Simagic Alpha Mini + GT4 Wheel Review - 2021

good morning everybody and welcome to a very long awaited reveal of my new sim magic alpha mini direct drive sim rating wheelbase and gt4 rim i'm not going to do a lengthy unboxing because there are millions of unboxing videos and i've never really seen the appeal anyway so i'll probably just speed all this up but i'll show you what's in this this box that after like i say a long wait finally arrived with me today courtesy of my ever reliable dpd driver robert um right let's just uh crack into it this is genuinely the first time i've opened it so this video might end very abruptly if it hasn't got the right stuff in there so be prepared for that it's a heavy box by the way which bodes well considering what this wheelbase needs to do and that is put out a fair amount of torque and resistance okay there is the actual wheelbase and i can see the box for the wheel below it so that's just there is the wheel let's just chuck this to the side anyone not familiar this is a 10 newton meter direct drive servo motor wheelbase and the main reason for choosing this well for perfectly honest it's because i didn't want to wait the entire time that it takes to get a fanatex csl dd as it happened if i just ordered the fan attack when the pre-orders came out i'd have had that ages ago but i wasn't expecting to wait so long for this and i like the idea of using the cube control wheels at some point because they're the quality and just the finish and the build is absolutely stunning and they work perfectly with this wheelbase uh whereas with fanatec i think it's a slightly more complicated procedure to use third-party wheels on their wheelbases i might be wrong but that's just the way i read it right so in the box i said i wouldn't do a full unboxing there's a couple of usbs warranty thing i presume and boom there is the wheelbase it's actually quite small quite heavy though wow there it is just one big electric motor yeah that weighs quite a lot very good power cable with the wrong freaking plug on it there's the power brick hopefully i've got a spare one of these somewhere with a uk plug on that's peed me off already uh some bolts and an allen key oh i take it back uk plug adapter all is forgiven sim magic um that's it right that's all you need to see in there it's actually very boring to look at but that's where the sim magic happens ah i might edit that out that was horrendous this is the bit i'm most excited about so i'm going to end up with well i've got to sit down my feet hurting i want to end up with a round um a round rim for rallying and so retro classic sports cars as well but i also wanted a gt style rim and that's where we started with the cinemagic gt4 with what hopefully if they fitted it i've got the extra dual clutch paddles as well warranty lots of stickers by lots of things very cool uh that saves me writing my own little sticky labels which i've done on my logitech which is actually going to be packaged up now that i've got this and sent to his new owner oh oh oh it's a sexy little thing oh that my god it's heavy oh sorry for just the weird noises there you go can you see that that is lovely weighs a ton it's very solid beautiful alcantara grips ah they feel nice and it's got one of my favorite things based on my research which is the sim magic quick release which by every account i've read and watched is an absolute joy to use they have fitted the clutches so i've got dual clutch paddles at the back for any events where we do a standing start you hold one clutch in and set it to like a mild biting point you can just release it to get a launch and then gradually feed out the second clutch to get a nice smooth takeaway we have these lovely carbon fiber pedals ah anyway that was the unboxing bit i will go into full details about the wheel and everything once we start setting up on the rig i'm out of breath this is definitely long covered you know even that was exhausting but anyway okay all mounted up um i skipped the part of actually fitting it to the to the rig and plugging it in because as with the uh unboxing there are a billion videos out there with that kind of thing so there's no point in me doing a repeat of all that please excuse all of the cable lack of cable management that you can see everywhere i am planning on tidying that up at some point but it's not really high on my list of priorities at the moment and so what i've done is we've jumped into acc i will talk to you about some of the details or some of the pros and cons of the the mounting and setup process but i'm not going to go into too much detail because i've got a feeling it's going to be very specific to the rig you've got and uh and the software you use so uh although there is one piece of stuff this is weird isn't it look you can see my finger instead of my face hang on i've got an idea hold on bear with me i think this will work okay so not the best drawing i've ever done but good enough for presenting this video i've got the facial hair right i think just about what was i saying okay yeah so in terms of mounting i'm not going to go into much detail but i will tell you probably the first plus is that it turns out i didn't need to order any of the sim magic mounting brackets this sits perfectly on the gt omega wheel base and the holes line up for mounting straight underneath it's just sitting there on the wheel base four mounting screws under there which are absolutely rock solid so that was a real relief which meant i didn't because that that mounted bracket doesn't seem to be in stock anywhere so i would have