps so identical power supplies between the two as well so that again tells us that we're not expecting any difference in terms of the overall strength of the wheels compared to each other [Music] [Music] so we've taken the clothes off both wheelbases here we've got the g920 here the older generation on the left and the g923 xbox version on the right now i've intentionally done both xbox versions here not the playstation version of the 923 because the circuitry is slightly different for the security chip for both so i thought it would be best to compare xbox versus xbox but look there's a couple of observations here which i think we need to go through first of all the gearbox assemblies are completely identical the shaft feels exactly the same between the two as well so there's absolutely no difference at all in the feeling between the two whatsoever so i don't expect there to be a massive amount of difference in the overall force back feel true force aside we can see that they're using exactly the same motors in both as well so exactly as logitech told me they are physically identical to each other other than the motherboard which is what we expected to see so i'm not going to go into a massive amount of heavy tech here and electronics on you guys but the two differences that i can see here looking at them they are different processes to each other they are both from the same process of family so they are arm stm 32 processors but the one on the g920 is stm32p4o1 whereas the one on the 923 is a stm32f401 so there are some significance between the two in terms of bandwidth as well as processing capacity and memory exactly as we expected but the biggest difference between the two boards is in the motor driver circuitry and you can see from about the midpoint upwards how fundamentally different the boards are from each other so on the bottom half we've got all the processing side and then on the top half we've got the power supply input so you can see here where the power is coming in and then these two connections here the connections that go out to the motor and this area here at the top is the driver circuitry so again i'm not going to go into super heavy tech here on you guys but these two little chips that you can see here these are the motor driver ics or integrated circuits so the one on the g920 and g29 is a am4951 which is a 24 volt 0.5 amp motor drive meaning that its maximum capacity is 24 volts and 0.5 amps then when we move across to the g923 you can see we've got the two driver ics one there and one underneath there and in the case of the g923 they are 8872 motor drivers now from the data sheets that i can find these appear to be 45 volt 3.6 amp motor driver ics so they are capable of double the voltage as well as significantly more current too so again we're only confirming what logitech already told us here but i did want to open this up and show you guys side by side so you could see for yourselves exactly what the differences were so yeah theoretically the the driver circuitry in the g923 is capable of a lot more than what the driver circuitry is in the g920 and g29 but anyway let's have a look at some of the other design features internally while we have the g923 open and then we'll get into the pedals now it's quite funny even though i owned a g27 for 10 years i never actually opened one up this is the first time i've ever had a look inside a logitech g steering wheel and i gotta say i mean the the fact that the internal design is identical between the two tells you that there wasn't really anything that they felt they needed to change from the g920 to make it stronger in any regard and you can see all the plastic reinforcement internally now i mean obviously it's not the strongest wheelbase in the world but all the fundamentals that we need for a wheel of this strength are there so you can see how the motors are attached directly to a steel plate for the for the gearbox assembly and that steel plate is two millimeters thick as well as you can see there i don't see any other sort of design shortcuts or anything like that internally electronically everything seems sound as well you've got nice decent thick gauge wiring for the motors as well as the power input and you've got ferrite chokes on the motor outputs as well as all the line-ins and line outs for various different data inputs and switches and things like that as well usb connections and so forth so yeah i don't see any cause for concern here whatsoever you can see down the bottom here as well the mounting brackets where the screws go through if you are hard mounting this to a to a rig and those again are two millimeter thick steel as well now obviously we'll comment on the rigidity stability and all those sorts of things once we get to driving but i just want to give you a quick little look of the internals now if we just quickly spin it around as well you can see on the front of the gearbox housing here we've got quite a lot of plastic reinforcement which adds extra rigidity so you don't get flex up and down and quite a hefty bearing system in here on the front of the shaft as well so you can see a little tiny bit of grease seeping out from around the outside of the bearing there so that leads me to believe that it is a grease packed ball bearing type bearing system now there's not a whole lot to see in terms of the wheels guts but i do just want to quickly show you why we've got this apart how the spring mechanism and micro stitches for the paddles work so all that's actually providing the spring force there for the paddles is these little plastic tabs here at all now i've never had those break so i don't see that to be a problem at all but i wanted to show you how exactly that works so there's no mechanical springs no metal pieces or anything like that just the plastic and then if we have a look at the back of the wheel you can see two basic micro switches one for each paddle and that's it you can also see the mechanism down there for the uh 24-way switch as well but we're not going to turn that'll fiddle with that too much while things are apart because