Logitech G29 / G920 – The Best Sim Racing Beginner Wheel

Logitech G29 and G920.jpg
Logitech’s G29 and G920 wheel and pedal sets have proven for years to be a perfect option for both beginners and enthusiasts on a budget.

Sim racing hardware runs the risk of becoming unnecessarily costly for beginners and those on a budget. Pictures you often see online of massive triple-screen, direct drive and load cell-based systems look awesome, but it’s more than what most people will need, especially as new sim racers.

Both the PlayStation compatible G29 and its Xbox-friendly G920 counterpart are known as great options for the more limited world of console sim racing hardware, but they make great options for PC as well. For beginners or those on a budget, cost and reliability are two primary considerations when choosing a wheel. Logitech’s G29 and G920 offerings check both of those boxes nicely.

2020 was a tough year for finding used sim racing gear, but things seem to have calmed down in 2021. It’s not hard to find a used Logitech wheel in most areas now, with prices sometimes dropping 30% below MSRP. And for those looking for to buy new, major retailers frequently have stock of new G29 and G920 sets.

These Logitech wheel and pedal sets aren’t known for incorporating the most coveted sim gear technology, but they are becoming synonymous with dependability. The nearly 9,000 reviews left on Amazon.com have averaged to 4.7 out of 5 stars. That figure is extremely impressive and speaks to not only the quality of the product, but also the reliability. Logitech’s more recent G923 set uses improved technology but comes with a ~$120USD premium versus the outgoing models, so the G29 and G920 remain a leading option for your first sim racing wheel.

Direct drive wheels give a more detailed level of force feedback than the gear driven force feedback in the Logitech wheelbases, and the load cell used with higher end brake pedals use is superior to the potentiometer utilized by Logitech, but an important thing for new sim racers to remember is that higher-end sim gear won’t immediately lead to better lap times. In fact, many of the fastest sim racers you’ll encounter race with the same technology used in the G29 and G920. Upgrading one’s sim racing gear should be viewed as improving immersion rather than speed.

The G29 and G920 may be aimed toward newer or inexperienced sim racers, but the wheel sets have several impressive features, including clamping arms for mounting the wheelbase onto a desk, a clutch pedal, upgrade compatibility for adding an H-pattern shifter, carpet grips for the pedal set, leather wrapped steering wheel, threaded holes for mounting the wheelbase or pedals to a cockpit, and RPM lights on the G29 wheel.


Buy a Logitech G29 bundle from Amazon for $291.50
Buy a Logitech G920 bundle from Amazon for $304,43
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Logitech is not the only company that makes budget-friendly sim racing gear, of course. Thrustmaster and Fanatec also have great offerings for entry level sim racers, though either company will be a more costly option versus Logitech. There are also racing wheels on the market that come in cheaper than Logitech’s sets, but there is typically a noticeable drop in quality. Logitech seems to have found a healthy balance of price and quality with the G29 and G920 models.

For the new sim racer or those on a budget, maximizing dependability while minimizing costs is key. Logitech’s G29 and G920 are excellent wheel and pedal sets for this demographic. Major retailers and even the used hardware market seem to have consistent stock of either, so these seem like the perfect option as a starter or budget-friendly wheel in the world of sim racing.
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

Some of us live in countries where the more premium sim gear is really expensive. Have had my G25 for over 13 years without issues and still have it hooked up on the family mac with GTR2, Race07 and AMS running in crossover.

Recently found an open box G29 for a $150 through a local liquidator and picked up a GT Omega Classic stand on Kijiji for $100. Also purchased a Truebrake upgrade, which I highly recommend. All currently running on a Frankentosh PC conversion on the "50 4k TV with AMS2, ACC, AC and pCars2. Unfotunately I'm not quite in the 60fps range.

Luckily, this week I am picking up my Nephews old Gaming PC (i7 with a GTX 1080). These upgrades will keep me racing until I can afford a CSL DD which is $600 just for the base unit here.

Logitech is well supported here compared to TM and Fanatec which don't even sell on our Amazon. Once you do your research and find good G29 FFB setups for your sims It does the job as advertised.

If I didn't have a family to support I would probably opt for something better but I'm glad this entry level option is available so I can keep sim racing "on a budget"!
 
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For sure, a number of people have said they have no problems at all despite prolonged use, so maybe it's a dust thing rather than a wear & tear thing.
However, I don't think I'd conclude that the quality is any different on the newer wheels, because lots of G25/7 users have experienced issues with their pots (me included).
All I'm going on is what I've read, admitting that those with problems shout 10 times louder that those without, and that of my personal experience where the pots in 2 separate G29 pedal sets started failing after only 6 months of use.

