If you own a PlayStation 5, want to play Gran Turismo 7 with a wheel, and your budget stops hard at around $300, the Logitech G923 is still the wheel to buy. It is not close. Every direct drive base at that price skips PlayStation, and the next PlayStation-licensed step up costs almost double once you add pedals. That is the one scenario where I will tell you to buy a gear-driven wheel in 2026 without a long sigh first.

If you are on Xbox or PC, the answer flips. The Moza R3 bundle sells for around $350 most of the year and dips to roughly $300 during sales. It is a 3.9 Nm direct drive base with a usable set of pedals, and once you have felt a direct drive wheel settle into a corner without the cogging and the center notch of a geared motor, you do not go back. The G923 is the better-built product in some ways. It is still the wrong buy for most people on those platforms.

Earning both of those statements takes a while. Stay with me.

What the G923 actually is

The G923 launched in 2020 at a $399 list price and has been floating between $249 and $329 ever since, depending on the week and which version you grab. Logitech built it on the same bones as the G29 and G920 from 2015: a pair of brushed DC motors driving the shaft through helical gears, 900 degrees of rotation, a hand-stitched leather rim about 270 mm across, and a three-pedal set in a plastic housing with metal pedal faces. The hardware changes were a stronger spring tune on the force feedback, a revised brake pedal with a slightly softer progression, dual clutch paddles with a launch-control mode, and TrueForce.

TrueForce is the marketing headline and deserves a plain explanation. In supported games, the wheel samples engine and surface data at a high rate and turns it into vibration through the motors, separate from the normal steering forces. In Gran Turismo 7 you feel the engine note climb through your palms and the rumble strips arrive as texture rather than a single clunk. In iRacing it mostly adds a slider you will turn down. In Assetto Corsa Competizione it is fine and forgettable. The support list is shorter than Logitech’s launch materials implied and it has not grown much since 2023.

Torque is the number people search for and Logitech does not publish one. Community bench tests put peak output somewhere around 2.1 to 2.3 Nm at the rim, and that figure drops as the motors heat up over a long stint. For comparison, the Moza R3 is rated at 3.9 Nm, the Fanatec CSL DD does 5 Nm stock and 8 Nm with the boost kit, and the Logitech G RS50 is 8 Nm. The raw number matters less than how the force is delivered, which is the next section.

Unboxing and the first hour

The box is heavy for a budget wheel and the fit and finish is a notch above everything else at this price. The rim leather feels like leather. The metal paddles have a real click. The built-in desk clamp is two large thumbscrews that bite into the underside of a desk, and it works on anything up to around 50 mm thick without an adapter. Playseat Challenge owners can bolt it straight to the wheel plate with the included M6 threads, which is a bigger deal than it sounds because the Moza R3 needs its separate table clamp or a drilled plate to go anywhere other than a desk.

Setup on PC runs through Logitech G HUB. G HUB has a reputation, and it earned it. It will occasionally forget the wheel exists after a Windows update, and the fix is to unplug the USB, kill the G HUB process, and plug back in. On PS5 the wheel is plug and play and GT7 detects it immediately, which is the smoothest console setup of anything I own.

The first thing you will notice when you turn the wheel with the power on is the gearing. Rotate it slowly off center and you can feel the teeth. Not grinding, but a faint, regular cogging under your fingers that direct drive does not have because there is nothing between the motor and the shaft. You stop consciously noticing it after a few sessions. You never stop feeling it.

A week in: what gear drive does to your driving

Take an MX-5 Cup around Lime Rock in iRacing on the G923 and the information you need is present. You can tell when the rear starts to rotate. You can catch a slide. The weight builds through the long right-hander at the top of the hill and lightens as the car crests. What is missing is the fine detail on either side of center. When the wheel passes through the straight-ahead position there is a soft spot, maybe two or three degrees wide, where the gears unload and the motor has nothing to push against. On a fast flick, like the chicane at Spa in ACC in a GT3 car, you feel a small clunk as the gears take up on the other side. That clunk is the single thing people who upgrade from the G923 mention first.

The second thing is dynamic range. Direct drive at 4 Nm can render a small surface change under braking and a heavy load through a long corner in the same lap because there is headroom. The G923 is close to its ceiling under heavy load, so the small effects either get compressed out or you turn the gain down to preserve them and lose the heavy end. You pick one.

Settings that get the most out of the hardware, from my own testing and from the recurring threads on r/simracing:

• G HUB: leave rotation at 900, turn centering spring off, leave sensitivity at 50. Let the game handle the rest.
• iRacing: run the in-game strength around 35 to 45 so the F9 meter does not clip in a GT3, with the TrueForce effects slider at 50 percent or less. Enable the linear mode checkbox.
• ACC: gain 85 to 95, minimum force 4 to 6 percent to fill the center dead zone, dynamic damping 100, road effects 15 to 20.
• GT7: max torque 6 or 7, sensitivity 1 or 2. Running torque at 10 heats the motors and makes everything feel the same.

The minimum force setting in ACC is the one worth stealing. It adds a small constant force on either side of center so the gears stay loaded and the dead spot shrinks. It does not disappear. It gets smaller.

The pedals

The three-pedal set is the most argued-about part of this product and I come down on the side that says they are fine for a year and then annoying. The throttle and clutch are light, springy, and fine. The brake has a progressive spring with a rubber bump stop that produces a hard wall near the end of travel. The intent is to simulate the firmness of a real brake so you can brake by pressure rather than position. The reality is a pedal that goes soft, then soft, then suddenly stops, and your foot learns a position anyway.

