NAILED IT! - NEW Fanatec CSL Elite Pedals V2 Review

hey guys will here so on the table today we have what look like two identical sets of csl elite pedals from fnatic now the ones on my left are the original v1 the ones on my right however are the brand newly upgraded v2 ones now they may look identical as you guys see them right now but there are some really significant and exciting upgrades in the v2 pedals which make them absolutely worth checking out so that's exactly what we're going to be doing today we're going to be talking about the comparison between these the originals as well as some other alternatives you see behind me as well we're going to be figuring out whether these are worth looking at as an upgrade if you already own the v1 pedals as well as whether these are worth looking at if you're maybe looking at upgrading to load cell pedals for the very first time and i think you'll be surprised at the price point that they've come out with with these new v2 pedals so let's dive in and check them out [Music] so as always big thank you to fanatec for sending across these pedals to check out we're making a few comparisons today to other brands too all of those pedals that you see in today's video have been supplied by their various manufacturers so thank you very much to them for making these kinds of comparisons possible if you do decide you want to pick up any of the gear that you see in today's video we do have some affiliate links down in the description below which are an awesome way of helping support our channel at no additional cost to you guys but as is always the case on this channel this is purely just our own observations and our own opinions with absolutely no external editorial control whatsoever so let's get started talking about pricing and compatibility first and then we'll get into the details so if you're in europe these are going to set you back 299.95 us 299.95 also japan 39 900 yen and in australia 499 dollars so it prices them a little bit above what you get with the csl pedal non-elite version but this is a big big big step up in quality and driving experience as we'll see in today's video now compatibility wise they are compatible with the entire ecosystem from fnatic so all the current wheelbases as well as the older club sport wheelbase 2.5 not going to have any issues there you can plug them in directly to your pc via usb as was the case with the v1s if you bought the load cell upgrade you can also connect the pedals directly to your phonetic wheelbase via an rj12 cable which is included and that will of course give you console compatibility as well just depending on the wheelbase and wheel that you have connected so basically this integrates with whatever compatibility you already have now one very important thing to highlight there with regards to console compatibility you do have the option of adjusting the braking force required to activate 100 braking force inside your game directly from the tuning menu on your wheelbase so that means that you do have control over the sensitivity of the brake pedal even if you are playing on a console where the game doesn't actually allow you to calibrate the pedal so that is definitely an advantage over using some other pedals which may have aftermarket adapters that you can use to actually make them compatible with console but don't necessarily give you any ability to fine-tune the actual experience now just to run you through a couple of other important factors which may determine whether or not these are a consideration for you before we get into the meat of today's video it's a 200 kilogram load cell they tell me with a maximum breaking force at the pedal phase of 90 kilograms that can be adjusted between a range of 10 kilograms and 90 kilograms so it means you can use the pedals on the carpet or on the floor but i don't recommend doing so i think that the csl pedals are a better option for those who are running on the carpet simply because to get the full experience out of what the load cell has to offer here with proper trail braking threshold braking and so forth you really just can't do that with these pedals without the pedals sliding around on the carpet so you will want to have some solid way of mounting these pedals so they won't move independently of your chair you can get creative you can you know use a plank of wood to maybe bolt your chair to and the pedal so you don't necessarily need to have a cockpit but if the pedals are moving around relative to your seating position you aren't going to get along well with these and you're not going to have the best experience possible no point in spending the money if you're not going to be able to take advantage of what these have to offer so just keep that in mind before we dive into the rest of today's video so let's talk now about the comparison between the v1 and the v2 and what exactly they've changed so looking at the two side by side front on you'd be doing very well to notice any difference whatsoever the basic footprint is exactly the same the materials used for the basic construction being exactly the same as well cast aluminium with this kind of ripple effect coating over the top of it now the v1 pedals we have here were actually daily used for well over 18 months and you can see they've stood the test of time very well in terms of general wear and tear if you look very closely you may be able to pick up on camera that the surface is a little bit more shiny underneath where the heels sit so break and throttle but other than that and just a little bit of dust they've stood up to the abuse very very well i must say overall so the two things that you will notice if you look very closely slightly different assembly just here for the load cells the load cell has been completely revised and the other thing you'll notice is two little plugs in the front here now whereas before it was just a solid piece of aluminium all the way across now that is to allow easier