been spent another 60 70 quid and had to more importantly wait a long time let me just tell you about the rim very quickly it's stunning the quality of this thing is next level very solid aluminium build every rotary knob these funky switches they are all aluminium and just feel nice and cold and beautiful on the fingers every button's got this aluminium shroud around it so you can't it's less likely to accidentally press something and the buttons themselves and see if you can hear this really you hear that just the most beautiful satisfying click with every press which actually brings me on to the first negative of the rim as stunning as they are to use these shifters they're very loud now while i'm racing and i've got my headphones on it's not going to bother me in the slightest but for you guys watching videos and streams that might last a good few hours you're going to hear this every time i change gear see feels lovely works brilliantly makes a loud noise what else can i tell you about the room oh the best part or not the best part but something that just brings absolute joy to my heart every time i do it and that is the quick release down here that you can't see so i'm going to turn back into hand mode and show you how it works so you literally put two thumbs pull the quick release in towards you and there it is just slides off oh i can show you the paddles properly now so i opted to have these analog clutch paddles added as well and you see these two tiny little screws they allow the lever to be moved in and out because of my tiny little um donald trump hands i've needed to move these almost as far out as they would go so i can get a comfortable reach on them uh when changing gear with regards to this quick release so is this again just qualities this beautiful aluminium shroud and these ball bearings when the shroud pops forward the ball bearings compress a ring on the inside which locks it onto the wheelbase um and they're also it's all completely wireless so you see these five pins they line up with these five sort of conductor strips on the wheelbase to transmit data and and power i'll just click it back on so you can hear the loud satisfying clunk and then i suppose we'll jump out on track and i'll give you some thoughts on how it feels out on the road there we go quickly before we drive regarding the lights you can change the color of all these lights either as a group or individually i've gone for a very subtle setup for now with just red on everything that's in game related and this will be my push to talk for discord so i've left that one white and that one i can't actually remember what i've done with that but i've left that white as well just for symmetry okay i'm just going to quickly change screen here so you can see the screen just next to me is the alpha manager software so this is the thing that basically controls all of the settings for whichever game you're running i've i loaded up these stock acc set up and made just a couple of tiny adjustments to it but this is basically the software you would use to set everything up one real annoyance is that i haven't found a way to automatically launch this alpha manager at the same time as launching the game and even more irritating it doesn't recognize or doesn't pre-load the the profile that i've set up so i can load in dirt rally now having already made a dirt rally profile and it would still have my acc profile loaded on alpha manager so if anyone knows a way of basically automating that so every time i launch acc it re it preloads my my setup and the same for any other software please do let me know in the comments that would be super useful and were there anything else to let you know about alpha manager other than you just you've got to download it from the sim magic website i believe dirt rally i've just mentioned obviously i made a profile for that i will talk about that in more detail in a moment because that actually wasn't a giant pain in the ass for someone like me anyway enough talk let's get on track i'm going to do the autumn park uh ninja challenge server uh because i want to try and set a decent time anyway but also autumn park with this really rough surface actually demonstrates the the detail of the feedback really well incidentally the way i've met mapping the buttons and everything was a piece of cake but the way i've mapped is you've got these two funky switches here which are really really handy let me just go back to this for a second so you can see so with a funky switch you've got up down left right push button and if you can see rotation so the one on this side has dual functions when we're not actually racing i can use it to oh i say i can oh i've gone into the chat menu for some reason um when i'm not in the chat oh no no no no oh my god what am i doing sorry folks i'm dealing with an absolute amateur here right back to what we were saying so i've mapped this funky switch when we're not driving to control game menu options so you can see i'm scrolling across the top option so you've got left right up down and then click to oh click to accept when i'm in game one press of that funky switch will bring up boom my pit menu in the multi-function display and then likewise once in that menu use the up down arrows to basically make all of your your pit stop changes all from one button so that should be much more straightforward when driving the one thing i haven't set up yet is the the clutch because i don't have a need for it at this point it will be something i plan to put to good use at some stage in actual fact i use this as the handbraking