i don't want things to fall apart on me and everything else appears to be pretty straightforward here in terms of communication between the wheel and the motherboard or the main board that we looked at just before we've only got the one seven pin connector here so it appears to be some sort of a can bus style system that communicates back with the motherboard rather than an individual connection for each individual function that would explain the brains that we can see here in the background as well but anyway let's get this all put back together and take a more detailed look at the [Music] pedals [Music] so just before we move on with this disassembly i just want to show you something that's pretty cool about these pedals a lot of people don't realize that you can do this so on the back side we've got these little plastic tabs and on the inside of these mounts here you can see there's three different positions so what we can do is we can actually move the pedals across in three different positions there to give us the spacing that we desire so say you have really wide feet for example you can move it all the way over to the right hand side and you can move your break over to this side or if you're doing a lot of heel and toe you might want to have them quite close together so you could move them like that so lots of different configurations that you can do for all three pedals just to give you that little extra bit of personalization and customization there so i just wanted to point that out now if we flip the pedals over quickly as well we've got six mounting holes on the bottom that we can use to mount this to a rig so one two three four five six and most rigs that are available these days do have pre-drilled holes in the correct position for logitech pedals so that minimizes the amount of stuffing around at the top here you can see we also have this clever little carpet spike type arrangement so we flip the little button here and that flicks down and it is identical to the design of the previous generation pedals but yeah this does do a good job on short pile carpet at least of keeping the pedals relatively firm but anyway we'll continue with the disassembly now one thing that i do just want to quickly point out with this disassembly is you need to undo all the screws around the perimeter so 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. now there are two little screws underneath the carpet spike there as well that you can just see one there and one there so you just need to make sure you undo those as well the first time i undid a set of these pedals i actually nearly snapped the plastic because i didn't realize that those screws were there and was trying to pull it nearly broke it so just make sure you undo all the screws and then the cover will pop off [Music] [Music] now you need to be very careful because the cables internally here are very very fragile you need to make sure you undo the screws for or loosen the screws for the strain relief here before you try to take the lid off completely [Music] so internally we have what appears to be exactly the same design again as the g920 and g29 pedals so potentiometers again on each of the pedals you can see the little cylinders one two three and as we push the pedals down that rotates and that gives a variable amount of resistance which is then interpreted by the by the wheelbase as a pedal position so we're not using load cells or anything like that but as a lot of you guys would be familiar there are some pretty good load cell upgrades available for the g920 and g29 pedals as well as some of the older pedals too now i don't see any reason here why those wouldn't also be compatible with these pedals we do still have the standard serial port connection here so yeah any accessories that worked with the previous pedals should also work with these pedals too at least from what i can see here i can tell you that the throttle and the clutch don't feel massively different from my g920 but remember that again that that is five years old now so the springs probably have loosened up a little bit maybe a little more firm than the g920 but not a whole lot in it certainly nothing to write home about but let's just quickly pop the covers off the spring assemblies as well so we can have a quick look inside of what we've got going on there because this is where i believe the changes are with the g923 okay that is probably going to be an absolute nightmare to put back together again but these are the things we do so let's just pop that out quickly grab a little insert out as well so it doesn't get lost and let's pop the cap off here okay so yeah that is a different spring to what we had in the other unit so you can see their progressive spring rate and this is what they were talking about so let's just move this over to the side quickly so it's out of the way so this is what's referred to as a progressive spring and some people might be familiar with these from car suspension as well they're quite frequently used there so it's progressive in the sense that the spring rate changes throughout the length of the springs so you can see here as we squish the spring in the initial part actually goes in a little bit more easily than the second part and that gives us that nice progressive or that change in the spring rate as we push the pedal down that gives us a little bit more control now if we compare that to the spring from the g920 let's quickly bring this one across we'll move the inserts again so we don't lose them and there we go that is the factory spring from the g920 so hold them side by side progressive spring in the g923 and a standard single rate spring for the g920 and g29 so we'll quickly have a look at the other springs as well see if they're any different i'm not sure if they will be or not but we may as well take a look okay so throttle spring looks to be absolutely identical so yeah there you go that is the g920 and g29 and that is the uh g923 you can see the spring's a little longer maybe like a millimeter but i'd say that's probably just from the spring compressing over time