big head-to head here you can see it is the
thrustmaster GT3 F gt34 add-on versus the fantic McLaren GT3 racing wheel and I've been using the
thrustmaster for the last few weeks on my PC on the t818 direct drive system across a variety
of Sims and I used some McLaren for a couple of years on my PlayStation and the PC as well now I
bought the fitech thrust Master gave me a review version here here there are no strings attached
on either thrust Master just said say whatever you want to say we just want to hear your honest
thoughts on it so I'm going to do that good and negative just so you know but for me this really
is a head-to-head like and we're going to get into this in the video but it represents two different
ecosystems and The Fanatic ecosystem I think is more respected than the trust Master ecosystem
when it comes to mid to high end so I started on t150 this is quite an interesting video I started
on the thrust Master t150 uh on this channel and I upgraded to a fanch CS Elite with this so I went
from thrustmaster to Fant I didn't think at that point about going from thrust well I considered
it going from thrust Master thrust Master T300 the t818 wasn't available there now thrust Mars have
the T8 it's a more compelling sort of comparison okay so I'm going to start with the 48 GT3 and
let you know my honest thoughts completely honest thoughts I'm not obliged to say anything or not
say anything so when I took this out of the box I was like o this feels cheap and I looked at
the back of it and you see the quick release looks cheap it doesn't look like for example my
mosa quick releases also this wasn't attached it was just a hole into the wheel like an exposed
USB it was very very very light and it is light and it's got these weird d-pads here and almost
like bare LED lights you can't really see here but there like bare LEDs I like o this feels very
cheap it just feels like a circuit board with some grips p on it and I put it back in the box I was
reading some other stuff and then eventually I put it back on I put it on the PC on my t818 when
I started using it my opinion did change and it started to make a bit more sense and explain
why so firstly it is light but I don't think it's light because it's cheap and though by the way
these come in at the same price important to say basically £199 for both I prefer the carbon
fiber face plate on this to the faux carbon fiber on the fitech and I was really worried
about the quick release but I attached it in the counter sunk holes here slaughtered in and
I've had no issues the biggest issue with me on the thrust M system has been attaching the t818
to the rig so in the end the lightness and that weren't a problem now I still don't like these
buttons here I think they're weird now whether it's accurate or not because this is a basically
a replica the F 4 H3 which is my favorite car to drive in Sim racing and I've actually driven the F
4 H3 in real life but the one I drove in real life had the circular wheel this has the uh the GT1
but whether that's replica or not I don't know but I don't like them but some stuff did start to
make sense so the buttons and sort of industrial nature of the LEDs and the very very very clicky
which I didn't like at the time shift is is a very actually satisfying and solid click I would still
damper them though otherwise you're going to wake up your neighbors and indeed the next Village but
it feels like a very responsive because the thrust Mo t818 has quite a delicate force feedback
what I mean by that is when you're going mid corner and you want to make an adjustment the
thrust Master t818 force feedback allows you to facilitate that compared to say something like
this is a complet opposite example like the C C12 Once you turn on the C C12 that's it that's
your steering position it's really difficult to change it now when I drove the Ferrari 48 G3 real
life I had the same delicate Sensational steering you can see that in my videos because it's a
very power steer car to drive very power steer and that's what the thrust mus Force speedback
gives you and because this is a light wheel it also dials into that and gives you that delicate
falce feedback you feel like you can almost drive it like that sometimes and that's how the fry was
to drive so it started to make sense in that way it's like it feels like a replica it's got a nice
carbon fiber front plate it's got these industrial LEDs and it's relatively light because it's like
do that there are some negatives we're going to get on to so but first let's put this down just
again bring up the F uh the the fitech here the fitech is thicker if you can see it feels this
is so confusing cuz it's mirrored on my screen so you can see there it's thicker I'm actually
not sure which one is heavier I don't know we'll put the specs on screen so you can work it out and
you can see that the again these are replicas so you know the button placement it's all replica I
prefer the button placement on the thrust Master actually and there's some on the McLaren that