access to the mounting holes on the underside you can see the design is basically the same there if we flip the two of them up so you've got a groove here now rather than a hole which means you can actually slide the bolt in rather than kind of having to poke it in and through the little hole you can see if i flip it around the side there it was quite clumsy to actually get that in but more importantly if we look at the tops what you can do now is pop out these little plugs i'll pop this one out so you guys get a better look and that allows you to access with an allen key through the top and tighten the bolts down previously you had to kind of get in on the side and because of the way this was shaped you only had restricted movement so you could only turn it about 20 or 30 degrees and it was just a pain in the ass to install these something that always frustrated me and i know i wasn't alone in that otherwise mounting is exactly the same between the two if we flip them around again you can see the mounting holes on the back side are exactly the same so you've got six mounting holes in the back in total you can of course remove these bracings if you wish to do so that just adds a little bit of extra rigidity so you don't get the pedals flexing inwards if you're pushing really really hard now just like with the v1s they are a modular design so you can remove each of the three pedals and move them around from side to side you can see the various different positions which are available there it simply just slots in and bolts back in through the top you can of course also remove the clutch if you wish to do so but it does come pre-assembled in this configuration inside the box and if we flip it back around to the front again we've got this rubber strip along here which looks quite nice and if we grab a little pry tool and flick that up you can see that pulls out there you go and that allows access to the m8 bolts which secure the pedals in from the top so overall a very functional design you don't have any adjustment in terms of pedal angle or anything like that most rigs these days do have adjustment for tilt anyway but what they've essentially done here and it's the same with the v1 pedals as well they've tried to minimize the complexity here keep things as simple as possible to keep the cost down but also providing a good overall driving experience now if we spin around to the back we'll put this rubber strip back in this is where the significant differences are so starting off with the throttle and the clutch pedal we now have hall effect sensors rather than potentiometers installed in both of these now they perform essentially the same function however with the hall effect sensor what it's essentially doing is measuring a magnetic field and deflection of electrons across a little tiny metal plate and the position of the pedal is then calculated based on the variance in that magnetic field whereas with a potentiometer as you can see what happens when you push the pedal the little cog spins and the potentiometer is just a variable resistor which varies the voltage and that is then determined as the pedal position inside the sim now there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the potentiometer we see them used in real life cars all the time and often used for very important things too like throttle control for example so a good quality sealed unit is absolutely fine however no moving parts means that there's no chance of things wearing out and failing over time and as you can see with the csl elite v1 pedals they are an open design so they do lend themselves to getting full of dirt and debris over time dead skin cells nasty things like that and although i haven't personally experienced it does create an opportunity for failure there which isn't the case with the hall effect sensor so that is a good upgrade there i would say doesn't have an impact on the overall driving experience as long as everything's working correctly but a good thing in terms of longevity now moving on to the star of the show which is the load cell so you can see a very very different design between the two of these and straight away you'll notice that the v2 pedal is a lot more stiff on that initial uptake then was the case with the v1 it had this little foam insert in the elastomer stack here which at least in my opinion never really felt particularly good always felt like it was a step down in quality in terms of the driving experience from what you get with other more expensive load cell pedals which of course when you consider the price difference does make sense but as you'll see later on the upgrade to the v2 pedals does mean that you get very close to the same driving experience you get with much more expensive pedals than this are which is definitely something to be excited about now there are a couple other really important differences here to highlight just with regards to the actual mechanical design beyond just the feeling difference between the two and obviously we'll explore the feeling differences when we drive later on but on the v2 pedal you'll see there's a load cell actually at the back of the elastomer stack so it's measuring the force applied to the pedal via the elastomer stack directly so the braking force as it's interpreted by the game is influenced by not only the leverage provided by the pedal but also of course the resistance provided by the elastomer stack and the end result in force applied to the load cell is what is being used inside the game now with the v1 pedal it was very different you can see there's no load cell at the back of the elastomer stack behind this little cover here is actually where the load cell sits so what this was doing is actually measuring the deflection in the pedal arm itself now again that does result ultimately as a function of the resistance being provided by the elastomers so the softer the elastomers the less deflection you're obviously going to have in the