Exploring EA Sports WRC: Is a Racing Wheel Worth the Investment?

Whether you're a big rally racing nerd with a sim set up in your living room or not, EA Sports WRC is a bundle of fun, allowing you to smack into trees in fidelity that was previously reserved for the pros. But, just how much do you need to spend to have a satisfying sim racing experience?

To find out, EA Sports handed us one metric bushel of sponsorship money, and basically said, I don't know, do whatever you want, as long as you work in a few talking points about the game. So we decided to get the whole range of setups,

from a wheel and pedals that we got for $30 on Facebook Marketplace, hooked up to a PC that matches their minimum spec, all the way up to a racing sim setup that costs more than an actual rally car.

Is it worth it to spend a bit more cash on your rig? Or would you be better off sticking with a PS5 controller? Cause, not gonna lie, that's looking like a very real possibility right now.

Meet the Thrustmaster T80 Ferrari Edition. Side note guys, you absolutely should not pay extra for the Prancing Pony logo, just get an unbranded T80.

We found this one for $30 on Facebook Marketplace, including some tasty feet pics. So, that's the way you're gonna wanna go if you're aiming at a pretty basic setup. Speaking of basic setup, getting this setup is very easy,

you just throw the wheel at your tech tippy friend and let him figure it out. Oh, interesting, and we're timing me, excellent. And begin.

To be clear, the point is not to set some kind of speed record for installing a racing wheel, but rather just to provide some convenience context for each of the various setups. All we gotta do for this guy is loosen the desk clamp,

without clamping this guy, I have personally done that before, slide this bad boy onto here, tighten and clamp the desk clamp. Oh boy.

I can kind of see leaving it plugged in, but just in a pile next to you, I suspect that's what a lot of people end up doing. But we're gonna go ahead and plug her in.

Alex, was your genius plan to use this IKEA footrest to kind of angle the pedals, or am I moving it out of the way? That would be horrible.

Okay, fair enough. Hey, but how convenient is that, now you don't need a footrest. Ow, dang it.

I am really not selling this very well, am I? Not the single most ergonomic, okay, no. With the chair adjustments, we're gonna need a little bit more time.

There, that's not so bad, under two minutes. Hold on, hold on, you're missing something. What are you doing?

You take them, jam them into the wheels like that. That's my pro racing tip right there. Then you don't slide back.

Oh yeah, hey, that's not bad. It's mostly stops. Two minutes, 30 seconds, just about on the nose.

Let's fire up the game. Do we have a solution for the pedals? Oh, I guess I could just put them against the wall.

Yeah, and do you see that box that's filled with sandpaper? How do I always end up crawling around under your desk? That's only happened like once before.

There we go. If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid. Okay, this is not bad.

You've got your ABXY, or at least the PlayStation equivalent. This engine start button is actually a little D-pad, which is super cool. Now that we're on the main menu, there's a whole whack of gameplay options,

but we're just gonna jump straight into quick play, where we can play solo or multiplayer in a variety of different modes. They've got quick generate, create rally,

where you can create a custom one, and a regularity rally, which I assume has something to do with the crapping yourself that you might do, going over some of these jumps and stuff.

Sorry, I'm not into rally racing, so I don't know all the lingo. And Alex, you say we want H1 for wheel drive? Yes.

Why H1? What's H1? Yeah, that's historic the first. That means nothing to me. Okay, perfect.

No, it just means like it's the very oldest. Oh, okay. Ooh, competition type, realistic.

That's one of the things people are really excited about with this game, is it's not super arcadey, which is gonna be a problem for me.

Oh my God, our poor car. Pfft! Can you tell this wasn't our first take?

Woo! Oh no! Okay.

Things didn't take long to go sideways, and not gonna lie, I don't think I can blame the game for it. In spite of the fact that we're running on minimum hardware,

this is a 9600K with a GTX 1060, I'm getting about 50 FPS running at 1080p low without dynamic resolution scaling.

