Moza R3 Racing bundle review – Meet your new favorite wallet-friendly race sim controller

Moza Racing has been rightly applauded in recent times as it has brought high quality sim racing gear to the masses at a price that makes some of its more pretentious rivals laugh and it has also recently announced Step into the flight sim market,

With a range of great tools already available for PC, Recently announced The R3 Race bundle is still PC friendly, but this is the company’s first foray into the console market with full Xbox compatibility built in.

If you want to use it for racing on your PC, that’s fine too, and if you’re new to sim racing games, or just want to upgrade that old belt-driven wheel that’s been lying under your desk for a decade, it’s a very reasonably priced option.

So let’s see what Moza Racing has done here, whether it’s successful, and whether we’re as excited as we were when we first heard about it.

What’s in the R3 Box?

The best part here is that you get everything you need to race in one big box: wheel, wheelbase, pedals and, thankfully, a desk clamp.

The clamp is important because chances are this is your starter wheel, which is why you’re going cheap for something like this, so again, chances are you don’t have a sim pit (yet!) or wheel stand to attach all your new toys to.

I’ve seen desk clamps before, even on joysticks, that have a lot of movement, which is annoying, but the steel form you get here is rock solid. Really, all you have to worry about is what’s on your desk. I have (had!) a plant that was precariously balanced on top of my speaker, which in turn was on a 3D-printed speaker stand. In the middle of a round of Assetto Corsa the plant swayed off the speaker and made an absolute mess!

Anyway, the point is that the clamp is great and attaches easily to the wheelbase with the help of four screws and the included tools.

If you’ve ever used a direct drive wheel before you’ll be amazed at what Moza has packed into the R3’s small size. There’s a molded X on the shell for Xbox use but you can hold it comfortably in one hand.

This is partly due to clever design, but also the fact that the R3 is the ‘weakest’ in the category when it comes to the force exerted by the wheel while driving. Even for a non-electrical engineer like me, this is a very basic explanation, so let’s delve further.

Science Lesson 101

Wheel force is measured in Nm (newton-meters) – Nm is the unit of torque when a force is applied one meter away from a pivot point at right angles to the radial direction. Sorry, forgot you ever read this.

Basically, we can simplify it in simple terms by saying that it is the impact that you feel back through the wheel. Here is a quick look at Nm measurements for some other bases of stockings

• R3: 3.9nm
• R5: 5.5nm
• R9: 9nm
• R12: 12nm
• R21: 21nm

As we can see here the R3 has the lowest Nm rating, but trust me, you don’t feel that way when you are struggling to get your car into a turn, and the wheel will try its best to free itself from your grip when it spins. So if that is the case, won’t a 21NM wheel rip your arm off?

Not at all, the increase in Nm actually allows you to feel more fine details in the road, oh, science, science, science. At this level all you really want to know is that the wheel feels great in your hand and the force feedback it gives is amazing.

The lesson is over. I think it’s all right.

Put it all together

As mentioned, you also get pedals here and these plug into the back of the wheelbase. Moza hasn’t skimped on connections here, there are ports on the base for the handbrake, electronic dashboard and gear shifter should you wish to upgrade in the future and add to your toolkit.

The pedals and pedal base are all steel and are an older unit. It comes with a throttle and a brake and you can choose to add a clutch as an optional extra. We added one and it was as simple as unscrewing the brake, moving it to the middle of the base and then attaching the clutch pedal and wire it into the port on the brake. It took about three minutes.

The pedals use Hall effect sensors to know where they are at any given time and that’s fine for the throttle which you’ll undoubtedly jam to the floor but the finer control for the brakes is missing here. Again, you can spend a little money on a Precision Brake upgrade which is basically a monster spring that massively increases the resistance on the brakes, making it a lot more realistic.

The best thing about both of these upgrades is that they are inexpensive, yet you don’t need them if this is your first time messing around with this sort of thing.

This brings us to the wheel. The R3 wheelbase is interchangeable with Mozza’s other wheels, including some F1 butterfly versions and the like, and what you get here is an Xbox-modded version of Mozza’s E3 wheel and the rim here weighs in at 280mm which feels a little small in some cases but, realistically, I’m being very selective.

The buttons are on the console. Instead of a Start button, we have the Xbox Start button and the usual Xbox controller buttons like Home and so on. All of the buttons have a nice clickability. I wasn’t a huge fan of the D-pad which felt a little spongy, but if I’m just using it to take a quick glance to the left or right or navigate menus, it’s not really a big deal.

The wheel features Moza’s Quick Release technology which means it can be detached from the base for easy storage by simply pulling off the metal cover. It’s really nice to see that the same mechanism from the really expensive setups is included here as well.

software

The R3 bundle is controlled by Moza’s Pit House software on the PC, which allows for tweaking and fine-tuning of almost everything, and I would recommend you spend at least a little time adjusting the curves to find something that feels natural to you.

There’s also an iOS and Android app that connects to the wheel via Bluetooth and allows for most of the same changes, and that’s definitely what you’ll need to do if you’re using it for your Xbox and not for an individual game.

Xbox Compatibility

This made me wonder how Xbox compatibility works because it might not be exactly what you expect. The security chip that makes it recognizable by the Xbox is actually in the wheel itself, not the base, which means you can technically attach the wheel to any base that fits and make it Xbox compatible. Great. There are a few caveats, you need a wheelbase that has connections for the pedals because you can’t plug any pedals directly into your console, but it does open up another upgrade path down the line.

Since this wheel is only available as part of the R3 bundle, you cannot buy it to attach to the existing R12 you are using on your PC. It may become available separately later.

R3 Bundle Conclusion

So is it worth it? If you’re upgrading from a) a controller or b) something like a Logitech entry-level wheel, this will blow you away. The fact that it’s only 3.9Nm doesn’t matter, the detail you’ll feel will put a smile on your face when you start using it.

And using it is nearly silent too, apart from the clicky gear-shift paddles. Anyone who has been in the room next to someone playing with one of the Logitech G Wheels will be fully aware of how noisy they are. The direct drive here is absolutely quiet and that is no exaggeration.

So, if you want to play a race game like Forza on your Xbox with a wheel, it’s no big deal. It’s a little more difficult for PC as there are so many great options, many of them from Mozilla itself, but as an entry-level into the direct drive ecosystem, especially if you don’t have a ton of money to spend, you can’t go wrong.

The R3 is a great first wheel and in many cases a fantastic second wheel. If you’re even slightly into sim racing you should consider buying it. If you go past a mirror and think you can beat Verstappen at his own game you might be happy to spend a little more money, but it’s unnecessary for most people.

Basically, if you want to get into racing with a wheel and try it out before spending thousands, it’s hard not to recommend the R3 bundle.

How much does r3 cost?

R3 Racing Wheel and Pedals for Xbox and PC Bundle Available now from Stockings Racing And it costs £399 on the online store