pad but the disadvantage of that approach was that the force as it was interpreted by the software or by the game could vary quite greatly depending on whereabouts your foot was actually contacting the pedal so if you were pushing right on the very top for example you would see a more extreme response than you would if you're pushing down on the bottom and that meant that there could be quite significant inconsistency in how the braking force was interpreted by the game if your foot was moving around on the pad while driving as opposed to having a consistent amount of force always being applied regardless of whereabouts it is on the pad now of course foot position will still determine the amount of leverage you have on any brake pedal but in my experience in driving with the v2s as you'll see later on a lot more consistency with these pedals than i had with the v1s and a much more accurate and lifelike feeling in the pedal as well obviously depending on how you set it up so those are the mechanical differences between the v1s and the v2s we want to talk a little bit more now about the adjustability that we have with the v2s we'll talk a little bit about mechanical comparisons with some other models as well then we'll get into the driving experience i'm going to set these guys aside and let's go through exactly what we have here so inside the box which is very well presented i must add we have a little kit like this on the right hand side we have our rj12 cable for connecting directly to the wheelbase we also have a nice long usb cable with a usb b connection for the side that connects to the pedals and a usb a connection for the side that connects to your pc now one really important thing to note because you might break your brand new pedals do not connect the usb cable to your pc if you are connecting via the wheelbase because that's going to give you two different power supplies both trying to come into the unit at once and you could cause some serious and permanent damage to your brand new pedals not a good thing to do then on the right hand side we also have a nice little tool kit included as well they include a couple of allen keys to help you mount the pedals as well as a spanner for undoing the bolts which are securing not only the pedal pivot points but also the support bars which as i mentioned before are removable depending on how you want to mount these now importantly there is no mounting hardware included with the pedals the reason for that is that they can't account for every single type of rig which you might be bolting this to there are m8 size holes though so nice and big but you may just need to duct down to your local hardware store to get these installed now one other thing i should mention here as well as you'll notice on the little control module here there is a little qr code if you scan that it actually takes you through to a good video from fnatic that runs you through the installation process calibration and all the things that you're going to need to do to get up and running with confidence it's really great to see that manufacturers are starting to do that a lot more than they used to there is of course a quick start guide in the box as well but a lot of people learn better from video and kind of having somebody actually show them through the process and they have done a very good job they've obviously put a lot of effort into the presentation and you know getting people up and running now on the left hand side of the package you can see a couple of little orange pieces here those are little tools to help you remove the load cell from its little notch so i'm not going to do it now because it's a little bit awkward the angle that i've got but i will show you this in a minute they also include a replacement uptake spring so if you find that the pedal is a little bit too vague for you just in that initial uptake or the area where the pad is interfacing with the rotor for the first time you can stiffen that up i didn't actually feel a massive difference between the two i did end up running the black spring which is a slightly stiffer of the two but i am used to running very very stiff pedals on my daily driver rig so that's just a personal preference thing the important thing once again is that it does provide an authentic feel right from the softest setting all the way through to the maximum setting as long as your sensitivity is set correctly but we'll cover that later on as well now also inside the box we've got a selection of changeable elastomers too so these are basically like rubber springs by default we have 365 sure elastomers installed we then have three 75s included as well as three 85s included two which are the stiffer of the three so you can combine any combination of these to achieve the pedal feel that suits you best one of the things that i really like about these pedals is they don't give you the option for an unrealistically soft pedal so it is kind of forcing you into proper braking technique proper trail braking proper threshold braking and all those important things so that does mean that it is going to be a bit of a steep learning curve if you're one of those people that is absolutely alien fast with potentiometer based position based pedals then you will take a couple of hours to really get back to your pace with these pedals and i did see this with the phonetic csl load cell pedal when it came out about a year ago now quite a few people were complaining that that pedal was too stiff for them now i actually found that pedal wasn't stiff enough for me having come from more higher end pedals so we'll be a little bit of a learning curve at first but don't let that put you off i absolutely guarantee that you will ultimately be not if not faster than definitely more consistent with a pedal with a feeling like this than you will be with a position based system so just persevere and i'm sure that you will get the hang of it in the long run so the way we change