Our Verdict
Pros
- Incredibly high build quality
- Customisable dashboard, a real party piece
- Gyro keeps the screen level
- A good number of inputs
- Tactile input performance
Cons
- High price tag
- The screen doesn’t stay perfectly level
- Noisy shifter paddles
Currently, in 2024, few sim racing brands are as innovating and are as motivated as MOZA Racing. While brands like Thrustmaster were very late to the direct drive party, and Fanatec showcased wheels with circular screens without any real release date, MOZA Racing has been dropping product after product.
We’re hot off the full release of the Xbox R3 bundle and a tasty-looking set of flight controls, but MOZA isn’t done for 2024. Their latest product is an incredibly futuristic-looking GT steering wheel called the Vision GS.
I’m lucky enough to have been sent the VGS wheel by MOZA for this review. I’m going to put it through its paces to see how well it performs and whether it is worth its rather large price tag.
What is the MOZA Vision GS Steering Wheel?
So, let’s kick things off with an overview of exactly what Vision GS brings to the table. This is a rather large sim racing steering wheel, measuring 310mm across, is designed to be a GT wheel.
If the design looks familiar, that’s because it’s reminiscent of the Porsche Vision Gran Turismo, a concept car created by Porsche for Gran Turismo 7. Funnily enough, Fanatec filed a patent for the Porche Vision GT steering wheel in 2023, meaning MOZA pulled a blinder by getting their rather similar wheel to market first.
This wheel features all of the usual MOZA Racing goodies, a high-quality build using carbon fibre and aerospace-grade Aluminum, plenty of customisable inputs, including RGB LED buttons, joysticks, and rotary encoders, and MOZA’s excellent quick release.
This wheel elevates the quality by adding additional extras, such as dual-clutch paddles and an incredible 2.85-inch touchscreen.
This touch screen is the real party piece of this sim racing steering wheel. It has a 60Hz refresh rate, allows completely customisable dashboard layouts, and is equipped with a gyroscope, allowing it to remain horizontal even when the wheel is rotated.
Watch our video review
Price
All of the high-quality additions to this wheel stack up when it comes to price. This certainly isn’t the cheapest sim racing steering wheel. However, considering all of the features, it isn’t as pricey as you may think.
The MOZA Vision GS wheel comes in at $749, €829, £749, AUD $1,299 or ¥119,900.
| Region | Price |
|---|---|
| United States | $749.00 |
| Europe | €829.00 |
| United Kingdom | £749.00 |
| Australia | $1,299.00 |
| Japan | ¥119,900.00 |
Considering some premium wheels from other brands stretch up to and in some cases, well over $1000, this price didn’t scare me as much as I thought it would.
This is MOZA’s most premium steering wheel to date, beating out the already impressive FSR wheel by around $100.
- Buy the MOZA Vision GS Wheel (United States) – $749.00
- Buy the MOZA Vision GS Wheel (Europe) – €829.00
- Buy the MOZA Vision GS Wheel (United Kingdom) – £749.00
Design & build quality
I now want to go back to the design of this steering wheel, and really break everything down.
Build quality
Starting with the build quality, this sim racing steering wheel is constructed using Aerospace-grade aluminum alloy for the chassis with a carbon fibre composite for the faceplate.
This combination ensures this wheel is completely rigid with zero flexing, and the composite carbon fibre gives the front of the wheel an almost soft touch effect, similar to the KS steering wheel or the Asetek Forte wheel.
The aluminium alloy must run through the hand grips because there is zero flexing even with the long expanse that runs across the top of this wheel.
While the buttons themselves are constructed from MOZA’s normal plastic, the thumb and rotary encoders are metal, and every input has an incredibly satisfying click and notchiness.
The buttons have a short throw, and there is minimal wobble or movement, which sometimes plagues sim racing wheels.
A hand grip finished in premium microfibre leather wraps from the bottom left to the bottom right. This grip is hand-stitched and feels rather soft and premium to hold. There isn’t too much aggressive ergonomics on show, instead, the hand grips looks smooth and classy, and feel very comfortable across longer race sessions.