Overall, pretty smooth gaming experience. I can't say the same for my wheel, though. That doesn't mean somebody more skilled

couldn't put up some decent times with this thing. Not everybody needs an expansive array of buttons and an Alcantara wrap. I mean, the shifting paddles are tactile enough,

and you're certainly not gonna lose your grip on it. But, it lacks any kind of force feedback, meaning that particularly for an inexperienced driver,

not having any kind of feedback from the vehicle, you know, steering a little harder when you're going faster, or from the shape of the road,

makes it really difficult to tell what the heck is going on, because all I have is the visual cues. Which, at that point, raises the question,

why don't I just use a controller? Let's try this for comparison. The controller definitely has the convenience factor going for it.

Uh... There. Here, let me start my timer.

3.67 seconds. Ooh... They've got integration with the PS5’s rumble.

Don't worry about my door, man. You worry about your door, okay? I'm gonna blow up my engine.

Never mind my doors. Oh, boy. Um...

Pfft... I just need a little bit of time to get the hang of this. Really?

You can tell? I mean... Whoo!

Stuff still happens. Uh... Okay.

Hey, we made it around that corner. Second gear, mind you, but we made it around the corner. Grand total adjustment time, about two minutes,

and I'm pretty sure I'm better on this already. Whoa! Ha-ha!

Don't speak too soon, that's how you learn! We know that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. The price delta between this and that wheel is over double.

But this at least serves other purposes and doesn't take up as much space in your house, and I think it's fair to say from our short experience

that a wheel without force feedback is just plain not gonna be a good time. I mean, PS5 winner?

Oh, by a lot. I tested this on the shakedown. I was 12 seconds faster on the controller.

That's like 25% faster. It's crazy. Yeah.

Bottom line, though, don't let us tell you what you like. At the cost of a basic wheel secondhand, you should just buy one, try it,

and then if you don't like it, resell it, probably for the exact same amount you paid. It's my favorite kind of free rental.

I do it all the time. Of course, the real reason that we did this video was not actually to look at the extremes,

both high and low budget, but rather so Alex could have an excuse to build his personal mid-tier setup on work time.

Wait, what? Yeah. Okay, that actually makes a lot of sense

and explains why we're at your house for this shoot. Guy's been genuinely stoked for this game since it was announced that Codemasters picked up the WRC IP,

and he's put together a pretty nice, but not unreasonable rig for it, starting with the GT Lite Pro from Next Level Racing.

Once again, in theory, we just crack this thing open and it's off to the races.

I'm making it look so easy. You really, really are not. Oh, wait.

Why am I doing this? This is your job. Oh, right.

Okay. I just write videos. Let's benchmark it.

Wait, you're gonna undo it now? We’re gonna time me again, just for fun, but theoretically, once it's all set up,

it would just be a matter of unfolding it and you're pretty much good to go. We're gonna wanna run these cables first,

including, ah yes, power. Oh, this is cool. We've got some handy-dandy little 3D printed spacers here

so we can clamp this onto a really, really slim plate like this. And then we got a couple of screws to secure this into place. Where do they line up?

I don't know. Am I allowed to have a helper friend? Yes.

Oh, wow, they do. Oh, nice! You don't happen to have handy-dandy spacers for this boy, do you?

I have screws for it. You have screws. Oh.

Well, yes, that will do. Uh, there we go. There we go.

Oh! What was that? Still good.

I don't know. By now, it should be pretty obvious that we're spending both a lot more time

and a lot more money on this versus our last setup. But when you consider the extra utility, not to mention how much you're already into it for

by the time you've got a PC that will run this game at its best, I don't think it's that unreasonable. This seat, for example, the GT Racing Lite, is $300 new,

and you can get a less cushiony version for $50 less, and you can find them for as little as $150 used if you're lucky. Other than that, we just need a USB and an HDMI cable

to run over to our PC, and we should be pretty much good to go. Hmm.

USB extension, anyone? Ooh, hi! Perfect.

If you don't need USB 3 speeds, active cables like this one are an inexpensive and convenient way to extend the range beyond the official specification.

As for what we're plugging it into, meet Alex's G27. It's the same racing wheel Logitech has been making

for about 19 years, but the 2009 version of it that is not as good as the original one,

but better than the ones that they have now. Yeah, how exactly does that work, that they keep bringing out new ones

that have less features and higher prices? Like, the G920 doesn't even include a shifter anymore. The good news is that means you can get something old

like this one, a G27, or even a G25, and still get a modern gaming experience out of it. These can be had for around the $150 to $250 range.

