Buy the Thrustmaster T248. If you’re on PC or PS5, want the better force feedback for the money, and you’re not already knee-deep in Logitech gear, it’s the wheel to get. The Logitech G923 isn’t bad, and there’s one specific reason to pick it that I’ll get to, but most people searching this at 11pm are trying to talk themselves into the brand they’ve heard of. That’s the G923. It’s also the one with the drivetrain most likely to annoy you six weeks in.
I’ve owned both. The G923 was my wheel for the better part of a year before I moved up the ladder, and I ran a T248 as a loaner rig for a housemate long enough to stop treating it like a rental. They live in the same price bracket, they both bolt to a desk, they both do the job. But the way they generate force feedback is fundamentally different, and that difference is the whole review. Everything else (rim material, the little screen, which pedals ship in the box) is trim.
The drivetrain is the entire argument
The G923 is gear-driven. There’s a set of helical gears between the motor and the shaft, and no amount of Logitech’s marketing changes the fact that gears have teeth. On smooth wheel movements it’s fine. On the tiny corrections you make holding a car through a long, loaded corner, you feel a faint mechanical graininess, a sort of low-grade notchiness as the teeth mesh. Some people never notice it. Once you do, you can’t stop.
The T248 uses a hybrid setup, a belt plus a gear stage, and the belt takes the edge off that cogging feel. It’s smoother through small inputs and it’s stronger. Thrustmaster quotes the peak torque coyly, and in practice you’re looking at something a touch above 3 Nm at the rim versus roughly 2.3 Nm on the G923. Neither is direct drive. Neither will crush your thumbs. But the T248 has more headroom before the effect flattens out, and it holds detail better when the front tires start to load up. In a straight A/B, most people who don’t know which wheel is which pick the T248’s feel. I’ve watched it happen at a LAN.
Here’s the counterweight, and it’s the G923’s one real card: TrueForce. In the handful of titles that support it (Gran Turismo 7, ACC, iRacing, the Dirt/EA WRC games), the G923 layers an audio-derived vibration on top of the physics feedback. Engine note, road surface, kerbs, all of it fed through the motor as texture. In GT7 specifically it’s genuinely good. You feel the rumble strip and the tarmac change in a way the T248 just doesn’t reproduce. If you’re a GT7-on-PS5 player and that immersion is what you’re buying a wheel for, the G923 has a point. Outside of supported titles, TrueForce does nothing, and the underlying gear FFB is what you’re left with.
Out of the box, first hour
The G923 feels like the more expensive product the second you lift it. Heavier base, a leather-wrapped rim that’s genuinely nice to hold, metal shift paddles with a solid click. Clamp it down, plug in the pedals, install G HUB, done. The setup is painless. Logitech has been shipping this basic design (through the G27, G29, G920) for well over a decade, and it shows in the fit and finish.
The T248 is more plastic in the hand and the rim is a little smaller, which some people with big hands don’t love. What it has instead is a colour LCD screen on the wheel showing revs, gear, and a shift light strip, and it’s more useful than it sounds once you stop staring at it. First-hour setup on PC means installing the Thrustmaster control panel and probably a firmware update, and I’d budget ten minutes for that because the updater is fussy and occasionally wants a specific USB port and a reboot. Get it done before you’re excited to drive, not after.
Both clamp to a desk with the included screw clamp. Both are light enough (under about 3 kg for the wheel unit) that a flexy particleboard desk isn’t the disaster it becomes with a real direct drive base. You’ll get some desk knock on big kerb strikes. A strip of rubber shelf liner under the clamp kills most of it. This is the one area where being weaker is quietly an advantage.
The pedals, which is where Logitech gets stingy
The T248 ships with the T3PM pedal set: three pedals, magnetic (contactless) sensors on throttle and brake, and a brake that you can stiffen using included conical rubber inserts. It is not a load cell. Let’s be clear about that, because the marketing gets read too generously. But the mod pedals give you a firmer, more progressive brake than the G923’s out of the box, and for a beginner learning to trail brake, firmer-and-progressive matters more than the sensor type.
The G923 pedals use a rubber cone under the brake for progressive resistance too, and they’re… fine. The throttle and clutch are light. The brake has a reasonable feel but tops out soft. Logitech assumes you’ll upgrade later, and to be fair, on this platform almost everyone eventually does. If pedals are a big part of your decision, the T248 box is the better value.
After a week, the quirks show up
The G923’s gear whine is the thing. Under heavy FFB, in a fast corner with a lot of self-aligning torque, you’ll hear it, a mechanical grinding hum that carries through the desk. Family in the next room will comment on it. The T248 is quieter through the belt but has its own signature, a slightly gritty texture in fast left-right transitions (think a chicane) where the belt and gear hand off. You get used to both. Neither is quiet in the way a good direct drive base is nearly silent.