Shifters and quick release
Flipping the wheel over, we find a series of paddle shifters. These are built from carbon fibre and use magnetic hall sensors like most premium wheels. Directly below these are two dual clutch paddles that provide a progressive activation.
Like all MOZA wheels, the shifters are quite clicky. You usually get a couple of silencing pads included, but I don’t seem to have these included with this wheel, so noisy is my only option.
The positioning of these shifters is spot on, with the perfect distance from the back of the wheel. MOZA has learned from the KS wheel which mounted the shifters way too close to the wheel, and this time around, the shifters feel great to use.
The quick release is the same design we’ve come to love from MOZA. It features an NRG-style system that clicks on and off with ease. The pins transfer both power and data to your MOZA wheel base.
Alternatively, if you want to use this wheel with a different branded wheel base, there is a port directly below the quick release.
Hidden buttons
Two additional push buttons are hidden on the rear of the wheel. These aren’t LED backlit, but being on the reverse of the wheel would be completely pointless.
These buttons are ideally placed for quick activations. I’m using them to activate the DRS and ERS in F1 24. Depending on your hand size, though, these buttons can feel a little far away. You have to activate them with your middle or third finger, which can take some getting used to. Either way, they’re a brilliant addition to have.
Functionality
The functionality of this steering wheel includes a range of customisable inputs, including 8 RGB backlit push buttons. MOZA claims that the short throw makes these buttons 60% faster to trigger than standard buttons. I’m not sure how impressive that is, but I can tell you each button feels great.
Out of the box, these buttons are naked, showcasing all of the LED lighting. However, a pretty extensive sticker sheet is included, which lets you add specific stickers to each button. I like this approach as it enables you to set up the overall look of your wheel to your preference. Nothing is worse than unboxing a wheel to see the pre-installed pit limiter button is in the wrong place!
Across the bottom of the steering wheel are three rotary encoders. These feel really intentional and somewhat stiff, in a good way. Each turn has a positive click to let you know just how many rotations you’ve made, and you can set these up as individual inputs or as single inputs each way.
These encoders are joined by two thumb encoders at the far edges of the faceplate. They are positioned perfectly for quick adjustments and finished in a rather nice blue aluminium. Again, these are on the stiffer side, allowing for intentional changes only and no mistakes.
My only slight issue with these thumb encoders is the lack of friction or grip. A few times, I have gone to make a rapid adjustment just for my thumb to glide over the encoder without it rotating. A slightly more embossed or notchier design could have helped avoid this.
There is also a 7-way funky switch and a joystick, which, like all other inputs, feel good to use. Across the top strip of the wheel is a series of RPM lights. These are the best MOZA has produced so far, and I am so glad to see the back of the frosted plastic strip MOZA used to include.
Using the Pit House software, these rev lights can be customized in numerous ways. You can change the timing of each light individually, the colours and behaviour, and set individual flag lights if required.
The digital dashboard
And then there is the large circular display. This display is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and incorporates touch capabilities.
With a swipe, you can switch between different dashboard designs or variations of the current layout. A range of preset designs are included that show everything from throttle and brake inputs, speed and lap time readouts, and live tyre and fuel indicators.
When you first power on the wheel, this display looks incredibly cool. However, the magic comes when you first drive out of the pits and notice that when you rotate the steering wheel, the display stays horizontal.
That is due to an in-built gyro that allows the display to remain steady no matter the orientation of the steering wheel. The 60Hz refresh rate does its best to keep the screen steady, and in practice, this works well.
There is a slight delay in the screen and the gyro, meaning the display will wobble slightly, but it does a good enough job of keeping the dashboard legible while moving the steering wheel.
Vision GS Pit House Settings
Dashboard editor
One element that I really need to discuss is the dashboard editor. This function is available in Pit House, and it’s the first time that I’ve experienced this level of customisation in a sim racing steering wheel.