rather than because it's a different spring but the thickness and everything else is absolutely identical so we'll pop that back when i get the muddled up so uh looks like it might be exactly the same i think yep so g920 and g923 absolutely identical so because this design has been around so long people have come up with all sorts of creative modifications and different ways to mount these pedals so what you can do we already talked about some of the upgrades in terms of different springs and load cells things like that which should be compatible with these pedals too but just for those who might be new to these pedals entirely what you can do is actually remove the four screws that hold each of the pedals in place in the plastic shell and then mount them however you want on a standard pedal plate or even invert and mount them upside down on a piece of wood or however you want to do so because they do have that sort of semi modular design they are very versatile in the different mounting options so i just wanted to point that out to you while we had it apart as well but we'll put the clothes back on now and get into the software and driving all right so we're all plugged in and up and running here as you would expect very plug and play no issues whatsoever with connection to the pc drivers installed themselves or automatically with the logitech g hub software installed now what i wanted to do is just quickly show you a little bit through this g-hub software because this has come a long way in the last couple of years logitech have done a really good job of integrating all their various different gaming peripherals together into this one convenient piece of software and it's very cool it's very clever because it kind of entices you to want to buy all logitech stuff and it's certainly been the case with me as you can see i have had a g903 i did a review on this over two years ago now as well as the power play mat and those have both been absolutely brilliant we just got our hands on the g915 and the pro x wireless headset as well so i'm going to be testing those out over the next few months but over here we have the g923 you can see all of these so you can click into each one and you get all sorts of settings that you can adjust for each but we don't need to go into that for the sake of this video but we'll go across now to the g923 now importantly if you do have a g29 or g920 that does integrate with this software as well so this isn't an upgrade that comes with a g923 so to speak but it is just something that i wanted to draw attention to before we get started but we'll click on the g923 here and you can see we've got all sorts of different assignments here that we can configure so we've got a nice little graphic here that shows all of the inputs and we can zoom in and zoom out on those as well to click on each one really really cool software really classy and i mean honestly i think that the likes of fanatic and even simucu could learn a lot from this because it's just it's so clean to use it's so tidy so intuitive and it really it really has that premium feel to it but anyway so what we can see here on the left is a list of all the commands that are available within windows so say for example you wanted to play a trick on your mate and assign the shift up to alt f4 so when they go to change up gears it quits the game just drag that to gear up and that will change that for you so obviously i don't recommend that you actually do that because it's likely to end with you getting in lots of trouble but you could do it if you wanted to and you can also switch on and off buttons as well so you can use the default command switch it back to default if you have been played with and then go back to use default or you can disable the command entirely as well if you've got a button that you're accidentally pressing quite frequently i'm going to talk about the uh the actual physical ergonomics of the wheel in just a moment when we get driving as well because that is one area that i really wish they had improved but anyway we'll push forward we've got keys here so these are hot keys that you can assign as well so if you're running a game that doesn't have its own commands built in but uses windows assigned hotkeys you can drag and drop those onto the wheel as well so that's very useful actions so these are little software applications so obs control for example so if you're a streamer and you don't have access to dedicated control surfaces for streaming and things like that you can assign your starting and stopping and scenes and all those sorts of things to buttons on the wheel as well so again very useful and it's great that they've gone to the links to really sort of integrate as much as they possibly can into the wheel so that you don't need to spend a fortune on third-party applications to get the bare basics done we can also record macros so you can create a new macro and then drag that to a button as well we don't really need to go all through that now though and then under system as well we have things like copy paste undo operating systems so switching to lock screen these are the kinds of functions that probably not going to be quite so useful for people other than maybe the audio input volume up and down so you could for example assign the volume to the control dial so we go here we can go clockwise volume up and counterclockwise volume down and so forth so extremely customizable here and very very impressive in my opinion so let's click on down to steering wheel settings now this is where we set up the driver level settings and you can see there's not a whole lot to adjust here maybe a little less than i had hoped for but we've got an adjustment for operating range here so this is the range of movement that we have available to us in the wheel now importantly here if we do crank that down to say 180 degrees you can see when i turn the wheel the software or soft bump stop is uh limiting us to 180 degrees of movement but the wheel itself doesn't stop so unlike the more expensive belt driven and direct drive wheels we don't get a mechanical