By the way, we're not gonna be running this stock. Alex, do you have some hair elastics handy? Oh yes, one second.

Of course he does. I need to go steal them. So we go around here with two.

Okay. Hold it up. Wait, don't you lift an e-brake?

Not in a rally car. You go... Yeah.

Now we just need a display. Mounting for a monitor is not included with most of these seats because it's typical for people to set this up

in their living room or their family room and use their TV. But as a not forever alone,

Alex doesn't really have that option, which is funny because she thinks it's not gonna disturb her, I guess, but like...

It's really loud. When the force feedback is running, it's like...

Anyhoo, let's put this monitor onto this mount that you got from also Next Level Racing, and what are one of these worth?

100 bucks or so. Okay. This is gonna be difficult.

With the power of the LTT screwdriver. Lttstore.com Okay, how do we get the other ones in now?

That's the bit that I was concerned about. Oh, like this. Well, okay.

Okay, in all seriousness, I bet we can... I think we can get this last one.

Hold on. You might wanna back that off. Yeah, that one's not going in.

Nope. That's a negatory. But the good news is that it's not gonna get lost

because it's trapped in there. You gotta have a seat, though, so we can get the height adjusted.

Okay. Oh, balls. Oh, goodness.

I don't think you're supposed to get in from that side with the shift rally. Oh, my mic's caught, too.

Now I can't... Oh, balls. Is this the right height for you, sir?

It needs to go up a little bit. Wait, you want it that close to... You want the wheel covering that much of the screen?

Yeah, that's fine. Oh, I mean, I guess that's sort of the experience. The FOV is like the biggest thing.

Right, okay. Not bad. I mean, you don't have Ed's racing shoes.

That heel-toe, I mean, probably could have been a little better if you weren't in moccasins.

You stay put, because I think getting in and out of there is not happening at this point.

I'll get you set up, okay? I think we're supposed to, like, move this thing away. That's how you get in and out?

I don't know. Race cars are hard to get into. It's just realistic.

Something to note, if you want to replicate Alex's setup, which by far is the best bang for the buck

out of what we're looking at today, we'll have everything linked down below, is that the G27 specifically cooperates best

with a USB 2 port. So this is a USB 3 extension, but he specifically chose this motherboard

because it has USB 2 ports, and we're operating in USB 2 mode. This is amazing.

Why are you going out that side? It's great. Ah, yes.

Being short, not so bad after all, is it? This is the difference maker.

While the other wheel had tension when you turned it to the side, this one has motors inside it

that actively resist you according to the bumps in the road or the force with which you should be turning.

They're not the most sophisticated motors. You can get ones that are higher power or have better granularity,

but I am expecting this to be a major step up. Yeah. This is another critical piece of any SIM setup.

You do not want to do what he was doing or even what I was doing every time you need a keyboard or mouse.

So having one of these magneted to the bottom of the chair is an A player move.

Is this the monitor you're going to be using or is this just something you stole from work for now? Oh, no, this is my monitor.

It was supposed to replace the one that's in there. It's better in every single way, but the OSD sucks, so I don't use it.

Oh. It's really bad, like awful. Just terrible.

How often do you need to use the on-screen display? All the time, because you need it to be brighter during the day

and then turn it down during the night, and then it's like, in the one right there,

I have three color temperatures, three different color profiles. I believe you.

It's beautiful. You can just switch between them. Yeah, I just...never

Let us know in the comments. Are you an Alex or are you a... Me.

To Logitech's credit, sure, they haven't developed a new wheel in 20 years, but hey, at least they're still supporting

the old wheel that they still make. Yeah. Look at all these things we can adjust in the software.

You've got the force strength, the degrees of rotation that it'll take before it just stops.

This is great. Centering spring. Disable that.

Also, degrees of rotation, 270 is the best for this. You can go full sim.

I go full. I want to set records. People always get so like mad.

