Fanatec CSR-E Arrived - My Thoughts

[Altrezia]

My new fanatec wheel arrived today, which was nice. I'll keep it simple and short as I've got load to do today, but here are my thoughts after 30 minutes of play.

The base is impressive - it weights about six tonnes and is huge. I'd say it's perhaps twice as tall and twice as wide as the GT2. When solid mounted there are no wobbles at all from the base.

The wheel is terrible. The rubber/plastic feels really cheap, and it creaks when you grab it hard. The red buttons and forza logo make it look really cheap. This feels worse than a Logitech wheel, and much worse than the alcontara effort of the GT2. Also, with a bit of strength the wheel flexes a bit, again adding to the cheap feeling.

The shifters are great - much nicer than the GT2 one, and stronger feeling than Logitech's efforts.

The force feedback is super strong, and very smooth. There is a downside though, there is a few degrees of deadzone in the middle, much like a G25. Hopefully they can patch this out with firmware as there's no reason why it should have it

The wheel is very accurate - every tiny movement is shown in game.

Overall, it's farily disapointing - but only because of the cheap wheel. If they had put more effort into the wheel, it'd be the best wheel I've ever used. At the moment, it's so close, yet so far!

Base: 9/10 (10/10 when they sort the deadzone)

Wheel: 5/10

Overall: 7.5/10

Here's a few pics:

http://dorkish.com/albums/Geek/Fanatec%20CSR-E/IMG...
http://dorkish.com/albums/Geek/Fanatec%20CSR-E/IMG...
http://dorkish.com/albums/Geek/Fanatec%20CSR-E/IMG...
http://dorkish.com/albums/Geek/Fanatec%20CSR-E/IMG...

[Remagel2507]

I must say that looks very good - I'd really like those paddle shifters on my PWTS as the standard ones are a bit small. Do the paddle shifters have a bit more feel to them than the Porsche wheel or are they same?

[Altrezia]

Loads more feel, they have a proper click and move back and forth about 1 inch