The T248’s other tell is heat. Push it hard for a long stint, a two-hour endurance race in ACC, and the motor warms up and the FFB throttles back to protect itself. It’s subtle and it recovers, but if you’re doing long races you’ll feel the wheel go slightly limp near the end. The G923 doesn’t do this in the same obvious way; gears don’t cook like that. For sprint racing, irrelevant. For enduros, worth knowing.
Reliability-wise, both are proven. Logitech’s gear wheels are famously hard to kill, which is why used G29s still sell. The T248 is newer but the platform (it’s close cousins with the TX/T300 family) has a long track record. The most common T248 gripe online isn’t a hardware failure, it’s firmware and the control panel losing the wheel until you replug it. Annoying, not fatal.
Settings that actually work
For the T248 on PC in ACC: turn the on-wheel gain down from the default, because the default clips and mushes detail. I ran it around 70 to 75 percent overall, with the in-game gain near 100 and a small amount of minimum force to get past the deadzone where the belt has slack around centre. Rotation set by the sim (ACC handles it), or 900 degrees as the base. The dynamic FFB modes on the wheel are worth a night of experimenting; I left it on the middle setting and stopped fiddling.
For the G923: in G HUB, do not run TrueForce at max in every title. In GT7 it’s automatic and good. In ACC and iRacing, a lot of people (me included) end up dialling TrueForce down to something like 50 to 60 percent, because cranked all the way it starts to bury the actual force feedback under buzz. Set the operating range and centre spring off, let the sim own rotation. The single biggest improvement most G923 owners never make is turning TrueForce down instead of up.
In a car, on a track
Take the Ferrari 296 GT3 around Brands Hatch in ACC. Through Paddock Hill Bend, that steep downhill right where the front loads up hard, the T248 gives you a cleaner sense of the front tire biting and then starting to wash. You feel the edge. On the G923 the same corner comes through with a bit of grain over the top of the load, and the lightness at the limit means you’re reading the slide slightly later. Not fatal. Just less information.
Now switch to GT7 on a PS5, a Gr.3 car through Deep Forest. This is the G923’s home turf. TrueForce makes the surface changes and the rumble strips come alive, and the whole thing feels more physical and more fun than the T248’s flatter, more clinical response. In a controller-vs-wheel sense the T248 is arguably the more accurate tool here, but the G923 is the more engaging one, and for casual GT7 nights that counts for a lot.
What people actually argue about
On r/simracing the recurring fight is exactly this: T248 people say it’s simply the better-feeling wheel for the money and the G923 sells on nostalgia and a green logo. G923 people counter with TrueForce and build quality, and they’re not wrong about either. The thread that always shows up under both is someone pointing out that if you can stretch another hundred-ish dollars, a used Fanatec CSL DD or a Moza R5 makes this whole comparison moot, because real direct drive is a different sport. That person is also correct, and I’ll say it plainly below.
The bigger-picture honesty
Both of these are the last generation of the old way. Gear and belt wheels are on the way out at this price, and direct drive has crept down to meet them. A Moza R5 bundle or a used Fanatec CSL DD lands not far above the T248’s sticker and gives you smoother, stronger, quieter feedback with room to grow. If your budget can flex to roughly the $450 to $550 range, buy one of those and skip this entire page. I’d rather tell you that than sell you the wrong tier.
But plenty of people genuinely have a hard $300 ceiling, or a PS5 and a GT7 addiction and no interest in going further. For them this comparison is real, and the T248 is the better answer for most.
FAQ
Is the T248 good enough for iRacing? Yes. It’s not a top-split alien’s tool, but the FFB carries enough information to learn car control and run mid-pack in the MX-5 or GT3 fields. You’ll want to add a load cell brake before you add anything else.
Does the G923 work on both PS5 and Xbox? No, and this trips people up. There are two separate versions. The PlayStation/PC model works on PS5, PS4 and PC. The Xbox/PC model works on Xbox and PC. Buy the one that matches your console. The T248 splits the same way (a PS/PC version and an Xbox version), so check the box for your platform before you order.
Is TrueForce worth choosing the G923 for? Only if you mainly play titles that support it, and mostly if that’s GT7. In supported games it’s a real, felt upgrade to immersion. In everything else it’s dormant and you’re back to the gear feel, which the T248 beats.
So, which one
Get the T248 if you’re on PC or PS5, you want the best force feedback and pedals in the box under $300, and you don’t already own Logitech gear. Get the G923 if you play mostly Gran Turismo 7 on a PS5 and TrueForce immersion is the thing you actually care about, or if a leather rim and a heavier, more premium-feeling base matter more to you than raw FFB accuracy.
Before you click buy: confirm the platform version matches your console, check the current price against a used CSL DD or Moza R5 (if the gap is under about $150, buy the direct drive instead), and budget for a load cell brake down the line, because whichever wheel you pick, the pedals are what you’ll want to replace first.
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