bump stop that is adjustable through software so just be aware of that doesn't really matter in the great scheme of things but if you are wanting to sort of feel that bump stop as you reach the end you're not going to it's just going to keep turning we'll go back up to 900 degrees again for now we've got a sensitivity adjustment as well obviously that adjusts how much you have to turn the wheel physically to equate to how much it actually turns inside the game then we have a centering spring strength adjustment here as well so this is how strongly the wheel tries to force itself back into the middle so you can see here with the centering spring in non-force feedback games checkbox is disabled that is grayed out so that's actually controlled by the game itself when that's turned off when you click this on it gives you physical control over this setting for games that don't have their own force feedback there's not too many of those around these days but you do have the option there should you need it we're going to turn that back off again for now and then if we scroll down we have the new true force setting so again if you wanted to know more about exactly how true force works we do have another video where i went into all the details on how it all works in the software side but essentially what this is doing is it's taking telemetry data from the game as well as the audio output signal and using it to create effects within the game through the motors that are inside the wheel so there's no additional motors inside the wheel we established that when we pulled it apart but what it's doing is using the dual motor system to create these effects through its own api which sits outside of the normal udp telemetry data that's available through these games but definitely do check out that previous video where we went into a lot more detail on exactly how true force works so we have a setting here apply settings from the game so again this is allowing the game to determine exactly how things feel we can switch that off and that gives us manual control of both the torque and the audio effects so interestingly it's working kind of like a butt kicker system and then it's able to interpret the audio signals and then translate those into force feedback through those motors as we discussed before but we're going to leave that set to apply settings from game and then lastly let's just quickly jump down to pedal sensitivity as well now i was able to confirm with logitech that they are still 8-bit pedals so that does limit the resolution in terms of when you press the pedal how much how many different steps you get but look i mean honestly there's a little bit of lag there in the software and i'm sure that's not going to be present when we actually go for a drive but we'll comment on it if it is a problem but you can see there the finest little movements of the pedal are related back in the driver software there so look i don't see the resolution being a being an issue for anybody i i really don't think you're going to feel the difference in pedals of this quality level i think you know when you move up to really really high-end hydraulic pedals and things like that then yeah absolutely it can make a difference but for this i really don't see that being a problem so as we said before throttle pedal and clutch pedal feel exactly the same as they did before on the previous models but the brake pedal is showing me some really good signs even before we go for our first drive here so with that progressive spring i can tell you that the the change in the change in pressure is taking place at around the sort of 70 to 80 percent break pressure mark and that is exactly how i like to set up my he ultimate pedals as well so i've got those set up so that you know the the change in pressure where i start to feel the increase is around about that 70 to 80 pressure point and the reason why i like to set it up that way is it helps me set muscle memory at around about the point where abs would kick in all the wheels would start to lock up so obviously it does vary a little bit depending on different cars but i find 70 to 80 percent brake pressure is generally about where you want that to be so that is a really good sign straight off the bat before we even go for a drive there and i think that's a big improvement on logitech's part with these new pedals so thumbs up there but we have the usual adjustments here for sensitivity for clutch brake and accelerator so we can of course adjust that sensitivity if we wish to do so so in the case of the brake if we wanted to make it so that that change in pressure was a little bit lower for cars that might be a little bit more sensitive on the brakes so say the porsche 911 gt3 r in iracing for example we can adjust this value to our preference and then obviously the same for accelerator as well now it is worth noting we do have the combined pedal setting here as well for games that aren't so simulator friendly and that allows us to combine the brake and accelerator into one axis so you can see when i press the brake the axis moves down when i press the throttle the axis moves up then we've got a separate one for clutch so some sim titles do still need that some of the older ones do but for most people you're going to be leaving that switched off but anyway i think that's all we need to cover in terms of the software i just wanted to give you a quick run through and show you just how polished and pleasant this software is to run with so dual clutch this is actually very easy to use and quite effective so what we want to do to get it started is hold in both paddles and the l1 and r3 buttons simultaneously or lsb and rsb if you're on the xbox version so hold those in for two seconds you'll see the car will stall in the game that's fine you need to set this up before you're actually starting a race but once you've got it all set up you shouldn't need to change it again until you change to a different car of course so we're going to put the brake back on so we don't roll around in the pits we're in neutral there so we're going to