out these elastomers is very very simple all we do is install the little orange tool as we saw before that just slips on in either side we just push down on it pops out of the groove and then the entire elastomer stack can be removed from the load cell that gives you a good look at what the load cell looks like in there as well so you can see the little metal tab there that is what is deflected and there's a little tiny strain gauge in there which measures the deflection of that metal tab and that is what's interpreted as breaking force via of course the elastomer stack so we'll get these little tools back off here again obviously you need to be very careful you don't lose any of these parts but you've got a little spacer between each piece of elastomer literally just pull them off like so and you can replace them with whatever you want so i actually ended up going with a 65 and 285 so i'm going to do exactly the same thing again now so we pop our elastomer on you can actually see on the top there it's got stamped the sure rating so you're not going to get muddled up so slide it on slide another spacer on very important you put spaces between each of the elastomers if you don't then they can bind up and actually tear themselves so important that you do that so we've got a 65 an 85 and an 85 then we put this guy back on the bottom pop it back into our load cell grab these guys again you may not actually even need these but it's good that they include them put it back down into position and then we just pull down pop it back into the groove like so and it is as simple as that you will just need to jump into the software and make sure that your calibration is still good and i'll show you that in just a minute so what i wanted to do now is just give you a quick comparison between this the v3 pedals from phonetic as well as the csl load cell pedal kit which does come in a little bit cheaper than this but a very different driving experience so quick side-by-side comparison between the v2s and the csl pedals with the load cell upgrade now we do have a detailed review on these pedals on the channel link it above my head and down in the description below for you guys if you want to check them out in full detail hall effect sensors across the throttle and the clutch just like we have on the v2 csl elite pedals same kind of basic load cell design here as well you can see the load cell sitting in the back here what we don't get with this break is adjustment at least out of the factory now there are some after-market kits available which do change the feel of these i haven't tested any of those out so i can't comment on them but look overall the basic function and design of these pedals is quite similar to what we have here so i'd say if you've got a set of these pedals already and maybe you're not quite happy with the feeling that you're getting through the brake pedal maybe it is worth exploring mods first before you look at upgrading to these if you can get a good second hand price for these and then upgrade to these for 100 us dollars more then maybe worthwhile but it's going to be a subjective thing the thing that i found using this brake pedal compared to this one is just there isn't quite that clearly defined threshold point that you get with this one it was i found that i just wasn't as consistent with the braking here even at the same braking pressure you obviously don't get the adjustment from the factory that you get with the cslv2 so 65 sure hardness on the csl as opposed to 65 plus the 75 plus the 85 adjustment plus the little uptake spring here as well so the main difference in the driving experience at least for me was that this just didn't have the clearly defined threshold point to modulate around it felt a lot more vague and i guess a lot more linear in the input and that makes it harder to hit a consistent braking force inside the game than what you had with these but what i would say is that these are a lot closer to say the phonetic v3 pedals with the performance upgrade which we'll look at in just a minute or even i could i could go as far as saying that these are a lot closer to something like acertec fortes or mecha cup ones or housing valve sprints or using their ultimates even than these guys are so it is a significant step up in the driving experience at least in my opinion to these over the csl pedals whereas the experience with the v1 csl elites was a lot closer to what you get with these guys otherwise you've got a similar kind of adjustable range here so you can move the pedals around space them out you can remove the clutch if you want to space the throttle and the brake further apart so although the physical appearance is quite different the versatility is actually quite similar one other thing i should actually mention while we're here as well as this does have the tuning kit upgrade which gives you the brushed aluminium pedal pads by default this does come with plastic pedal pads so moving on to a quick comparison side by side with the phonetic v3 pedals now these are pretty much fully optioned we have the damper kit as well as the performance kit installed now the v3 pedals are actually the very first set of high-end pedals that i bought after upgrading from a logitech g27 so i've put a number of years into these pedals before i upgraded to what was a houstonvale ultimates i went to after these on my daily driver rig so i actually really love these pedals they weren't without their downfalls one of the big issues that people have is the the aluminium screws which hold the heel plate in place tend to strip out very easily you can see that one's actually stripped and those two have been replaced a number of times now i actually ended up getting an aftermarket one from hardware store to install there look overall they've been a very reliable pedal set haven't had any major issues with them they also have a very high end and striking appearance too the brushed aluminium anodized finish