dirt rally right now anyway we'll come on to that another time right let's get out on track again if you can hear these these gear changes let's see can you already see the forces that are going through my through my and this is turned down to 70 at the base and 70 i think in game so there's a lot more to go and it's giving me quite a workout i'll be honest right what this isn't going to be is a lesson on how to drive uh but what i would do is i'll get try and get the tyres warm and then we'll go for one kind of aggressive lap if i can get anywhere around the 135 136s then i'll know that's kind of on on pace with where i should be so i know i've put it through its paces and then i'll tell you about what the feelings are what i will say before i start this uh flying lap i'm pretty sure this isn't going to give me any pace advantage over a single lap whatsoever what it will do which i would imagine will be demonstrated during this firing lap is it should give me better pace over the duration of a race purely and simply because i can feel small car movements like that i could feel the back end coming out and correct it much quicker and with much more precision right so let's get into a lap here the tires are still a bit cold but there that came right round because of cold tires managed to catch it and hold it pretty sure nine times out of ten on my logitech g29 i'd have ended up facing the wrong way forgive the fact that i'm hitting the rev limiter on every gear change here it's because i can't really hear it because i'm talking over over everything right back's gone again there managed to just control it i can feel every single texture i mean it is a particularly bumpy circuit this one one other things i think i'm gonna have to start wearing gloves because i grip this so tight i'm definitely going to be wearing wearing through the uh alcantara very quickly very slow into there but again it doesn't matter this is just uh this is just to try and push it a bit and demonstrate some of the forces that oh there we go what it can't do is help you from outbreaking yourself all right let's continue uh because the tyres are up to pressures a little bit better now [Music] i really felt that clump over the curb [Music] again the back end was really coming out there and i was able to hold it so albeit that compromises lap time in a race where i i do that quite often at the moment my season has been made up of uh big mistakes where i end up facing the wrong way or in a barrier or in another car if i can avoid those by being able to correct these things quicker and less dramatically like that then it should stand me in good stead to survive an entire race distance better than i currently can and to be honest that is my main concern at the moment let's try and talk through what i'm feeling there like while i'm driving like a complete muffin i am still getting all of the sensations that i'm supposed to get so the first thing as you've seen speed of response is absolutely amazing really really impressed by that right as he said look at that i mean right that was an example of the opposite of what i was talking about right anyway so reaction speed and car movement correction aside let's move on i can feel the weight of the car which i actually think is one of the biggest benefits in terms of immersion and this bend here is going to be the best example of that i can feel i'm whoa that's because i've buggered my tires from the previous speed anyway what i could feel is the weight of the steering and the i mean maybe i'm getting this wrong with the strike describing it wrong but it's almost like i can feel the weight of the car's sort of body roll um and general sort of movement on its suspension which i didn't expect to feel and it might just be that i've sort of convinced myself that is what i'm feeling but that would then mean that the uh the wheel's doing its job but yeah you can you can feel the weight of the car as it as direction change uh three direction changes uh you can certainly feel if it's losing traction at either end [Music] uh the most obvious thing which i think i mentioned before the smoothness it's you know there's no belts there's no no gears smoothness is a joke it's just absolutely beautiful to use um but that's the first thing everybody says when they do these reviews all i can do is concur i can concur with that thought i'm hoping it doesn't make me sort of lazy and complacent about sort of having a loose back end because obviously i don't really want that anyway because it's gonna damage tyres and it just makes for a more sea of your pants kind of experience for the entirety of a race which might be fun to watch but it's bloody exhausting uh which leads me on to the next point this is bloody exhausting it's um like so i can adjust the strength i can adjust the forces i want to feel the weight of everything oh there we go what was i saying about it doesn't help you with missing breaking points um i'm feeling it in my shoulders my triceps my wrists my chest which is good because i have no inclination to go to a gym ever so if this gives me some kind of upper body workout then double bubble it's like having bought a home gym at the same time [Music] um i'm racking my brains now for other things to tell you about it that whenever i watch a review i sort of think i wish he'd mention this or what about whoa whoa this is going to be a big one oh there we go right um still got my presenter face so i'm sure i've missed out loads of important information if i didn't mention it when i was doing the unboxing i will let you know it's a 10 newton