The common fix costs nothing: pull the rubber insert out of the brake assembly and you get a longer, more linear travel. The better fix costs money. Third-party brake mods with stiffer springs or a small elastomer stack are around $30 to $50 and make the pedal behave much more like a load cell, without actually being one. A real load cell pedal set like the Moza SR-P or the Logitech RS pedals is a different experience entirely and is the single upgrade that moves lap times the most. Nothing at the G923 price includes one.

The other issue surfaces after roughly a year of regular use. The pedals use potentiometers, and potentiometers get dirty. The symptom is a throttle that twitches to 100 percent for a frame while sitting at idle, or a brake that reads 3 percent with your foot off it. A squirt of contact cleaner into the pot fixes it for a few months. Direct drive bundles at the same price use the same kind of potentiometer, so this is not a G923 failing specifically, but it is a fact of life you will hit.

What tends to go wrong

The motors are reliable. I have not seen a G29 or G923 base fail outright in the years I have been around this gear, and the thing that kills them is usually a user who ran a 10 Nm force profile in a torque-boosting third-party tool and cooked the gearbox. The known trouble spots are smaller:

• The leather on the rim wears shiny at nine and three within a year or two and starts to peel at the stitching if you have sweaty hands. Driving gloves solve this and also make the thin rim feel better.
• The gear whine under fast oscillation is louder than you expect. In a car that shimmies under braking, like a Porsche Cup car at the Nürburgring, the wheel makes a noise like a small electric drill. Headphones solve it. Housemates may not agree.
• The desk clamp loosens over time on laminate desks and the whole base starts to rock a few millimeters. Retighten monthly or add a rubber pad.
• The PS version’s 24-point selection dial has a cheap feel and the center detent wears, so you overshoot the setting you wanted.

None of these are deal-breakers. All of them are things a two-year owner will nod at.

The version trap

Logitech sells two G923 models and they are not interchangeable. The PlayStation version works on PS4, PS5, and PC. The Xbox version works on Xbox One, Series X and S, and PC. Neither works on the other console, and the PS version’s LED strip and dial are the only cosmetic differences, so a lot of people buy the wrong one on a marketplace listing. If you have both consoles, the PS version plus PC is the more useful combination because GT7 is the better wheel game and Forza Motorsport’s force feedback has been contentious since launch. Check the box art for the console logo before you pay.

Against the direct drive options

Here is the comparison that actually matters at this budget, with prices rounded because they move weekly.

The Moza R3 bundle is the direct drive wheel that broke the old price logic. Nearly double the G923’s torque, no center notch, no gear noise, and Xbox compatibility in a box that includes pedals. The pedals are the weak point. The SR-P Lite set is two pedals in a plastic frame with a spring brake that is, if anything, less pleasant than the Logitech brake until you add Moza’s elastomer kit. The rim is a smaller 280 mm plastic-and-rubber affair that feels like it belongs on a cheaper product than the base does. And Moza is a newer brand with a shorter support history, which comes up on the brand Discord mainly as firmware grumbles and the occasional base that ships with a DOA USB port. Their replacement turnaround has been reasonable from what I have seen, and nothing like the Fanatec shipping horror stories of 2023 and 2024.

The Logitech G RS50 is the wheel Logitech should have made five years ago. Eight newton-meters, a quick-release hub, TrueForce that finally has the headroom to work properly, and a build that feels like Logitech rather than a startup. It also costs roughly three times a discounted G923 by the time you own a rim and pedals. If your budget is $300, the RS50 is not an alternative, it is a different purchase. If your budget is flexible and you expect to still be doing this in two years, it is the one I would stretch for, and the one Fanatec’s CSL DD now has to answer.

One more thing about direct drive that the G923 avoids entirely. A 4 Nm base on a flimsy desk with a clamp mount is a worse experience than a 2 Nm base on the same desk, because the extra force moves the desk instead of your hands and you feel the flex as mush. The R3 wants a real mount or a sturdy desk. The G923 is weak enough that desk flex barely registers. That is faint praise, but it is real.

Who should actually buy the G923 in 2026

PlayStation owners at a hard $300 ceiling. That is the list. The Thrustmaster T248 is the only real competitor in that lane and its hybrid belt-and-gear drive is marginally smoother with a noticeably cheaper feel in the hands, so the G923 wins on build and on TrueForce in GT7, which is the game you are buying it for.

Also, grudgingly, anyone who finds a used G923 for around $150 with the pedals in good shape. At that price the gear notch stops mattering and it becomes an excellent first wheel to learn on, sell for most of what you paid, and move up from.

Everyone else on Xbox or PC should spend the extra $50 to $100 on the R3 bundle. The gap in feel is bigger than the gap in price.

FAQ

Is the Logitech G923 direct drive? No. It uses two DC motors driving the shaft through helical gears. TrueForce is a vibration feature layered on top of that geared drive, not a different drive type. The Logitech wheels with direct drive are the RS50 and RS50 Xbox.

Does the G923 work on PS5 and Xbox? Each version works on one console family plus PC. The PlayStation model covers PS4, PS5, and PC. The Xbox model covers Xbox One, Series X and S, and PC. There is no single G923 that does both consoles.

Is the G923 worth it over the G29? At the same price, yes, for the better brake progression and TrueForce in GT7. If the G29 is $80 cheaper, buy the G29 and put the difference toward a brake mod. The force feedback in the actual steering is near identical.

Before you order

Buy the G923 if you are on PlayStation, GT7 is your main game, and you can grab it at or below $280. Check the box says PlayStation, not Xbox. Budget another $40 for a brake mod within the first six months, because you will want one.

Skip it if you are on Xbox or PC and can reach $350, and buy the Moza R3 bundle instead, then bolt it to something that does not flex. Skip both if you have around $850 and a year of racing ahead of you, and go straight to the RS50 with a load cell pedal set, because you will otherwise buy it anyway after selling the first wheel at a loss.