They're like, oh, it's not very realistic to do that. I'm like,

I don't care. The most realistic thing is to try and win the race by exploiting the rules.

We've gone a little higher end for the PC this time. Codemasters recommends a 2070, but Alex has a 3080,

so we're gonna go ahead and crank some details, I think. This time,

we're also gonna be upgrading the experience. We're gonna go with WRC, and they've got 18 locations

of gravel, snow, and tarmac that, according to Codemasters, is greatly improved.

Alex wanted me to go with Chile, and this is a gravel map. Track.

No, stage. Stage. 34.7 kilometers.

That is an incredibly huge map to create. No wonder this didn't launch on PlayStation 4. Like, how could you even contain that?

Not with ease, apparently. That's pretty cool. Okay.

Now, here. Go to the left. Builder.

Ooh! What are we doing? You're building a car.

What do you mean? Well, I don't know where engines go. Mid-engine.

Yeah, sure. Oh, my gosh. Exhaust kits?

Like, what? Why? What do you mean?

Like, just to change the sound? Okay, well, this one, then, I guess, right? Sure.

I mean, yeah, brakes. Get the good one, I guess? Painite.

I can feel the pain of everyone watching this who's actually into this stuff, including our sponsor. By the way, thank you very much. No, no.

He knows the stuff. Andrew knows it the most. He's just letting me struggle for fun.

Am I done now? Oh, my. Oh, my goodness.

There's so many things. This is also, like, kind of realistic, because they don't even make, like, they don't modify a Toyota Yaris.

Right. They take a body and put Yaris body parts on it at the end. I see.

That makes sense. This is like the tennis rackets that the pros supposedly use, when actually they just use their old racket that they trained on and learned on with a new paint job, so they

can sell the new racket to you, the idiot consumer. Sort of. Does it matter how much I spent?

I don't think so. Just quick play. Oh, it's automatic.

Oh. Well, that's not going to be a very apples-to-apples comparison. Well, we can change that pretty easily.

There we go. Oh, no. I'm immediately much worse, Alex.

Wait, where am I going? Oh, he said right. Okay.

This must be very hard for you guys to watch. This is kind of the Dirt slash WRC experience for the first couple of hours. They call it the Dark Souls of racing games.

Okay. Did he say extreme left? I can't understand his accent.

He sounds like Andrew. Woo. Okay.

That right there was the first like, oh, yeah, I can definitely feel a difference with the force feedback moment. Oh, you should use your left foot for braking.

There's no way that I would be able to do that. That would completely break my brain. Oh, no.

Speaking of breaking, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, still alive. There is no question, though.

That I am way faster on this than I was on either the other like useless wheel with no feedback or the controller. You're on the road in a car that's so much harder to control.

Oh, yeah. This isn't even like apples to apples either. And this is a gravel track compared to the other one, too right?

Yeah. uh oh, uh oh, uh oh. Handbrake.

Right. Sorry. Sorry.

Sorry. I just hit the thing. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Don't oversteer, Linus. No, no, I got this.

I got this. Okay, show us how it's done. Oh, God.

I didn't even have fun on the other set up, to be honest with you. Oh, yeah. There's this within a minute.

I'm having fun. Totally different game. Oh, my goodness.

This is like scary fast. I would not want to be in this car. All this force feedback needs to get changed a lot.

Still, having it at all is so much better than what we had before, Alex. This is 1440p ultra, and we're sitting at about 80 FPS. And it's solid.

Overall, you beat me by 39. Well, look, who's keeping track of the exact number? This is.

I can do better than 136. All right. Or 215.

I can't do better than 136. Handbrake gas. What?

Why do you need a handbrake in gas? So you can let go of the handbrake. Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, that poor engine. Well, that sounds like future Alex's problem.

Oh, yeah. We turn the force feedback way up, and it is definitely better. Ah!

Okay. No, no. I got this.

I got this. Oh, no. No.

Dang it. Okay. I'm still going to get a better time than last time.

Oh, crap. Oh, no. Am I?

Okay. Well, that explains why the brakes aren't working very well. You're doing so much worse.

I'm worse. Why am I worse? The door fell off.

I love the damage effects, though. No! No, no.