meter um that's about the only stat you really need to know about these things the the box itself the actual wheelbase itself is all metal very heavy beautifully put together quite small well actually very small very compact unit and has only one minor annoyance which is this that light it's more glaring than i think it's going to come up on video but it's actually really irritating so when my wheel is at this angle i can't see it but every time i straighten my will i've got this green light which you now can't see uh glaring in my face it's a very minor thing not a huge problem but anyway summarizing the star of the show is actually the wheel rim for me i love the extra forces and the smoothness of the wheelbase but for me if an object can make me instantly want to come out and do more driving and racing then it's worth every single penny and just the feel of this oh i mean it's just beautiful obviously this is my main point of contact i have my pedals down there as well which i really like but they tend to get pretty ignored this is the main focus and it needs to feel nice it needs to look nice and this does all of that i mean i can't get enough of playing with these metal dials pressing these buttons when i don't actually need to so i'm going to need to try and find some functions or make up excuses to use the functions to press these buttons as often as i'd like to because it just feels brilliant and it might not seem like an important thing to a lot of you but to me that is absolutely priceless in terms of actual price i think it's just gone up by about 50 quid but this entire package is listed at 900 or was listed at and that included the optional paddles at the back of the steering wheel i think the without those i think it was about 40 quid cheaper something like that they do a gt1 wheel as well which can be either round or d-shaped but i don't think the quality is quite up to the standard of this one i've got a feeling it's plastic rotary dials etc so when i do inevitably get a round rim as well for the rallying which reminds me i need to talk about dirt rally very quickly i will be looking at cube controls and their gt wheels which are just i mean if i think this is nice i have a feeling cube controls is gonna make this feel like something from toys r us but anyway dirt rally so out of the box dirt rally false feedback did not work at all it's getting nothing no resistance whatsoever the wheel worked in terms of it functioned left right etc easy to map the buttons once again that was all fine but no amount of fiddling with the in-game settings would get me any force feedback in dirt rally as it turns out having scoured the internet and the sim magic facebook forum there's a replacement i think it's called a device defines file it's like is it an ini file or an xml file something like that anyway just downloaded that file went into the game documents within my steam folder on my pc replaced that device defines document with the newly downloaded one and boom we had false feedback all that said it's still not great i think it's inherent in the game because i've heard issues with most wheelbases perhaps with the exception of fanatec which seems to just work brilliantly with everything i think there's an issue with dirt rally 2's force feedback in general i can forgive it on the basis that there's less resistance anyway given that the wheels are 99 of the time sliding through gravel snow etc so you're not gonna feel the same weight through the wheel as you would when you're gripping up hard on tarmac etc but it just didn't seem like a particular improvement over the g29 other than the fact obviously i get to use this beautiful rim but that's not really designed for rallying either i definitely need a round room anyway just so i'd let you know that um apologies that this has gone on without really telling you an awful lot i don't think if you do have questions please let me know if anyone knows how to get it so that every time i launch acc it launches alpha manager and the correct profile at the same time and likewise with other sims please do in the comments that would be really helpful but for now that's it i'm delighted to have it so far it seems worth every penny if you're serious about sim racing it seems like a logical step for what is in the grand scheme of things and in comparison to most other makes pretty good value for money the csl dd undercuts it slightly in terms of if you were to buy a decent wheel and a csl dd with the power boost i think you're probably looking at around 850 pounds as well so nylon light for like um i certainly i'd be interested to make comparisons between the two but i would imagine there's not an awful lot for someone like me to detect too new to meter difference between the csld and this isn't gonna shake any trees from my point of view purely the reason for going down this path if i'm honest there are two reasons one i love the quality of the the rim and two it was available a lot quicker to me than a csl dd was and that's it anyway thanks everyone for watching i hope this was of use to some or all of you and i look forward to doing plenty of live streams and races with this wicked bit of kit very soon take it easy

Channel: WKG

Views: 4,875

Keywords: simagic, alpha mini, direct drive, wheelbase, gt4, new wheel day, ffb, assetto corsa competizione, ACC, sim racing, sim rig, gt omega, fanatec, force feedback, review, test, Oulton park, motorsport, car race, racing, racer, sim racer, esport, wkg, wkg motorsport

Id: YDJtELm0dF0

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 13 2021