When lockdown started in March last year I switched to Thrustmaster, and the T3PA pedal set is still running perfectly a year and half later. I might also add that they've had way more daily use than the G29 pedals ever had.

I'll be first to say that my experience is a very small sample, but when 2 examples of a product fail twice with the exact same problem with the pots, and a third unrelated product from the same manufacturer has a pot problem out of the box, then I can only come to the conclusion that said manufacturer is being real cheap with the component sourcing.
 
Not the way things would go for many consumers, I reckon.
Simply put, if I buy a product and it breaks, and I find that a cheap (and unusual) part - that the manufacturer still makes but (perversely!) refuses to sell me and that I can't buy off the shelf - is rendering my product worthless, I learn my lesson and do not buy from that manufacturer again.

Sadly there are near infinite variations on the simple 10 k linear pot. The one you have found is superficially similar to the Logitech one, but on inspection it has a different thread diameter, and the rotation angle is 300° (vs. ~70° for the Logitech custom pot). There may be other differences too.

I have no fear of soldering the pins into place, but if I'm going to have to fabricate a custom sleeve to make the darn things fit into the holes then I'd far sooner use a 3DRap-style kit which replaces the pots with genuinely standard ones (which is what I did, as it happens), and alters the gearing to extract more angular range from the pedal travel, because 70° pots are... rare.

Meanwhile, the 300° rotation on that pot would knacker the already-borderline digital resolution. It's only an 8-bit ADC on the G27, and it's really not very well configured (judging from mine), with only just over 7 bits of range truly available at the output. The end result of having a pot like the one you chose would be a roughly 5-bit equivalent pedal - not unusable but the discrete steps would be pretty noticeable.

With the diameter of the threaded mounting point and the rotation range they were complete assholes, that's very dishonest from them. But I still mantain that it's perfectly workable with comertial pots and DIY methods. You are the proof of it, and there is also the option of a direct replacement without any need to replace the gears. The about 1mm gap can be filled with a epoxy putty like JB weld, or even electrical tape. Also there's no need to solder anything, just trimming a bit those pot terminals with cutting pliers is enough to make the faston connectors fit.

On specs you would loose on paper usable resolution and would need to adjust the pedal range in DXTweak, but in practical terms the reduction in resolution is just placebo effect. The physical pedal only travels 48mm and that's measured from the very top of the pedal, not even at the centre of the pedal.
At the end of the day the pedal with 5bit usable still ends up having a resolution of 48 / 2^5=1.5mm/step that's absolutly ok, a bit on the crude side but still more than good enough as to not be any kind of limitation on user experience in practice and also on laptimes.

But that wasn't my point in my last 2 posts, on this thread. The point is that at least they didn't went out of their way to make a pot replacement nearly impossible, as it was in their previous wheels. Look to this picture, those are the pedals from the logitech momo what was the G25 predecessor:

Momo.jpg


Look at that pot at the end of the red arrow. Good luck finding anything even near to that, observe the lack of a suitable mounting point for the pots compatible with anything on existence. The pot shaft diameter was incompatible with everything on existence back then and still now. Also observe how bad is the overall construction quality, it's so bad that the owner of those pedals had so much play due to plastic wear that he needed to mount industrial bearings in the most crude and DIY way ever to make them usable again. They also used so much grease that no epoxi could ever adhere on that plastic.

The G25 was a quantum leap forward in building quality and features, and they dropped the ball while they still were leading the market by both build quality and sales by a country mile, they where the equivalent to fanatec back in 2006 and now they are the lowest tier in simracing equipment.
 
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@TRASGU

You're right; I was thinking like a reasonable and honest person for a moment there when I typed that. :rolleyes:

You would think that a company's main motivation would be to increase their reputation and fanbase until they have a clear monopoly and everyone loves them, but these companies are all interested in short-term gains instead. It will be quite funny if very capable alternatives for low and mid-end market pop up some day and the old giants become forgotten, but that does not happen very often.

This what happens when bean counters take control of a company instead of engineers, they search to increase the profitability at short term to aplease the share holders and keep the company valuation high. That was what happened to AMD, it was on the very edge of being bankrupt. An engineer was appointed to lead the company and look how good is AMD now.

Back in 2006 if you had any logitech product that failed while in warranty, they were so nice that they sended to you a completely new device provided that you sended them an email with a picture of your device with the cable cut. I still remember when back in the early 90s any appliance like a TV still had a paper inside with all the schematics and a list of components to help any technician to fix your device if it broke.

