Moza R9 VS. Fanatec CSL DD - REVIEW PT.3

hey guys so we've made it to the conclusion of our review video series on the mozza racing r9 wheelbase and gs wheel so we've been putting it through it's pace putting both of these products through their paces over the course of the last couple of days we've already covered the hardware we've looked inside we've looked at the build quality all those aspects we've covered the software the driving experience you can check out those two videos from the two previous days linked down in the description so if you have watched those two previous videos hopefully by now you have formed your own opinions based on all of the objective facts that we've presented today's video is going to be all about just sharing our comparisons our opinions and our experience with you guys in the hope that it can help you guys to make the best decision possible as to what products are going to suit your needs best so let's just get stuck straight into it so just quickly before we kick off here just to give you guys the appropriate context as is pretty much always the case here at boosted media all the equipment that we're going to be talking about today was sent by the various different manufacturers for us to check out and produce this content and as always if you do decide you want to pick up any of the gear that we've discussed today just head over to boostedmedia.net you'll find a whole list of different product pages with all of the reviews that we've done specific to each product as well as some affiliate links which are an awesome way of supporting the channel and the work that we do here at no additional cost to you now if you do decide you want to pick up some mozza racing gear there is also a discount code available we'll put that down in the description but it's also available on boostedmedia.net as well so definitely check that out before you pull the trigger but let's get started here so look mozza has been a bit of an interesting one we got involved with them about seven or so months ago now with an early version of the r16 16 newton meter wheelbase and it wasn't exactly smooth sailing from the get-go was it no not exactly we did have a few little quality control issues a bit of a pinched cable in the back of the assembly and things like that and um i mean while there was a lot of potential in it yeah force feedback felt good and that kind of thing there was just a few little alarm bells yeah so i mean you guys can go back and actually watch watch those videos where we actually went through that entire process but basically what happened there is we were sent the r16 wheelbase under the i guess you could say understanding that it was a retail version of the product and that what we were reviewing was going to be indicative of what customers would be receiving and when we started to sort of unpackage things and find a lot of problems with it when we went back to them and sort of said hey you know we found this what's going on here they said oh no it won't be like that on the final production and so forth and that kind of created this awkward situation where we're like well we can't review something that isn't what customers are going to be receiving so what do we only have what we have yeah so what are we even doing here so anyway the longer short of it was basically we never really i guess finished the proper review process there we ended up going back to them sending all the gear that they'd sent us back including two wheelbases the dash set of pedals as well we sent everything back to them and said look come back to us when you're actually shipping to customers and you're ready because at the moment we just don't feel like the product is ready for the market and we actually put up a community post at the time as well saying that we didn't feel like the products were ready to be purchased yet and that we would revisit again later on once we could see that they're actually starting to ship things out to customers now they actually did send us a replacement r16 base which we haven't checked out yet that will come hopefully pretty soon but it was a little bit of a rocky start there with regards to not really understanding exactly what customers could expect from the products when they started shipping so now having the r9 base here which we know is already shipping to customers we're seeing people post on facebook with their experiences and so forth i was really i guess intrigued to see what the experience would be like now six months down the track that's it yeah and i think after having a deep dive inside this thing the other day um it was clear that a lot of those things have been addressed definitely i mean even just looking at the software as well i mean while it still looks very similar at face value a lot of the little typos and there's just little glitches and things like that seem to be resolved and just overall it was a much more refined experience from the get-go you know right from the moment you plug everything in and i guess to a point this is just down to the form factor in the design of it but it does feel like a more premium kind of more classy more high-end product than the r16 and the r21 do at face value at least when we pulled it apart as well internally it all looks very well made there was no issues with cables being pinched or anything like that which we saw with the previous r16 now we're yet to open up the new one but we'll definitely be checking that out a little bit further on down the track but i guess the point here is that the experience you know if this had been the first experience that we'd had with mozart the initial impression would have been very very different to what it was early on but i thought it was important to kind of include that in the discussion because it sets a bit of wider context for how things have gone from there yeah i think from the moment we took this out of the box as