I'm still alive. Okay. Here we go.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Well, it's better than last time.

Hey! Oh, yeah. It's a pretty big improvement.

This poor car. Let's see how she's doing. As great as this handbrake mod is here, I'd kind of like to continue to use it as a shifter.

So, I got this thing. It was 80 bucks off of Amazon, and it is the Annex Sim Racing handbrake. Anyway, let's throw it on.

This handbrake came with hardware, but the slots aren't large enough for it to go through. Well, you get what you pay for, I guess. What?

It looks pretty funny. Oh, whatever, you guys. Ha-ha.

Nice. That wasn't hard at all. Improvised some mounting hardware with some leftover VESA screws.

And you thought we were idiots for not putting all the screws in there. Once again. Wow.

Honestly, this is way worse. I think you just paid $80 for a downgrade, sir. Yeah.

This is... That feels so chunky and nice. This...

It's chunky. Yeah, it's... It's something.

The good news is there are lots of other good upgrades that you can make to a setup like this if you want to spend a little bit more money. Like, for example, a nicer pedal set from someone like Fanatec.

These can either stick to the floor with their grips or can be bolted into a frame or onto a sim rig. Then there's wheels. There might not be a huge control advantage to it,

but I'd say having a wheel that's a similar diameter to an actual car might help it immerse a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. That's more like it.

And this particular one is attached to Fanatec's CSLDD, which is the same motor that we used in Jake's Intel Extreme Tech upgrade, and... It costs almost as much as this,

but it is a really, really nice upgrade. One that not everyone will agree about, though, is VR. The game is supposed to add VR support sometime in the...

But Alex will not be using it? Nah. The whole sim racing is hard to set up is already a huge problem.

You don't need to set up VR at the same time. It's shocking how often my Valve hardware running on my Valve software just... miraculously doesn't work from one day to the next.

Yeah. You know what does work, though, is this transition to the ultimate setup. The ultimate sim racing setup that lives in our employee lounge hasn't changed since we built it,

and that's because it was already flipping awesome, and Codemasters has already done the work to integrate not just higher-end peripherals from the likes of Fanatec and Heusinkveld...

Oh, these pedals. Oh, see that tension? It's all adjustable and everything. It's so cool.

But even D-Box, meaning that our platform down here, which has four AC servo motors that can independently adjust the height of each corner of the platform, allowing it to tilt forward when you brake,

lean back when you accelerate, and bump all over the place when you're going over a gravel road. Fun fact, by the way, your co-driver, who sits in the passenger seat

and calls out which turns are coming next, how far out they are, recorded the lines while sitting in a rig like this so that as you're going down the road,

his voice actually reflects the condition of the road you're driving on. That is so cool. Why am I talking about it then?

Just kidding. Me and Linus have both played around with this a fair bit in the game, because honestly, it's just absolute heaps of fun.

Although that's not what we're going to be doing right now. This right here is going to be an emulation of the 1985 Safari Rally, where all that Linus needs to do for it to be historically accurate is to crash out.

For the most part, around really long pavement stages and stuff like that, it's a lot of fun. The Safari Rally isn't.

It's just a workout. It's punishing. It hurts you.

What the heck? If it makes you feel any better, I got a 329 on the stage. So it is quite doable, actually.

That's not to say I'm going to pull it off, because apparently we've turned damage up to hardcore mode. So good luck me.

Hey, I had that too. OK, should I do a shakedown? Yeah, do a shakedown.

See how she feels. OK. 2, 1, go.

50. And I stalled. Fantastic.

I am going really slow, and this is extremely bumpy. Oh, redlined it. Oh, I'm in neutral.

Whoopsie daisies. OK. I am not going very fast, but it really feels like I am right now.

And I was not paying attention to my co-driver. What do you say? I don't know, but I'm good.

I'm good. I'm still alive. Something that's hard to even focus on on a course like this,

because everything's shaking all over the place, and you're just trying to stay on the road, is that the game looks really, really good.

We're on a 3090 here running at, what is it? 3 by 4K, Alex? Yes.

This is freaking awesome. Woo! Oh, my goodness, I hit a guy.