do now is choose a button to activate the dual clutch so we can only choose between l3 or r3 or lsb and rsp if you're on the xbox again so we'll choose l3 and you'll see the lights will flash there now we've got red so what we want to do now is put our foot all the way on the clutch you can see the blue bar there going up in eye racing and then we're going to put our foot all the way on to the accelerator as well what we want to do is we want to put it into first gear and then find the point where the clutch starts to bite so in this car we know that it's going to be around about the mid way up the mark so we'll put it in first gear apply some throttle and then what we want to do is start pressing the down arrow and you can see there the clutch is going down even though we've got our foot flat on the accelerator you can see that the hand brakes are released and we're starting to get a little bite bit of bite here now so the car is starting to move forward we're going to go a little bit more than that still though a little bit down to about here i think is good for this car and then we can test it so before we go out of the mode we can just test it here so we're going to go back into neutral start the engine again so we can do a quick practice start here before we go out of the setting mode just in case we need to do any fine tuning adjustment so what we'll do is put our thumb on l3 and you can see the clutch there goes back up to 100 so that's our dual clutch activated we're going to shift it into first gear you can see the handbrake's on shift into first gear apply the amount of throttle that we want to launch the car and then when the lights go green we're going to let go of l3 and that's going to take us to our bike point automatically so we'll let go one two three go and then we let the clutch out the rest of the way and off we go on our merry way simple as that so if you need to make any more fine-tuning adjustments while you're in this mode you can simply go up and down like we did before and you can see the clutch is adjusting itself and once you're happy with the setting hit the enter key you'll see it flashes and that is your dual clutch all set up so we'll do one more launch here quickly three two one go little wheel spin that time but you get the point takes a bit of practice but uh yeah definitely a useful tool and something that i think will help out a lot of people so that is how you use dual clutch so on to the driving test now and the first thing that i did was test the g920 and g923 back to back in multiple different sim titles with true force switched off and the reason why i did that is i wanted to establish first of all what kind of differences there were if any between the two different wheelbases in terms of their feel without true force being a part of the equation and i can tell you that at least to my senses there was very little difference between them so i can only sort of i guess deduce from that that the increased polling rate and additional processing power is going mostly towards true force now we'll elaborate on the subtle nuances of the g923 in just a moment but suffice to say for now that it feels pretty much exactly the same as the g920 does without true force enabled and just like with the g29 and g920 and the g27 and g25 before that you can feel all the details that you need to feel to go fast and something that i always point out to people is that some of the fastest guys in sim racing indeed do use these wheels in their day-to-day rigs and they actually prefer to drive with the force feedback levels turned down so that they're not sort of having to fight against the wheel they only feel the things that they need to feel to drive quickly now true force aside as well consistency between different sim titles was also very very good with the g923 as well as i expected this is something that i've talked about a little bit before on the channel one of the issues that can arise from more high-end sim rigs is that the feeling between different sim titles can be quite different so you kind of have to learn to drive all over again every time you change titles and that's something that i've always appreciated about logitech and fanatic in particular is that you can jump in pretty much any sim and the feeling is quite similar so there isn't a steep learning curve every time you change there was also absolutely minimal setup required between different sims as well so all you had to do was just bind your controls in many cases there were presets already present so as soon as you plugged in the wheel it detected it and all the settings were just ready to go so i never needed to spend more than maybe three minutes getting any particular sim running before i could just jump in and drive which was much appreciated now let's explore the nuances of the wheel in a little bit more detail now one of the things that i've seen many people complain about over the years is the noise of these wheels and unfortunately it is no better with the g923 it is still quite loud to operate now you don't really notice this when you're wearing headphones or when you've got your speakers turned up but if you are in close proximity to people that are trying to sleep or study then you might want to look elsewhere maybe towards a belt driven wheel they are a little bit more expensive but they are significantly quieter so i'll let you have a quick listen now to how loud the wheel is with true force disabled [Music] and now with true force turned on [Music] uh so it's actually quite a strange experience you can kind of hear the engine sounds and the game audio coming through the wheel which is very strange the first time you hear it very similar to if you've used a butt kicker or some other transducer system that is driven by the audio signal out of the game before so before we move on to true force let's just talk quickly about the pedals as i expected based on my observations before we even started driving it was much easier to determine muscle memory find that sort of threshold of braking performance and limit the amount of locking up