Nowadays not only nobody gives you a schematic even if you want to pay for it, in some cases they even erase the IC's identification markings so you can't know what IC is nor who is it's manufacturer, and ban the IC manufacturer to sell it to anybody else. Some are starting to even pair IC's and devices with a software that only the manufacturer company has in their factory, so even if you use an original working IC from a broken device it is still useless as you can't pair it to the device that you are fixing. Heck, even nowadays you can't change your phone battery because safety issues BS, that way you have to purchase a new one.

The simracing world isn't inmune to that, sadly.
 
And you probably paid more for your G923 than you would have paid for a far better T150 pro, or maybe even more than for a far far better T300 if you paid it full price (Logitech always release their "new but still the same" wheels for $400+, which is crazy, at least 2 times what they worth and what is asked for the previous model).
Ahh yes, one in every crowd, and it makes you sad, your problem... had those wheels, did not like them, I spend my earned money the way I choose, you buy what you want, I'll buy what I want, period. News flash...all wheels are over priced.
 
I have a second hand G27 for 6 years now (I guess G29 is based on the same technology) and I'm very happy with it!
The 3 pedals and the H shifter packed with the wheel are more than optional for me, as I drive old cars most of the time, I appreciate much the simplicity and sturdiness of the whole pack for a budget-price.
 
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Staff
Premium
In terms of products which are regarded as being "designed to break" (and manufacturers who don't provide spare parts), I'm very much hoping that the "right to repair" laws which are coming in throughout the EU (and even the UK!) will make some kind of difference in due course.
 
In terms of products which are regarded as being "designed to break" (and manufacturers who don't provide spare parts), I'm very much hoping that the "right to repair" laws which are coming in throughout the EU (and even the UK!) will make some kind of difference in due course.
Without going too far off topic, the one main thing that needs to change with "right to repair" is trend of non user replaceable batteries.

Generally the first thing that fails in any modern device is the battery, and they only have an expected lifetime of around 3 years.

At work I see hundreds of perfectly good devices thrown away simply because the battery cannot be replaced, either due to battery unavailability/inaccessibility , or that it's simply not cost effective to do so.
 
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Do you know the worst of all?, my vanilla G25 pedals from 2006 don't spike at all and are totally linear, and I have used them more than 20 hours/week for years when I was still a student and had a lot of spare time. Now I use my own DIY custom pedals, but I used the G25 original ones for 13 years or so.

And the only reason I buit my own ones was because I wanted to have a load cell brake pedal and a hall sensor throttle and clutch to avoid the possibility of what it happened to you happening to me in the future to come, to future proof them. A close friend of mine had his G27 working fine for a decade until the famous wheel encoder broke, but the pedals still worked fine.

What you do report only happened to me with the logitech wingman formula and with the logitech momo racing, those had really cheap made in plastic non standard pots that you couldn't find anywhere, but they learned their lesson with the G25. Not only that, the original G25 pots are standard sized and easily replaceable.

It seems to me as if the bean counters decided that it was more profitable to not pay engineering hours in releasing and improving new models, and instead they simply lowered the quality of internals, removed features as the shifter, increased the price (they went from 237 to 299€), just added some buttons and did small changes in the cosmetics to fool people into "step up" to the new wheel.

Oh man, how low logitech has falled in both quality and lack of engineering. The logitech wingman formula felt like a chinese cheap toy, the logitech momo felt like a big step up (it had way better ergonomics than even the G25 and all it's successors). The G25 upgrade felt like a quantum leap to a premium product for what at the time was also a reasonable price having in mind that it was the best wheel on the market if we don't take in account small luxury manufacturers of the time, and after that inspiring product their products only went downhill. I loved them so much back then when they still innovated and cared about the product quality and features.
There's an easy fix for the wheel encoder. A fix that can't be done with the g29. Which is the main difference with the older models.
 
Staff
Premium
There's an easy fix for the wheel encoder. A fix that can't be done with the g29. Which is the main difference with the older models.
Ah, wasn't aware of that. I've seen plenty of ads for replacement encoders for the G27 but I had no idea that the same wouldn't work on a G29.
I'm happy enough sticking with the G27 anyway, because when I finally get around to building a load-cell brake mod, I won't be having to try and work around the nasty non-linear brake curve that they built into the G29 (paired with that block of rubber).
 