with the what look like diamond cut edges so they've got nice shiny edges and i mean you can see for yourselves they look a class above the csl elite pedals there's no questioning that but in terms of the actual functionality and driving experience out of the box the v3 pedals as standard without the performance kit actually don't drive as well in my opinion as the v2 csl elite pedals do the foam inserts that come as standard with the brake just don't feel as good they're a lot more vague than we get with the elastomer stack on the v2s and while that can be fixed with the performance kit that is an additional cost 20 us dollars if you're looking at that and it is quite a pain to install as opposed to the toolless design that we have here you saw i did it in about four seconds on this one this one was a good number of hours and you know messing around now they have improved the process quite significantly since i bought these pedals they include some tools now in the kit as well but there are a lot of issues with people stripping out the grub screw that you need to remove you've got to pull the pin assembly out and you guys can search around and see for yourself the process that's involved in upgrading this to the performance kit not something that you can easily just switch between elastomers either if you want to change cars it's not something that you're going to be doing at the drop of a hat on this because it is quite an investment in time to change them whereas with this you can go i want to drive a different car quickly pop it off quickly put a different elastomer in and you're good to go within a few seconds now if we spin them around there are a couple of other little things of note here as well so on the back here you can see we do have a little vibration motor that allows you to have tactile feedback for things like abs or wheel lock up depending on how you configure it in phonetic software now look honestly i was never a big fan of that it it's a subjective thing but i actually had somebody ask me about two months after i upgraded to my houstonvale ultimate pedals whether i missed the vibration motor and i kind of i'm an art about it for a second i'm like oh yeah that's right those had the vibration motor didn't they i just didn't really miss it and you know obviously different people's experience will vary on that i just found personally that it didn't really add a whole lot to the experience for me likewise with the damper kit as well that was a honestly i would say a regretful purchase i purchased that at the same time as the as the performance kit it is quite an expensive upgrade and it does give you a slightly more hydraulic-like feeling to the pedal but i just didn't find that it added all that much to the driving experience if anything at all i did have some issues with it leaking as well and i just honestly felt like i wasted my money buying that now i have seen quite a few people buy the damper kit to run on the throttle pedal i did try that as well and i found that while it did feel quite nice it did add some lift off lag to the pedal even at the lowest settings what i mean by that is as i was lifting off the throttle pedal it wouldn't actually come back directly under my foot it would kind of lag behind a little bit and obviously when you're needing to make quick changes and modulations to your throttle input that is definitely not something that you want so again your experience may vary on that but i didn't find that the damper kit was really worth the money as an upgrade so i don't really miss it not being an option for these pedals but overall i would say with the performance kit installed in the v3s the experience using the brake is actually quite similar to what you get with the elite v2s now the clutch is significantly different you can see this one actually has a two-stage kind of effect to it so it simulates that friction point where the pressure plates on the clutch actually engage and you connect your engine by the flywheel through to your drivetrain so i do actually really like the clutch on the v3 pedals and i'd say that's probably the most significant difference other than appearance between the two the throttle pedal did come with an option to change out the spring if you felt like the default spring was a little bit too soft but overall i'd say you know quite a similar feel between the two of them just keep in mind that you don't get any adjustability with the throttle and clutch on these v2 pedals now another thing i should mention here as well is the shiny surface that you get with the v3 petals you do have the option on the csl elite pedals to remove these rubber covers you can just pop them off like so and you can see the pedal pads then have the same ripple powder coating as you have on the rest of the assembly they don't look particularly presentable like this but in my experience they do slip quite nicely under your feet and they provide a good driving experience either with socks on or boots on you can see with the v3 pedals you can move the pads around on the face as well to adjust the spacing but one advantage that these have which you don't have with the v3 pedals is the ability to actually separate them and adjust the spacing horizontally across the base i have actually seen a few people remove the clutch and adjust them with spacers and things like that but it's a very after-market thing that requires quite a bit of work unlike with this where you can just unbolt it and adjust them in a couple of minutes so i think that's everything we need to cover in terms of the hardware let's jump on over to the sim rig now to give you a quick look at the software calibration and dive into the driving experience okay so all set up and ready to go now on our next level racing gt elite cockpit absolutely no issues with bolting on whatsoever those little adjustments that they've made to the accessibility of the mounting surfaces makes things a lot easier it was a