and pushing into abs finding the correct breaking point and establishing muscle memory was much easier on these pedals than the previous models have been and i was able to turn pretty consistent lap times within probably 10 minutes of learning to drive with these pedals which impressed me quite a lot but just keep in mind that there are much cheaper upgrade kits available such as aftermarket springs load cell kits and things like that so i certainly wouldn't say that this is a reason to rush out and upgrade from a g29 or g920 to the g923 so one last thing we do need to cover before we talk about true force is ergonomics of this wheel there were a few little things that did annoy me that i feel they could have upgraded with the newer model so let's just quickly look at that in a bit more detail so let's talk a little bit more about the ergonomics of this wheel so there's some things that i really like about it and some things that i feel are missed opportunities now when i first used a logitech g920 after using a 27 for a long time one of the first things i noticed was the lack of buttons on the sides here you'll remember on the g27 we had three buttons on either side and while they were quite cheap and nasty buttons they were very easy to reach while you're driving without sort of having to roll your hands or move your hands around at all and i actually used those extensively for f1 games in particular to change things like ers modes fuel trims and things like that and one thing that i noticed when i changed to a g920 is that it was much harder to reach the buttons while driving so the only two buttons that you can really reach without rolling your hands are the left button here and the circle button here and i actually use that for drs deployment and that for my pit limiter in the f1 games now but changing other engine modes and things like that are a little bit more tricky on this wheel than they used to be with the 27 because you can't just quickly reach across you're going to have to roll your hand and go up and down now you do adapt to it quickly and what i've done is i've actually changed this to be my fuel trim and this to be my ers deployment modes but yeah just something that i wanted to point out because i do feel like it's a bit of a missed opportunity with an upgrade to a new model wheel particularly after five years i would have liked to have seen a couple of buttons maybe up here or somewhere where they're a little bit more easy to reach ergonomically but i will say that all the buttons that are there do feel relatively sturdy with the exception of the r3 and l3 buttons those do feel a little bit plasticky everything else feels pretty good the rotary dial here is rubberized as well so that has quite a nice feel to it and it does have a nice tactile feel as you spin it as well it does have a nice click into each position as well so it's relatively easy to sort of turn without having to look at it and take your eyes off the road but otherwise i think they've nailed pretty much all the other important stuff being a relatively round wheel with only a small d shape there it's easy to drift with as well you can easily slip the wheel through your hands and being a 280 millimeter diameter i think was a good choice too i've seen a few people complain that it's not bigger but with the amount of leverage that you have at 280 millimeters it feels about right to counteract the forces that the motors are able to put out and obviously as you increase the diameter of the wheel you are increasing your leverage that's fighting against the motors so that it is an important consideration there as well but yeah the leather feels nice everything else about it feels good and just while we're here as well i can show you there is a little tiny bit of flex there in the hub that's not the platform moving at all on the table that is the wheel moving not really noticeable while you're driving but just something that i think is important to point out just for the sake of completeness and that is consistent across both the g923s here that i have in the studio as well as my five-year-old g920 all right so on to true force now this is by far the thing that they've talked up the most and the biggest most compelling reason to potentially upgrade from the previous models to this model so let's spend a bit of time talking about this so the only titles that it's compatible with on pc at launch are eye racing assetto corsa competition and grid 2019 and i did test it out with all three titles if you have a playstation then it is also compatible with gran turismo sport but i don't have one of those so i wasn't able to test it on that but nonetheless we were able to get a pretty broad spectrum picture of exactly what this has to offer so as soon as i switched this on i was genuinely amazed at how much difference it made it wasn't necessarily adding any additional detail that would make me go faster and that isn't what i expected at all but the immersion level genuinely did go through the roof and it actually took me by surprise because i expected that it would feel a little bit weird i mean we understand that most of what it's doing is generating the sort of effects that you would normally feel through a transducer system as we mentioned before like a butt kicker and i'm used to having one of those on my rig so it kind of wasn't all that foreign feeling to me but the sensation of those details coming through your hands rather than through the seat of your pants was something that i thought might be a little bit sort of strange because it's not really how it works in the real world but i was amazed at how quickly my brain actually adapted to it and actually started to feel natural so at first when i first switched it on it was kind of like whoa and then once i got used to it i did genuinely enjoy it and i'll go as far as to say that when i jumped back into my daily driver rig i intentionally drove with my butt kicker gamer 2 switched off and i genuinely felt despite the fact that i'm using a simi cube to ultimate and a motion platform that there was some detail