In previous wheels with screens like the MOZA FSR, you must choose your design from presets. With this Vision GS wheel, you can unleash your inner creativity and design your own layout.
Opening up the dashboard editor, you will be presented with a UI that doesn’t look too dissimilar to editing software such as Photoshop. You can choose from a range of shapes and text elements to add to your design and even upload custom imagery.
With some of the preset elements, you can customise almost every single aspect of them, from line thicknesses and the opacity, down to the behaviour of how the element acts during specific scenarios.
Then, you can set a range of real telemetry to convert these elements into live readouts while racing. You have a huge number of options to choose from including the usual gear, speed, lap count, lap times etc.
Then you have some more obscure options, such as damage and wear levels, which allow you to be really in-depth with your creations. Due to the sheer number of options, it would have been nice to have some sort of search feature, rather than having to scroll down the extensive list to try and find something. I’m hoping this gets added in an update.
Because this dashboard is circular, it does have some limitations regarding how you layout your screen. For example, I tried to create a realistic F1 dash, but I had to make some adjustments to fit the shape of the screen. Some circular elements help overcome this shape issue.
If you like some of the preset designs but fancy tweaking them, you can do this by loading up and editing these presets. You can also save, share and upload templates, meaning I can imagine there being a nice selection of community designs available shortly after launch.
Struggles updating the wheel
One issue I encountered was updating the wheel and getting it working. I’m not sure if this was an issue because I was running pre-release firmware or if it is an inherent issue with the wheel.
However, when trying to update the firmware for the Vision GS wheel, I ran into all sorts of problems. In Pit House, the display screen is seen as a separate entity from the wheel itself.
I received multiple failed upgrade messages when trying to use the one-click upgrade in Pit House. At first, the display panel wouldn’t connect to Pit House; once it did, it took forever to upgrade.
To put it in context, the R12 wheel base and Vision GS wheel both take around 30 seconds each to upgrade the firmware. When I finally got the display panel to upgrade, it took about 30 minutes for the upgrade to complete.
As I said, this could be due to the pre-release firmware I was running, and it did sort itself out eventually. But it was undoubtedly a bit of a headache.
Compatibility with other wheel bases
I did touch on compatibility briefly earlier, but I wanted to look at the extent of the compatibility of the Vision GS wheel. With the included quick release, this steering wheel is compatible with all modern MOZA wheel bases.
It simply clicks on and instantly works due to the pins inside the quick release. If you have an older MOZA wheel base or you’re using a wheel base from a different brand, say Simucube or Fanatec, for example, you can transfer data using the included port on the rear of the wheel.
A range of quick-release adapters are available for all brands, and MOZA has their own Universal Hub, which lets you mount this wheel to other wheel bases with relative ease.
It is worth noting that this steering wheel is PC-only and not compatible with any console, such as Xbox or PlayStation. The MOZA R3 remains the only MOZA product that offers console support.
Final thoughts and should you buy the MOZA Vision GS Steering Wheel?
That brings me to my final thoughts on this steering wheel. This is undoubtedly a striking-looking steering wheel that will be loved by many. I rather like its futuristic design concept, and despite me primarily racing open-wheeled cars, the 310mm diameter doesn’t feel too large.
The wheel uses the highest-quality materials, resulting in a premium-feeling sim racing product that doesn’t compromise performance. All inputs are incredibly tactile, and I have no issues with the quality other than the typical MOZA noisy shifters.
The screen is the real party piece of this wheel and offers a real USP that other brands currently don’t have. The ability to customise this screen may be overwhelming at first, but this is a dream for those who love to tinker with their gear.
Overall, this wheel expands on MOZA’s ever-growing sim racing steering wheel range, offering sim racers a much more premium option. The price tag is pretty high, but probably not as high as it should be, allowing it to be within reach for serious sim racers looking to upgrade and improve their current setup.
Technical Specifications
Review written by Felix König