I'd been using the G series wheels since the G25 came out and only changed to a G29 because of the PS4 and also got a G920 because they were £99!!!! at the time from PC World. They were rock solid and I'd guess the G25 I sold is still going strong as well.

I did however chance my hand on a T300 before Covid pricing and picked one up for £180 and I think it's the better of them despite supposed reliability problems some people have. Running at 75% strength I've found that's plenty and still classed as clipping in nearly all the sims, so I dont know why anyone would turn it up into clipping territory?
 
This weird article doesn't say why I should pick G29 over T150 Pro, when I can get the latter for about the same or less and have an arguably better wheelbase and objectively better pedals.
 
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Whoever recommends a G920 to first time wheel buyers is either paid for it or doesn't know that there are much better alternatives out there.
 
Whoever recommends a G920 to first time wheel buyers is either paid for it or doesn't know that there are much better alternatives out there.
Can you suggest me one, please? Despite I have a G920 it's always good to check other options.

Thanks in advance.

Ricardo V. Soares
 
Can you suggest me one, please? Despite I have a G920 it's always good to check other options.

Thanks in advance.

Ricardo V. Soares
In the same price range - Thrustmaster T150 or TMX. If you can spend a bit extra, the Thrustmaster T300RS or TX are great. All these (except TX) have worse pedals than the G920 but the Wheels+Base are far better.

T150/TMX/T300 also have options which ship with the T3PA pedal set instead of the standard pedals (which are brake+Accelerator combo, no clutch) - these are better than the G920 pedals especially in reliability. The TX comes with T3PA pedals.

If you go to a level above these- things get very very interesting but also pricey.

Edit - my comments on the pricing is based on what they are in India, which is wild and insane.
 
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Nah, as said before, better get a G27, in case is imposible I would recommend you to go for the Entry level thrustmasters , better forcefeedback for similar price.

If you feel its not enought TS PC is your best choice. Very durable hardware in my case ...and a pure ffb joy.

Logitech gadgets are so plastic toys and i supose you are now a grown man simulating you race a formula car or a gt3 ....believe me go for thrustmaster my friend.

With pure love, Daniel.
 
Nah, as said before, better get a G27, in case is imposible I would recommend you to go for the Entry level thrustmasters , better forcefeedback for similar price.

If you feel its not enought TS PC is your best choice. Very durable hardware in my case ...and a pure ffb joy.

Logitech gadgets are so plastic toys and i supose you are now a grown man simulating you race a formula car or a gt3 ....believe me go for thrustmaster my friend.

With pure love, Daniel.

Will remember that years from now. :thumbsup:

Regards
 
In the same price range - Thrustmaster T150 or TMX. If you can spend a bit extra, the Thrustmaster T300RS or TX are great. All these (except TX) have worse pedals than the G920 but the Wheels+Base are far better.

T150/TMX/T300 also have options which ship with the T3PA pedal set instead of the standard pedals (which are brake+Accelerator combo, no clutch) - these are better than the G920 pedals especially in reliability. The TX comes with T3PA pedals.

If you go to a level above these- things get very very interesting but also pricey.

Edit - my comments on the pricing is based on what they are in India, which is wild and insane.
so a used t150 and t3pa pedals would be better then a new logitech set? my wife has a ps5 and i play on pc with no intention of new xbox anytime soon.
 
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so a used t150 and t3pa pedals would be better then a new logitech set? my wife has a ps5 and i play on pc with no intention of new xbox anytime soon.
I would advise you to search information about the reliability of these units before buying them used. I've searched information myself 2 years ago to recommend a wheel to a friend and I didn't read anything about huge reliability issues about the t150 and the t3pa. Not sure it works on the ps5 though, its a ps3/ps4/pc wheel.
It seems the package is not available anymore but, for a long time, the "t150 pro" h1d been sold, it is exactly what you are searching for (t150+t3pa). You may find a used one. The t150 is not provided with a gear stick, you will need to buy one if you need it.
 
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I would advise you to search information about the reliability of these units before buying them used. I've searched information myself 2 years ago to recommend a wheel to a friend and I didn't read anything about huge reliability issues about the t150 and the t3pa. Not sure it works on the ps5 though, its a ps3/ps4/pc wheel.
It seems the package is not available anymore but, for a long time, the "t150 pro" h1d been sold, it is exactly what you are searching for (t150+t3pa). You may find a used one. The t150 is not provided with a gear stick, you will need to buy one if you need it.
Sounds good. Looks like the t300rs gt is the one to search for anyways. Supposedly if it works for the ps4 it works for the ps5, from what I've found.
 

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What's needed for simracing in 2024?

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