there missing that i craved so i certainly wouldn't say that true force is a gimmick but it certainly isn't adding anything that was is going to make you faster so it is purely down to just the level of immersion that you want to experience in particular i really enjoyed the sensation of gear changes every time you change up or down gear you really do feel the clunk of the engine through the wheel which is quite cool and again although that isn't something that you would normally feel through the steering wheel your brain does a pretty amazing job of kind of rewiring itself to interpret that correctly and it doesn't feel strange really at all after a little while i was also quite impressed with how the engine rpm feeling is translated through as well i thought this might feel a little bit too sort of overpowering and i was genuinely concerned that you know having that detail coming through the same motors in the wheel as the force feedback it might actually pull away kind of like with an audio system if you crank the base up too high it can kind of pull some of the detail away from the mids and highs i kind of thought that might happen here but honestly i didn't feel at any point like the details that i needed to feel to drive quickly and consistently were being diminished at all by true force which really impressed me because that's something that i was quite concerned about going into this so taking a deeper dive now into some of the nuances around particular sim titles i expected that assetto corsa competition would probably feel the best to me out of the compatible titles but actually found that eye racing felt the best overall assetto corsa competition kind of felt like it was just taking the game's audio and translating that through the wheel so although it did add that extra detail it kind of just felt like having a subwoofer sitting underneath you but coming through your hands rather than it really sort of adding fine details like textures and you know road bumps and gear changes and things like that whereas when i jumped into eye racing that was quite a different experience so that really started to bring out some of the subtle nuances in true force and that's where i really started to appreciate it for what it is now grid 2019 is a very fun game but obviously not a simulation style game it's more of an arcade style and so the force feedback quality there isn't as high to begin with but again i was able to sort of feel all the things i needed to feel to adapt to it quite quickly and have a ton of fun and again i genuinely felt like true force did add that extra level of immersion and that extra little bit of fun to the gameplay overall so definitely a worthwhile addition there too so i definitely did feel like something was missing when i then jumped back into other games that didn't support true force particularly f1 2020 i was quite disappointed that that's not compatible being a new title and hopefully compatibility will be added into the future given that grid is also a codemaster's title and that is compatible with it so fingers crossed there we can't make any guarantees obviously i don't know personally but that is definitely something that i would love to see so with all that said and done where does this land us in terms of value for money so look my honest feelings and i've got to be completely honest with you guys i feel like it is a little bit too expensive for what it is i mean the the quality of the force feedback is quite good and it is a noticeable improvement over previous generations for those titles that are true force compatible and i really am excited genuinely to see where true force goes into the future as compatibility is added for new software and also you know potentially new products from logitech as well now i don't have any insider information there whatsoever but i kind of just get the sense that you know we might end up seeing some more high-end software from them in the not-too-distant future i feel like there's been a lot of effort gone into true force and you know it has actually exceeded my expectations in terms of what it brings to the table so i feel like it's maybe a little bit wasted on an entry-level wheel or otherwise entry-level wheel like the g923 so i i kind of get the impression that they might have something a little bit more up their sleeve in the future so that is something that i am pretty excited about but look i mean you've got to consider when you look at the price of this wheel the fact that you know we do still have the g920 and the g29 available and they have confirmed with me at least in australia that they are going to continue to arrange those so those are still going to be considered the more entry-level wheel and this is sort of being a step up from that but when you push into the 800 australian dollar territory you are starting to compare to you know your thrust master belt driven wheels your phonetic csl elite packages as well are only a couple of hundred dollars more expensive than that and while that particular kit doesn't include a clutch pedal so you would have to spend a little bit more to get the same level of functionality that you get here overall the overall refinement smoothness quietness and just the overall quality of the force feedback that you get with a fanatic csl elite for example is you know it is better than what you get with the g920 and there really is no way around that i genuinely feel like logitech software is the best that i have used out of all the different sim hardware that i've used so simicube you know fanatic all those all those brands i think that they could learn a thing or two as i said before in the video from the way logitech uh has implemented their software it's very simple to use and while it doesn't have the adjustability that other titles do the ease of use really does make up for that in many ways and that is something that i would really love to see other brands sort of step up and take note of because i think this is an area that could definitely be improved but for me at least i think that if you were a g920 or a g29 owner