nightmare previously but wasn't really a stress at all with the way things are now so let's just quickly talk about the initial impressions and pedal feel while we're static in the rig before we get into a driving test we'll also just quickly cover the software for you guys as well so look i'm not going to waste any time here the throttle and the clutch feel exactly the same as they did do with the previous version which was absolutely fine there were no issues with those anyway there's a good amount of travel on the throttle as well as the clutch i'm not a big fan of the rubber pads though particularly with socks on they're gripping and kind of making my heel come up off the pedal tray rather than sliding underneath my foot it is going to be a personal preference thing but i will definitely be popping these off before we go for a drive i think i can tell straight away they're just not going to suit me now the brake feels immediately completely different from the previous csl elite load cell break that pedal had quite a sloppy initial uptake with the little foam insert that we looked at earlier and that meant that there was basically no definition in the pedal up until that point so you're kind of just pushing through that every single time with this new load cell even at the weakest setting there's immediately a good amount of resistance there but the thing that i always look for is a really sort of clearly defined threshold point that i can push to and then modulate around to either increase or trail break out so threshold breaking is really important to driving quickly in any sort of road car and absolutely going to be possible with these pedals so really good initial impression let's take a quick look at the software now and see exactly what we can do in terms of tweaking then we'll get in and do some driving so having a look at the software interface now remembering again that you can connect these pedals via your wheelbase which is what we've done here and that also allows you to tweak some settings on a console as well so if you go into the tuning menu on the wheel you can actually scroll through and adjust this brake force just the same as you can in the fanatec software which is really important so we can see a throttle we can see a clutch pretty straightforward there those as you can see by default actually auto calibrate themselves so the way that works is a new maximum is set whenever you hold the pedal beyond the default position for more than two seconds what that doesn't do however is allow you to have any sort of calibration for a dead zone at the minimum and we'll talk about that in just a minute but let's first talk about this brake force adjustment now the default setting that they recommend is 50 that for me is actually pretty much bang on exactly where i want it for the default spring set which comes with these pedals what you can do if you want to use these pedals on carpet is wind that all the way down to say minimum and you can see that is super super super sensitive now so it's literally just tweaking with my toes is enough to make that work all the way up to 100 braking force so there's no way you would ever want this sensitive for driving on a rig but if you are running on carpet this would probably be where you would need to be now i don't recommend buying these pedals for use on carpet i think the csl pedals are a much better option and the simple reason for that is purely just because you're not going to be able to take full advantage of these pedals if you're using them on carpet because you're not going to be able to push them and modulate your braking properly without them sliding around on the ground which just isn't really you know defeats the purpose of buying these pedals in the first place let's face it so much better suited to a hard mount now you could have them mounted on a plank of wood attached to your chair you don't necessarily have to have a cockpit but you're going to need to have some way to stop the pedals from sliding away from you when you're pushing into the back of your seat that's going to be absolutely fundamental to getting the most out of these pedals and that's the case for pretty much every other load cell pedal that is on the market so way way way too sensitive at the minimum setting there if we crank it up to the maximum setting you can see now i'm having to really get into the pedal to get anywhere near maximum force there and that is again getting into the point where there's just too much travel in that brake pedal and i'm starting to modulate my input based on position rather than force which is not what you want to do to drive quickly and consistently so i wouldn't recommend unless you're the hulk running maximum force either as i was saying 50 default value actually works really well for me so the reason i say that is when i push the pedal down to the natural kind of threshold point the point where i can actually feel a change or a significant change in the resistance behind the pedal that for me is around about 80 braking pressure which is exactly where you want it for most street cars that allows you to break to the threshold without locking up in cars that don't have abs and then gently modulate around that 80 point so for example you're starting to turn into the apex you're carrying a little bit too much speed and you're not quite at the threshold of your traction circle then you can actually modulate a little bit more braking force into there just to pull you up and make sure you hit that apex and likewise it allows you to maintain maximum braking efficiency whilst trail braking as you start to turn into the corner as well these are all fundamentals to driving quickly and consistently so you can see here as i push down the pedal i'm able to hit that 80 braking pressure pretty consistently there and then modulate around it really nicely which is exactly what i always look for in a set of load cell pedals so i've got to say for the