you said it was just it seems like really good quality right from the get-go the form factor of this is is a really cool design it's a solid little unit that feels very high-end just um when you're holding it it's you know it's not overly heavy but it's got good solid yeah feel to it it feels yeah it feels like an industrial strength kind of piece of gear yeah it definitely doesn't have any kind of toy-like feature to it exactly which is one of the things that i guess subjectively i didn't like about the r16 and r21 is it looks like a toy yeah even though it isn't it just kind of much more plastic on the finishing and yeah it just it doesn't have that you know industrial look to it so let's just run through the entire experience from mounting it on the rig to the software calibration setup and the driving experience so in terms of mounting it was nice and solid on the rig it does have the four m6 holes on the bottom which match the stud pattern that you have on say a csl elite or club sport wheelbase 2.5 so that was convenient means that it is compatible with most rigs that are available on the market at least right now but would like to see the option for some sort of side mounting as well i think it's that's one area where the csl dd is a little bit stronger gives you a little bit more versatility yeah definitely the side mounting options on the csl dd are good but gosh they're a bit of a pain in the ass those t-nuts on the bottom if you're trying to mount it from the bottom yeah they're pretty tricky i've seen people sort of suggest because we called that out in the csld review and we saw people suggest put them in place flip the plate over and then put it on the rig or you know use other adhesives and things to stick in there to hold it in place but yeah yeah it is it is a little bit cumbersome but i would like to see more mounting options for this because having a plate underneath is always going to have to be relatively thin otherwise you start to run into issues bumping into knees and it's just an opportunity for flex to arise whereas if you've got a side mount it gives you a lot more versatility instead of mounting is good yeah a lot more versatility in terms of you know solid mounting options so maybe if they were to not have the kind of star shape thing going on just have a solid piece here even though it would make it a tiny little bit heavier it would give us the opportunity to have some channels in the side that we could put some mounting brackets like what we have the csl dd and also the uh the sim magic m10 has it as well which is yeah or even some mounting holes on the front for like a midge style yeah that kind of thing i mean there's no reason why it couldn't line up with that is there really if they gave it a nice flush face yeah then yeah so interesting but overall i think the form factor is very good it is nice and small as well which is great again compared to the csl dd it is much smaller means you can get your screen lower you can tuck your screen in behind it and because it doesn't have any active cooling you can put your screen right up against the back of it without having to worry about it blocking airflow or anything like that so overall happy with the design i do think there are a few areas of improvement there though so what did you think of the software so obviously one thing we do need to mention in terms of software is that this is only pc compatible there are some aftermarket adapters available which supposedly do make it console compatible we haven't tested them we can't comment on them with regards to that but they aren't officially licensed products for xbox or playstation like what you have with the phonetic counterparts so that is one important factor and obviously that is going to put this out of the equation for a lot of users but if you're on a pc i thought the software was actually really darn good yeah it's i mean it's very easy to use isn't it yeah i mean even before we even get to ease of use just installing it i mean if you compare it to fnatic you've got to install their you know driver software which includes it includes the tuning app but then you've also got phantlab to install on top of that and if you don't have the right driver version to match the right phantom lab version it doesn't work and yeah i mean i get email after email after email from people wanting help with things like that whereas with this you literally just download the executable you double click it it installs all the drivers are there it prompts you to update the firmware like fnatic does now as well but yeah it was just a seamless easy experience from start to finish there and then once you actually open up the software i mean what did you think there yeah well as i said it's very easy to use i mean there's there's not as many parameters to play with as you get with with a lot of other wheelbases but um what you do have there makes a lot of sense yep and you know what it's doing and it's easy and and approachable to yeah i think approachable is a good way of describing it it was quite intuitive to use i really like that fine tuning panel as well it's almost like an equalizer where you can bump things up i wasn't sure how useful that was going to be when we first saw it but as it turned out initially when we got the general feeling of the bass to be how i liked it i felt like some of the effects like road textures in particular were quite numb and quite dull and using that equalizer to kind of bump those frequencies up actually made all the difference in the end and actually got it to feel on par in terms of driving experience with the csld and we'll talk about that comparison in just a minute but yeah the software to me at least had everything that you need and nothing that you don't yeah yeah well i mean i personally can find the phonetic software a little overwhelming you have two types of people there as well you have the people