looking to upgrade to the g923 i think your money would be better off spent on some sort of a transducer system like a butt kicker gamer 2 for example i feel like you know that offers a very similar type of force feedback feeling in what it delivers in terms of haptic feedback but it's delivering it to your body in a way that is more natural it's coming through the seat of your pants obviously depending on how you mount it rather than through your hands and that does lend itself to a higher level of realism overall but it does also add complexity to the system as well and that is something that should be noted so if you're wanting you know a little bit of extra haptic fib or a lot of extra haptic feedback i should say but packaged in the most simple way possible then the g923 might be that a better option for you but yeah look i would struggle to recommend this as an upgrade for owners of a g920 or a g29 i just don't think that the i just don't think that the level of upgrade that this represents is worth the extra money but for those who are in the market for their very first entry-level wheel and want something a little more than the g920 or the g29 have to offer then this is definitely something worth looking at but just do keep in mind that you don't have to push much further price wise to start pushing into that belt driven territory where you know things really do start to snowball and the quality does become quite a lot better but yeah you do just need to consider what else you can get for the money once you're starting to push into that price range but that said overall i do have to say that true force has genuinely impressed me and as i said before i am very excited to see what this will bring to the table into the future with potential future products as well i don't feel like it's a gimmick and i think that was probably the thing that i was most concerned about i thought that it might just be a marketing stunt it might just be something that is really kind of glitchy and gimmicky and doesn't really add anything of value to the overall driving experience but as i said although it's not adding anything that's going to make you faster or more consistent it definitely does add to the overall level of immersion and more so than i expected it would do so yeah i think it's a thumbs up for me in terms of the technology i just feel like it is a little bit too expensive at the price point that it's retailing for i think if it was a hundred dollars australian cheaper then it would be a different story for me i would def i'd be singing as praises i'd be jumping up and down and saying absolutely guys give this a try you'll be blown away by how much better it is on the games at least that support true force but yeah i think that the best way to put it is that at the price that this is being sold at the moment at least it may the price may drop i don't know but it it's sitting at an awkward point in the market where it's not quite at the level of a csl elite for example but it is you know it is better than a g920 or a g29 at least in the games that support true force so i think that's pretty much it guys hopefully you have found the video useful and interesting i know that it's been a long one but you guys have had a lot of questions and i wanted to sort of try to dive into as much detail as i possibly can to as answer as many of those questions as i could in the video so thank you for sticking around if you do have any further questions hit me up in the comments below as well and i will be holding on to a g923 as well to see how it evolves over time and how it's implemented into further games as well so i will have opportunities to do more testing for you guys but i think that pretty much covers everything that we need to for today so thank you guys very much for watching and as i said at the top end of this video if you have decided that you want to pick up one of these wheels i do have some links in the description below for you guys and i really do appreciate your support there it goes a long way to helping out keeping this channel running so thank you very much for that but above all thank you very much as always for watching if you've enjoyed the video leave a thumbs up consider subscribing as well if you aren't already and i'll see you guys again soon bye [Music] oh [Music] you

Channel: Boosted Media

Views: 211,707

Keywords: logitech, G923, G920, G29, G27, G25, logitech racing wheel, Trueforce, G923 teardown, G923 worth it, is the G923 worth it, best cheap sim racing wheel, logitech g923 hands on review, g923 test, trueforce logitech, fanatec csl elite, Next Gen console wheel, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X, PS5, best steering wheel for ps5, Logitech G923 Preorder, g923 vs g29, g923 vs g920, thrustmaster, fanatec vs thrustmaster vs logitech, logitech vs fanatec wheels, logitech vs thrustmaster

Id: yZKSrThDWiI

Length: 54min 58sec (3298 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PhroggyChief]

Ugh... Still the twin brushed can-motors. They couldn't even go with a brushless setup.

[u/Lobbbo]

Great review, very in dept and you really covered all bases. Nice to hear that TrueForce is really working but I am still disappointed with lack of improvement tech wise. Now I wonder if Thrustmaster is preparing something for new gen consoles.

Honestly I would like more competition between brands. There is bit of stagnation so there is no incentive to improve. You hear about Thrustmaster reliability issues or about wait time and bad service for Fanatec but there is not much of a choice. It is all determined by price range really, it goes Logitech -> Thrustmaster -> Fanatec -> DD rabbit hole. I was hoping this new Logitech wheel could compete with T300RS but all they could match was price point..

[u/djfil007]

Great video. But hard to recommend the wheel for these minor changes until the G29/G920 stock is gone and the price on these units start to drop.

[u/BL00DredRAGE]

Since the microcontroller is completely new, any idea if the pedal resolution is higher than the previous 8-bit? How would one tell?