don't me again they don't really work on Xbox anyway and the Xbox license but like these ones
not a massive fan of and I prefer the placement actually of the encoders here when it comes
to shifters I got a real soft spot for these shifters you can see that I've even worn away
the paint this has clutch pedals interestingly this doesn't have clutch pedals which is a bit
disappointing um now I want to go on to the grips now and was going to talk about negatives here
we go these feel like very cheap grips on the um thrust Master 48 and weirdly doing what I do
on this channel I've squeezed so many Sim racing grips now and I can tell when something is had a
lot of th and money spent on the material so for example my Asher racing arua McLaren Pro the grips
are Exquisite they look very similar they they'll look almost identical on camera but they just have
a slight give to them slight slight slight give that's almost hard to put into words and when I be
doing lawn stints on Sim racing and iRacing that's an absolute godsent like it's so nice just to be
able to move your hands around and squeeze when you need to release when you don't want to and
just sort of have that Flex the fitech U McLaren have a little bit of give in them just a little
bit in the material and the thrust M doesn't have any actually a similar one is the Z MOA FSR
very high expensive Rim doesn't really have any given those perforated grips so these feel quite
cheap actually and I wonder if they are expect a lot of people to be using gloves wearing this
because I know having worn this with no gloves AP from when I did my 8 hour stint for charity so
i' R for8 hours straight in this wheel for charity we raised over ,000 and I wore gloves then but
I don't know why I did that really I think I was worried about my hands understandably I'm going
to put them up again Head to Head the reality is is nowadays and I've waxed lyrical about this
wheel but I bought this wheel I loved it race top split witnessing One races in this thing like
my pal I feel like fitech stock excuse the P sort of dropped recently people a bit more concerned
about fitech actually getting your orders customer service thrustmaster you can buy it from your
retailer you can return it to your retailer so it's stock there hasn't really been affected
because it has it's going through other places of customer service you buy through retailers so
now there's an option of getting a Thrust a t818 if you decide to go for that and tlcm Lowel pedals
for whatever reasons because you like thrustmaster I believe you now have an equivalent GT3 wheel
to the fitech McLaren GT3 for a similar price and that means that you know you are just set
for GT3 racing in the same way that if you buy into fitech and you get that you are set for GT3
and F1 racing like this is people still use this who are doing thousands and thousands of hours
racing very high level like this will take you all the way to the mountain this will take you to
the top and I think this is similar because some of the build quality feels better I prefer it as
a replica and the downsides I think here you can mitigate probably wearing gloves and I think
it's going to be a similar wheel that's going to really play into the strength of the thrust
master t818 and also take you to the top of the mountain for a relatively cheap price I mean this
wheel will feel expensive than the thrust Master EOS system system and this whe feels cheap in
the fantic Eos system just where the brands are sort of placed pricewise and you can also believe
pair this with thrust Master T300 and it comes in the box with two different quick releases I think
the other ones with the T300 but yeah so taking it out my Impressions were not great I was like
this feels like a toy and then when I got to use it with the force feedback I got into it and I've
been really enjoying actually the thrust Master force feedback even though the interfaces ain't
paent the driver process is like is not very well uied and it didn't work natively in for example
lumon ultimate even though thrustmaster I think is the partner with lumon ultimate so some teething
problems there but when it's been working and for example in test of unlimited it worked natively
and my mosa just didn't work at all it's been a really good experience and I enjoy sitting in
front of a Ferrari logo like that actually does mean something weirdly that's branding probably
means more than this sort of McLaren stick on Logo there but look at this a classic head it doesn't
get closer than this I never been criticized in the past for comparing wildly different Wheels
but there we go let me know what you think in the comments about this I've been using this for
the last few weeks I'm going to keep using it um going forward so let me know what Sims you
want me to play on it and yeah I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments
that's my honest review of the thrust master the 48 GT3 wheel addon more videos around here if
you want to see them and I'll see you next time