that really sort of get into it and really want to understand and they fiddle and they fiddle in their fiddle until they get it right and then you've got the people that just look at it and they go i'm not touching that yeah and they never get the full experience out of the expensive hardware they just bought because it's too overwhelming yeah so having something that's nice and approachable is a you know is a big strength that i think shouldn't be understated absolutely now just while we're talking about software one thing that i didn't like there was the presets that they gave us out of the box there were presets the buttons that you could click on for gt style drift and so forth i found all of those actually felt pretty terrible to me they were very robotic or numb and i just i didn't feel like they'd put a lot of time and effort into i guess getting the most out of those now of course as a starting point it might be okay but what i actually ended up doing is just using the default setting and then fine tuning depending on the type of car what type of style of driving i was doing from there and that ended up working better for me now obviously i'm pretty confident when it comes to tuning these things i got a lot of experience with a lot of different wheelbases so i kind of understand it but yeah i think that's probably something that they can definitely improve on it wasn't particularly hard to get it to feel how you wanted it to feel from that starting point that's true but the out of box experience then isn't quite what it could be and if you're the kind of person that just doesn't want to touch anything yeah then that's that you're definitely not getting the most out of it straight out of the box now with the with the csldd and the gtd pro by comparison there uh with the prototype units that we tested initially it was very similar but when we got the final retail versions the outer box experience was actually really good with those across a multitude of different sim titles as well so that's definitely one area that i think they can improve there but i'm sure that will improve over time as well yeah i mean look at the um dd1 and dd2 when they first yeah they were pretty awful until the later firmware versions exactly so considering how early on we are with this once they get feedback from users on on what they're doing with the settings and that kind of thing i'm sure they'll be able to nail some presets and the fact that you can save and load presets as well means that i'm sure people will be sharing them in discord and places like that too so it shouldn't take long for that kind of those little teething issues to get resolved now another thing is what we haven't mentioned yet is the mobile app oh yeah very handy yeah yeah do you think it replaces the on wheel tuning though that you get on fnatic so yeah what you mean by that is the little telemetry screen that you can also make adjustments to your to your parameters for full feedback look i don't think it replaces it i feel like you know not everybody's going to have their phone handy next to their rig it definitely is more convenient than having to alt tab out of your game and you know potentially even have to quit your game to make adjustments and it does make it a little bit more approachable again because you can just kind of go oh i wonder what that does and you feel it immediately yeah without having to go out and back in and you're like oh what did that feel like so that aspect of it was really good i think for me for little fine-tuning adjustments like increasing and decreasing force feedback overall strength it is very convenient to have that available on the wheel maybe wheel sensitivity rotation as well as another one but i find i do change quite often depending on what i'm driving so i'd say for the more granular stuff not really a big deal i feel like you don't change that often enough for it to really be a problem on fnatic anyway yeah but for overall strength in the force feedback and little things like that that people do change regularly i do prefer the phonetic ecosystem and the ability to change it on the wheel what do you think yeah i think the well the more you become familiar with the tuning menu on the wheel the more you're going to use it i do find that those same two parameters that you mentioned is what i go to on the on the wheel as well the sensitivity and the overall strength as well yeah more granular changes i'm going to probably go into fennel lab anyway yeah pause the game hot tab out and make some fine tunes that way and i think that the simplicity with the mozza software does make up for that to a certain extent yep um but it's still not quite as it's still not quite there i think that's still one area of the market that you know fnatic do have a very very strong selling point there the wider ecosystem the multitude of different products that they have available as well as that tuning menu they are two standout features when it comes to phonetic stuff and of course you do also have the ability to display telemetry on that little screen there too so gears rpm speed all those kinds of things are all right there on your screen you obviously don't have that with muzzle wheels as it stands right now now it's something that we may see added in later on but we just don't know at this stage but i guess i was a little bit concerned that that mobile app might be a bit of a gimmick didn't really turn out to be the case it was quite useful no it's quite useful i mean i usually have my phone mounted on the cockpit right next to the wheel anyway for dashes and just seeing messages and discord that kind of thing yeah um so it's really good just to have have that app there so overall when it comes to the software i think it's a very very very good experience so yeah it ticked all the boxes yep agreed so driving experience now what did you think well i guess the first thing that