price especially these are absolutely hitting the mark for all the things i look for at least in terms of mechanical feel and we'll see in just a minute how it feels out on the track now i mentioned earlier minimum dead zone calibration and the auto calibration tool so i'm going to show you exactly what i mean by that now so if we have a look at the braking meter there you can see if i rest my foot on the brake even slightly so say i'm driving i'm changing gears i'm driving along and i'm just resting my foot on the brake ready to brake you can see there i'm actually applying three percent to four percent breaking pressure just by resting my foot on that load cell pedal and that is just purely down to the sensitivity of that load cell which is a good thing but obviously you don't want to have any braking pressure applied unintentionally now the auto calibration tool doesn't allow for minimum dead zone adjustment so what i would recommend you do is switch this on and doesn't really matter so much for the throttle and the clutch because they do have nice clearly defined return points and you do have to actually physically move the pedal intentionally to get a reading you can see if just resting my foot on the pedal i'm not getting anything on the throttle or the clutch unless i actually start to push in and that's because those two pedals are position based using the hall effect sensor that we talked about earlier rather than being force-based like we have with a load cell so what i'm going to do is i'm going to rest my foot on the brake and then push in just a tiny little bit more than the amount of force that i would normally be putting on just resting my foot there so let's say about eight percent feels about right for this particular load cell obviously it may be slightly different for you guys so i'd recommend just rest your foot on the brake to the point where you feel like you wouldn't be pushing past just resting your foot on there and then we're going to hit the minimum button here and that has now set a calibration so you can see when i rest my foot on the brake pedal i'm not getting any reading until i actually intentionally start to push on the pedal so that would be how i would recommend setting it up 50 braking force is good for me i usually break with a force of around about 65 to 70 kilograms obviously that's going to depend on how strong you are but i would highly recommend getting it set up so where you feel that threshold point is on the pedal so where you feel like you can always push and feel a consistent point where you can stop that is where you want to calibrate your 80 mark and then you can modulate around that and don't forget again as i mentioned earlier you can adjust the brake force directly from the wheel as well so you don't have to alt tab out of the game and that will of course also allow you to adjust this setting on consoles which is vitally important because they don't generally give you adjustments for this inside the games themselves all right so i think that covers everything we need to in terms of software i'm going to do some driving now we'll do a few laps make some adjustments to the pedals if necessary and then we'll come back and let you know how they go [Music] all right so i've been through done some driving testing and got the pedals configured to my best preference obviously this is going to be subjective thing will vary from person to person what i ended up doing was removing the pedal pads on the throttle and brake just to get a little bit more slip under my foot you can see now the pedal actually slides under my foot without my heel trying to come up with it and i think that's really important for being able to modulate and have precision input so i would recommend doing that if you're driving with socks or shoes that aren't slippery enough to have the pedal kind of slide under your foot with those rubber pads i also ended up swapping out two of the 65 short elastomers one for a 75 one for an 85 sure and also swapped the weaker uptake spring to the stiffer one as well didn't find a massive amount of difference between the two springs but having those uh shaw 75 and short 85 swapped out for the 65 did give me a little bit more stiffness in the pedal again it's a personal preference thing as i said the default settings are perfectly fine they are giving you a good experience i just prefer a slightly stiffer pedal based on my experience with much more high-end and much more expensive pedals than these are but let's head out on the track now we're running the porsche cup car in eye racing around inland a really great car for testing pedals because you don't have traction control or abs you've also got the engine in the rear too which means if you swing the car around you do get that pendulum effect you really have to be super super super precise on your braking and your throttle inputs this track in particular imola is great for testing cars too because you've got a lot of off camber corners you've got areas where you're braking into an apex coming down a hill all kinds of scenarios which are likely to unsettle a car and lead to inconsistency so let's set out here and i'll talk you through exactly why i'm genuinely extremely excited about these pedals for the price point i think that they've really really nailed this one and i don't say that lightly there's so many pedal sets on the market now that all kind of achieve a similar thing and a lot of them are arguably too expensive for what they're really bringing to the table and when something like this comes out [Music] at such an aggressive price point and still offers that same or very close to that same driving experience you get with more high-end stuff that is something that i think is really worth getting excited about so that's the reason why i'm so excited by these pedals but you can see straight away i'm not locking up anywhere you'll see a few little lock up marks on the track from before when i