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Review: Logitech G25 Force Feedback Racing Wheel - Part II

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Buttons and Switches

Chunxs rendition of the "extra" buttons for the wheel.As the Logitech designers related their stories of the G25’s genesis to me at E3, I listened with enjoyment about the design of a product that would satisfy the hard-core sim racing consumer. Their ideas were spot-on for our needs, except for one: The placement of the buttons and switches. For those of us who are disappointed in the lack of buttons on the wheel hub, you might be wondering “what were they thinking?” As it turns out, the motivation for this design decision rests more with the aesthetic than the functional, as the intent of the design team was to make a wheel that looked less toy-like and cluttered than some of their previous products. While I am all for a smart-looking product, I don’t think that we should sacrifice performance in the name of beauty. Just my opinion.

As mentioned earlier, the G25 comes equipped with two very nice stainless steel paddle shifters. But really the paddles merely serve as levers to actuate some micro-switches.  Although the shifter switches on the G25 seemed quieter to me, I was assured by the folks at Logitech that the actual micro-switches in the paddle shifters on the G25 are identical to those on the MOMO Racing wheel.

Although there aren’t enough buttons on the wheel hub, that doesn’t mean that the G25 is skimpy in this department. Like the Momo and DFP, the G25 provides an array of programmable buttons to use for various computer or racing functions as the owner sees fit. What is different is the location and quantity of buttons on the G25. Where the Momo Racing offered 6 programmable buttons on the wheel hub (ahhhh, buttons on the wheel hub...), the G25 offers 18, clustered in 4 locations: 2 on the wheel hub, four in a diamond pattern atop the shifter assembly, 8 in a Point-Of-View switch just below the diamond, and 4 additional buttons in a row at the bottom of the shifter assembly. That’s a lot of programmability for a wheel!

All the buttons work as expected, are easy to program, and represent an increase in “HOTAS”-style functionality for the sim racer. This aspect of the G25 gives it a great deal of flexibility, and is useful in such areas as pit stop strategy modification (programming the keys to quickly alter the fuel load, tire changes, damage repair plan, etc). The only limitation is in what it takes to activate buttons that are not located on the wheel itself, but more on that later.

That’s enough on the technical aspects of the G25.

Tomorrow we’ll go where the virtual rubber meets the virtual road and take the G25 out for a spin in a variety of simulations.

System Specs

  • Intel Pentium 4 3 GHz CPU (Retail, with heat sink and fan)

  • Asus P4C800 Deluxe motherboard

  • 1GB of Corsair 3200/400 DDR Ram (2x 512 MB DIMMS)

  • NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT

  • Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card

  • WD Raptor 74GB HDD

  • DirectX Version 9.0c

  • Windows XP Pro with SP2

 


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