stood out to me was just how similar this felt to the csl dd i mean in terms of the overall driving characteristics it was quite indistinguishable did you notice the difference between nine newton meters peak and eight newton meters peak with the boost kit no no i don't yeah maybe a slight do you think i don't know i mean we chopped and changed we we switched between the bases so many times and i honestly i think once we got the settings dialed in i would struggle to tell the difference in a blind test i think yeah i mean we don't know what the holding talk is on yeah that's true it could be stronger than what you get on the csld i don't know i don't know but i don't think that one newton meter of torque difference for peak is going to make a big difference yeah i guess the question that people are going to be asking is like oh i i kind of want the i kind of want the fnatic one but the mozza one's got one newton meter more i don't think that it's i don't think it's something that you need to be worried about i think if you prefer everything else about the fanatic ecosystem the extra newton meter isn't a reason to buy this over that yeah if you prefer this then you know great it's you know that's funny yeah exactly yeah i agree it's not it's not a it's not a deal breaker no not at all yeah but what about other characteristics of the motor did you notice any notchiness or any graininess in the rotation no then there's the overall smoothness as i said is is really good it's a very similar feel to the cs led in terms of smoothness no notchiness or graininess that kind of thing um yeah and the level of detail you get in um in road texture and curbs and and that kind of thing yeah um yeah it did take a little bit of fine-tuning in the software but it wasn't very hard to do yeah we did get it to feel pretty much identical to yeah and i think another big thing there as well is just the consistency across all the different sim titles we tested it in most of the major sims as well as some more sim card titles as well and we were able to achieve a very consistent driving experience across all of them which i think you know that's something that we've always called out historically as being a real strength of the fanatic ecosystem yeah you know compared to even the likes of simia cube there's quite a lot of variance between different sims i mean obviously there's going to be characteristics in the force feedback that feel different between the different sim titles because they have their strengths and weaknesses but the car should fundamentally feel like the same car to drive but i felt like once we had it dialed in at least it was very very close to what we had with the csldd as well yeah absolutely and the only thing that i tried to dial out a little bit moving from eye racing to acc was just some of the road textures i needed to bring it down a little bit yeah i mean eye racing is notoriously dull when it comes to road texture part of that's because of the lower refresh rate it runs at 60 hertz as opposed to 400 in the acc and you definitely feel that difference but yeah but in terms of all the other characteristics didn't have to change a thing no look there was a little bit of notchiness originally what i mean by notchiness was a bit of a i guess not quite dead zone but you felt a bit of a kind of notch in the center so as you were moving from direction to direction it kind of wanted to sit in the middle and you kind of had to force it past that point but again tweaking the settings and you know dialing everything in we were able to remove that completely another thing i always worry about with more entry-level direct drive wheel bases is torque ripple or that kind of feeling of graininess as you rotate the wheel what did you feel about that i wasn't something i noticed it definitely didn't stand out you don't drive a um semi cube to ultimate every day though no i don't well i mean i drive a dd one every day yeah um and i'd say it was very similar experience to that maybe a bit smoother yeah i think that's been one of the observations that a lot of people have had with the csld compared to the dd1 dd2 is it does have a little bit less of that feeling yeah um you know and that's just down to the characteristics of the motor as well as the technology advancing in the time since those models were released uh look the vrs direct force pro the simicube 2 range and the sim magic alpha they are all completely smooth you don't feel any torque ripple at all i haven't tested the alpha mini so i can't comment on that the sim magic m10 had a huge amount of torque ripple you really feel it and again you don't really notice it when you're driving but it's definitely there if you pay attention to it okay this for me sits pretty much at the same level as the csld and gtd pro so you you notice it a little bit if you pay attention to it but it's really not significant enough that you're gonna feel it when you're driving if i sit there in the pit lane like you saw in part two if i sit there and i'm rotating the wheel and kind of feeling of the weight feeling the weight transition in the car you know i i do feel it but if you're sitting in the car doing that you you know you're doing something wrong with life exactly well it was for the purpose of testing yeah okay but no when you when you're driving when you're actually in motion it i don't think that it's at a level that's going to bother anybody and particularly if this is your first direct drive experience and you haven't driven with something like a simicube 2 then it's not going to bother you it's certainly not at a point where i think it's problematic at all now another very important factor when people are choosing a wheelbase is noise levels did you hear it yeah no not really with the speakers up or headphones on definitely not it's pretty much dead sign again as we mentioned before it is completely passively cooled there's