was driving around i did just slightly miss the exit there just purely down to cold tires i think but [Music] these have genuinely put a smile on my face i gotta say so down through this section this is where things start to get hairy so we are still on cold tires we're going to be breaking up the 50 into the apex easing off trail breaking through then back on the brakes again turn it in get on the power really carefully up this hillyard the little curb on the outside there can unsettle the car get the back end to come around and we're going to be breaking about the 80 mark [Music] modulating my braking inputs really cautious on the throttle make sure we don't spin the back end out [Applause] [Music] so far so good and then [Music] breaking on the apex pretty much down the hill trail breaking as we turn in making sure that we're maintaining maximum braking efficiency and turning efficiency and then back on the throttle a little bit too early too aggressive on the throttle there [Music] but i mean having come from thousand dollar u.s plus pedals which i run on my rig as a daily driver i've got to say [Music] these are very very very close at least in terms of the braking field the throttle and the clutch unremarkable and i mean a lot of pedals are pretty unremarkable in terms of what they offer there certainly not feeling any binding or anything that is uh you know a concern with the for all the clutch at all but [Music] the brake is really what it's all about so [Music] whoa a little bit too keen on the throttle there again let me do a couple of laps i'll get the tyres completely warmed up but yeah i'm feeling everything that i need to feel here and yeah the level of adjustment is really good as well not quite the same as what you get with some other pedals and as i said before you definitely are going to be wanting to run these pedals on the floor i think that the csl pedals are a much better option for those who don't have a hard mount but let's do some hot laps now and then we'll wrap it up with our conclusions [Music] well [Music] [Applause] all right guys so i've spent a good chunk of time now driving with these pedals across a variety of different scenarios and look i gotta say for the price these pedals absolutely nail all the things that are fundamentally important for sim racing with a load cell break so as i mentioned earlier on even though you can wind the sensitivity down on the brake to the point where you could use these on carpet wouldn't recommend these pedals for use on carpet simply because they are designed for a more high-end level racing experience but at a lower price point but if you've got a solid mount for your pedals it doesn't have to be a cockpit necessarily if you've got some way of hard mounting these to the floor at least fixing them to your chair so they aren't going to slide away as you push back into your chair and i think that you're going to be absolutely blown away by the quality of these pedals the clutch and the brake are pretty unremarkable there's not really any adjustment there but they do what they need to do and i didn't have any problems at all modulating my throttle inputs with the throttle that was provided but i think when you consider the versatility that you're getting overall with these pedals the mounting options console compatibility and just the feeling of that load cell they really have nailed exactly what you need out of a load cell breaker and i think this is a bit of a wake-up call for the industry because there are quite a lot of bespoke load cell paddles out there that may look a little bit more fancy may have more adjustment than these do but don't necessarily provide a better overall driving experience so absolutely have no issue at all recommending these pedals and i do genuinely believe that this is the best option on the market right now at least out of the pedals that we've tested to step up from a potentiometer based system or hall effects based system into a load cell this really does absolutely nail it for the price point so two big questions i think people are going to be asking is it worth upgrading from the csl pedals with the load cell kit i would say yes as long as you have a hard mount it is a substantially better overall driving experience but if you're happy with those pedals then why spend the money so it really is a subjective thing in that regard of course there is always the option to mod your v1 pedals to have that more authentic feel and that may or may not be a cheaper option than upgrading depending on what you could get second hand for your v1 pedals i think that the value of those pedals is obviously going to drop significantly now that these ones are out but yeah i do think that these are a substantial upgrade from csl or csl elite v1 pedals and i'm absolutely confident when i say that you'll be extremely happy with these pedals for the money so i really hope that today's video has helped you out guys if it has please do leave a thumbs up if you do want to pick up these pedals or any of the other gear that you've seen in today's video we do have some affiliate links down in the description below that is an awesome way of supporting our work here at boosted media at no additional cost to you guys and we really do appreciate that but above all thanks very much for watching guys we will see you again soon bye

Channel: Boosted Media

Views: 159,148

Keywords: fanatec, csl elite, csl elite v2, load cell, load cell pedals, fanatec vs heusinkveld, CSL Elite vs sprint, csl elite pedals v2, CSL Elite pedal, load cell brake, best sim racing pedals, best value sim racing pedals, best pedals for sim racing, best sim racing epdals for playstation, best sim racing pedals for xbox, csl elite v2 vs 3, csl elite vs clubsport, boosted media, review, sim racing pedal review, boosted media review, boosted media fanatec, fanatec review

Id: 4beiBvFOeB4

Length: 40min 11sec (2411 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022