There is no question whatsoever that the more feedback you can get into your body, the more realism you get. And, like, I can't believe what a polished state this is in

for a game that isn't even out yet. Getting all of these exotic peripherals to work with anything can be challenging at the best of times.

How long did it take to set this up? Be honest, be honest. Probably about two hours.

The hardest bit is that they don't have native triple monitor support, so I had to go into a config file and get that all done. You can see I was kind of strange in the menu.

Yeah, but the D-Box stuff was all fine? Yeah, that just, like, worked. Oh, that's so cool.

Okay, I'm ready to start. How did I do on my shakedown, other than being slow? That was good.

Other than crashing out. Yeah. All right, let's go.

Let's go. What was your time? 3.26.

And how much of it is the shakedown? I don't know, about a third of it. Okay, so I could be closer than I was yesterday.

Yeah. Oh, put it in first and give it full revs. 2, 1, go.

50. Oh, my goodness. Well, that's not a good start.

This is it. This is go time. 3 left.

30. 5 right. 3 left.

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. I gotta give her more gas. This is a really long gas pedal.

Whoa, I do not need to give her more gas right now. Go slow. Slow's smart.

No, no, I got this. I got this. Not tightens over the crest.

I got this. Go for it. No, I'm not flooring it, Andy.

Go for it or go home. 3 right. Okay.

Turn heavy left. Whoa. Whoa, buddy.

How do I get in reverse? Dang it, I stalled. Crap.

Dang it, I stalled again. We won't count your penalties. There's penalties?

For resetting. Oh. Jump.

80. Jump? Crest.

Woo! 70. Man, if this gas pedal was a little shorter, I'd be having a way easier time with it.

30. Stop it. Whoa, what the hell?

This is something. No! I can't not stall this thing.

It doesn't help I have to think about the lingo so much. Oh, man, I am sweating right now. Like, freaking sweating right now.

Bad bump? Are you kidding me? Okay, that's a 5 minute 38.

5 minutes 38? Well, let's see how you did with the penalties. Am I done?

Oh, shoot. I wasn't done. No, you're done.

You just need to... It's the end of the rally, you know? You need to go up to the marshal.

Did I just stall? I just stalled just driving. In first.

What the heck happened? Okay, just floor it. Let the clutch go and get up to the guy.

This is not that hard. Okay, they did it for you. Okay.

Penalty, 17 seconds. Oh. How'd you do that in three minutes something?

I went a lot faster than that. Well, that felt really fast. Seriously, can you see?

How's my pits doing? There you go. We don't...

From a 5 minute race. No, no, the point is just, like, okay. Oh, yeah, it's physically exhausting.

Yeah. In a way that no other game is physically exhausting. Like, this is what?

A 600 watt motor? It's, like, grabbing on you, like, moving around. You got...

Even with the bolsters, you got to hold yourself. That was fun, though. There's no way I could play for hours at a time, though, man.

That's crazy. Yeah, not that stage in this. No question in my mind, sponsorship or not, that was a ton of fun.

And if you're into rally racing... Oh, yeah. Especially fun.

But the best way to experience it, that's what we set out to answer. And my tier list goes a little something like this. Wheel without force feedback.

Bottom of the barrel. Terrible. Controller with any kind of vibration.

Way above. Yeah, like, this much above. And then literally anything with force feedback in a wheel.

It's, like, I don't know, that much higher? Yep. And then I'd say it's more fun with the better wheel.

But in terms of your capability to compete, not that much? No. So, you're happy with your setup?

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think most people would be, too. And EA would be really happy if we mentioned that EA Sports WRC is out now for Xbox Series X and S,

PlayStation 5, and PC, with over 70 vehicles spanning decades of rally history, 17 locations, some of the longest stages we have ever seen in a rally game, and made by legendary developers Codemasters, so you guys are not going to want to miss it.

There's a link in the description to pick up a copy of the game and a bunch of the hardware that we showed off to help you guys best enjoy it. If you guys enjoyed this video, hey, maybe check out the one where we built this setup.

Now that we've got this game for it, it's like, without knowing it, this is what we made it for. So good.

Awesome.