no fans or anything like that in there so it doesn't have that constant wearing noise yeah and again it's it's similar to the csldd in terms of motor noise but yeah the csld you do get that clunk in the quick release yeah with the qr1 system and it's something that's uniform across all the phonetic wheelbases and wheels uh and we've never really quite nailed down exactly what it is but on change of direction and i'm sure a lot of people in the comments will be able to reinforce this you do get that kind of clunking noise almost like a metal to metal clapping sound yeah you don't even feel it sometimes you feel a slight thing but i don't know maybe it's placebo but it's certainly not you don't feel the sensation of the wheel slipping or anything but you hear this clunking noise whereas the quick release on this which we'll elaborate on in just a moment but the quick release on this is absolutely superior to the fnatic qr1 at least we obviously haven't seen the qr2 yet which they've been talking about for quite some time now but in terms of general use aside from the phonetic clunk they're both pretty much completely silent yeah and if you're upgrading from something like a logitech g920 or something like that you're going to be is this thing on even yeah it's it's literally like going from a jackhammer to you know just nothing so exactly it's noise level is not going to be an issue no but i guess the elephant in the room here when you're comparing the phonetic ecosystem to this is really just a quick release isn't it yeah that's it it is a very very nice quick release it is yeah i mean it's exactly the same as what we have on the sim magic wheel basis so anybody that's had an experience with those would know how good this is and it's also a i don't know whether i want to call it a copy or a clone or it's the same quick release as you get in some real-life race cars the nrg style quick release i believe they call it so that does mean that if you want to run an aftermarket wheel with this you can't actually plug that directly into this quick release and it will function obviously you just need to have that wheel plugged in via usb to get up and running but in terms of connection disconnection ease of use it only takes a couple of seconds to pop on pop off you don't have to worry about alignment you don't have to worry about bent pins or anything like that and yeah it's just in every whichever way you package it this is a superior quick release i even just love the look of it on the wheel side of it as well it looks nice doesn't it just a nice chunky good looking thing it looks like a race car yes yeah it's cool so i guess what i would say with regards to hardware as far as the base is concerned is that up to about here the quality is pretty much on par with the csld they're pretty much same same there's no real obvious differences between them in terms of build quality but when you look at the hub and the quick release i think that's where the mozza base does have the upper hand over the csl dd so i'm just going to grab a csl dd quickly and show you exactly what i'm talking about here so with the csl dd and the dd-1 d2 phonetics backs are kind of up against the wall a little bit because they've got to be able to maintain compatibility with their entire ecosystem of wheels but then they also need to make incremental improvements as the wheelbases get stronger as well and you've got to remember that when their quick release qr1 design was made the strongest wheelbase was you know a lot weaker than what we're running now so dd1 dd2 they had to move to a stem like this that had this rubber collar to sort of remove any flex in the base because they knew that they were going to have issues with snapping pins i would presume and you can see here this is just removed from a dd2 it unplugs when the qr2 is released i assume that that's just going to be a replacement nose for the motor so you unplug the old one plug in the qr2 and you're good to go now with the csl dd what they've had to do again so you can upgrade this to the qr2 later on is they've implemented this little collar system so you've got the collar here and what you do is you loosen off the little retainer and it's normally a lot tighter than this i've loosened it beforehand just to make it easier on camera so that loosens the collar and then the entire quick release slips out like so and you can replace that with the qr2 when it releases now what's been happening for quite a few people is this works its way a little bit loose over time and then this slips out the little usb-c connection becomes disconnected and the wheelbase disconnects on you so that has been a i wouldn't say common issue with the csld but it's something that is definitely possible and something that we have seen happen a number of times if you compare that to the experience with the let me set that aside again with the mozza base we couldn't get that off even when we tried to exactly so it's a solid thing right there again i mean the advantage there is simply that you know they don't have to account for older wheels or anything like that they can just say this is the way we want to do it and that's the way we're doing it moving forward whereas fnatic have to retain that compatibility across their entire ecosystem so it is definitely the better quick release we'll obviously see what the qr2 system is like when that releases from fnatic if it ever does release but i'm hoping that that will be just as strong as this is but as it stands right now if you compare the r9 to the csl ddd or the gtd pro you've got two areas of potential failure on the csld you've got the flex in the quick release itself which can lead to breaking pins on the wheel and you've also got the ability for that whole stem to slip out as we saw before whereas with this you get a very very very tiny little bit of flex in the quick release maybe if you're unlucky with the wheel that you're installing yeah i mean obviously there are manufacturing tolerances there so some wheels may have a little bit more rock in them than others but generally speaking the overall flex is less here than it is with the csl dd even if you remove the whole potential of that whole collar to slip out so i have to say this is a better overall fundamental design than you get with the csld or gtd pro it's just the way it is yeah i mean just look at it yeah it's obvious isn't it just looking at it it looks great yeah yeah so i think that just about does it for the r9 yeah yeah i think so i think we can take a look at the wheel now yes all right let's set this guy aside and we'll bring up the v 2.5 wheel from phonetic as well to do a bit of a side-by-side comparison here so what were your thoughts driving and you spent quite a bit of time with both of them side by side so yeah i mean it's interesting because uh you don't have a formula wheel of this size in the phonetic range no so it does fill a hole that fnatic doesn't fill at this point yeah so 270 millimeters here for the phonetic uh formula wheel and it is the same for all their current formula range whereas we've got 300 millimeter wide here so so it does feel much more versatile than the fnatic yep um 300 mil is right for a bunch of different cars yeah you happy driving this on a gt3 or a formula one yeah in terms of the overall feel of it though um i love the feel of the the alcantara here it's really nice soft it's got a little bit of squish in it which i really like uh it feels solid and no twist um or anything like that it just feels really nice in your hands yeah i really like the buttons it's very much a subjective thing i think in terms of their quality they're probably about on par they're a little bit more squishy before they activate but they have a nice click to them when they do activate yeah whereas these ones are a little bit more intentional maybe it honestly it's like these are more intentional but a little more hollow yep whereas these are a bit more solid but yeah i pressed that yeah anyway it's so subjective but i they're good either way yeah they're both good the buttons are fine the same style buttons that you have on some magic wheels as well they feel pretty much yeah yeah that's it the thumb encoders are quite a different feel though i was actually finding it kind of hard to turn them okay maybe it's also part of the design of the knob itself yep it's kind of hard to find the spot to put your thumb i think if it had deeper grooves in there for you to get your thumb in it would probably be a lot better or maybe more of like a almost like a paddle wheel kind of design like this yeah almost something like that yeah but no i did find them a bit tricky i do like the um push button there as well yeah that's quite handy that is quite handy yeah so is there anything else that kind of stood out well i guess i'm just thinking the wheel i use most from the phonetic range is the mclaren um gt3 v2 which is the same size as as this i guess it's a similar kind of shape um and this is a big step up in quality to that definitely it's a lot more expensive as well it is a lot more expensive i think for the price the mclaren the phonetic mclaren wheel is still one of the best value bits of sim racing gear there is this is definitely a step up in quality to that so i do prefer it to the mclaren wheeler you don't you don't have the thumb encoders on the mclaren as well yeah but yeah it obviously comes at a price yeah definitely in terms of build quality it's an interesting one because the phonetic wheels actually do to my eye at least have a slightly more premium look to them just with the rubberized coating that we have on the plastics around the back as well you can see all of this plastic here is all rubberized whereas on the mozza one it's all just that shiny kind of plastic so it looks more toy like in that regard but when you actually open up the mozza wheel the build quality internally is as good if not maybe even a little bit better than the phonetic wheels are and i think you know when it comes to things like the rotary encoders as well they've all got anodized aluminium caps on them whereas the plastic ones on the phonetic wheels we have seen quite a few of those crack we haven't had it happen to us personally but i have seen quite a few people in forums and on facebook with issues with those cracking they do replace them under warranty of course but yeah in terms of overall build quality i would say they're very very similar to each other the ergonomics are very similar other than the diameters there's not an excessive amount of flex if any flex on either of them so that's not really a consideration really it just comes down to again the quality of the quick release which we already discussed and the fact that you have to pay i think it's just under 200 us dollars extra 179 or something like that to get the function of analog paddles on the v2 wheels whereas this one does come with them speaking of the paddles though we did run into that problem with the the glitchiness yes the input coming from these yeah it was almost like it was a low sample rate or something like that through the bluetooth interface maybe but yeah maybe but it definitely had an impact on how they can be used in the game definitely i'm hoping that that's something that can be resolved with the with firmware updates or software or something like that but yeah it was definitely a problem that shouldn't shouldn't be overlooked at least for now and i guess the other thing that was a bit strange was the um the thumb pad yeah that was a strange one as well so yeah just to elaborate on that they are analog switches but in terms of how they're mechanically yeah but in terms of how they're actually implemented inside the software you can choose whether you want it to be a d-pad function which is a digital so it's an on off switch in each direction or just a normal button press so that obviously determines how it's interpreted by the game some games like to have a d-pad input others want to have a button but either way it's an on or off that's right it's a digital it's a digital signal that's coming out of it even though it's a analog movement so again that may be something that changes with software later on but it was definitely something that was a little bit strange yeah so for looking around the cockpit and that kind of thing that makes it quite hard when you haven't got that gradient of yeah yeah there you know again i think they'll probably fix it but yeah as as it stands right now or something that we did notice is a little bit strange it would also be nice if they were seven way funky switches definitely one of them at least yeah that is something that i do like about the um the phonetic wheels you've got the seven different directions up down left right rotate in either direction for a rotary encoder and push button it is relatively convenient for switching between different black box screens then maybe you want to have the other one assigned to looking or maybe to your menu system or something like that but i do prefer having the seven-way switch yeah it's funny because it could so easily and should be just that little bit better yeah but again these are teething issues and again we have to remember that they only have the two wheels in the ecosystem at the moment surely that's going to expand over time you think so yeah and it's going to be interesting to see what they do yep so i guess final conclusions on the r9 and gs wheel what do you feel about it i think that it really comes down to availability for me yeah i think that's going to be probably and i you know it's hard to believe that we're saying this but they're so close to each other that i guess really the two big factors are just the wider ecosystem and availability i think one of the big questions that people are going to have is well if i can buy one of these right now and have it here at my door in a couple of weeks versus having to wait months potentially for a csld is it worth the wait it's a very good option that's for sure i mean if you're not if you're only interested in playing on pc then i don't think you're really missing out on anything massive unless you just want to have a larger selection of wheels and obviously they're going to increase their availability of wheels over time as well and as you said before the option of third-party wheels that you can add on as well there are things you can do there you're not completely stuck yeah that's right you're not completely trapped into just the two wheels so yeah i mean i guess the big strength of the mozza r9 when compared to the csld would be the quick release overall it's just a far superior system to what we have with fnatic currently at least until the qr2 comes out and i guess the key differentiator and strength with the phonetic ecosystem is versatility in terms of compatibility with consoles as well as just the wider ecosystem and the bigger variety and bigger range you have available there you don't have to spend as much to get up and racing with phonetic as you do here to get a csl dd with a boost kit so keeping it equivalent here but with a much cheaper wheel which is still perfectly fine something like the mclaren wheel is going to cost you a significant amount less than what the r9 costs with the gs or rs rims so that is definitely consideration but yeah look honestly it's a really exciting time for sim racing i think new brand coming along and you know we had our reservations at first we did have some teething issues with the r15 and you know we've made that clear to you guys as well but you know they've impressed us here they've well they've definitely impressed me yeah likewise yeah i don't see any reason not to recommend this unless you need console compatibility or unless you already have a large selection of wheels from a different ecosystem uh yeah it's a very very good product and when you consider that it's still in its infancy it can only really go up from here so obviously there's still a lot of questions with regards to things like customer support as well we haven't really talked about that here we'll have to see how things play out and i would definitely recommend do your research with regards to that check out the facebook groups check out discord and yeah make sure you do do your due diligence there obviously it's a new brand so new experiences we don't know but yeah at this point all we can say is in terms of the hardware thumbs up yep definitely yeah so all good all right guys well hopefully this video series has helped you guys out if it has please do leave a thumbs up and consider subscribing as well so you don't miss future review videos and if you do decide you want to pick up any mozzarella or any of the other gear that you've seen talked about in today's video we do have some links down in the description below don't forget if you are buying one of these as well we do have a discount code available for you down in the description too so definitely check that out before you hit the go button but thank you very much for watching guys and we'll see you again soon bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Boosted Media

Views: 205,408

Keywords: moza sim racing wheel, moza sim racing r9, moza sim racing reviews, moza sim racing uk, moza racing, moza r9, boosted media, moza vs fanatec, moza r9 vs csl dd, moza r9 review, moza r9 vs fanatec dd, fanatec, GT DD Pro, CSL DD, Jimmy Broadbent, Super GT, Sim Racing Review, best direct drive, best sim racing wheel, driving sim, driving simulator, racing sim, sim racing setup, budget direct drive, budget sim racing wheel, moza gs wheel, steering wheel, direct drive wheel

Id: SGeAIrPrbCg

Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Wed May 25 2022