It's been over a year since the BMW M4 GT3 wheel was announced by Fanatec and many have been speculating at what the price would be. Fanatec published the price for the wheel on their twitter earlier today and it was certainly surprising to most of us.
Coming in at €1399.95 it's a lot lower than what most people were expecting. I recall people saying "it won't be less than four grand" so to see it come in under two grand was quite the shock. Yes it's still a lot for a sim racing wheel but lets not forget this particular product has to do more than talk to your computer, it needs to work for 24 hour endurance races in a real GT3 car.
I have already been conversing with people on twitter today about how practical it is or if it's even worth making a product that can do both real-world and sim applications. To that I say yes it was worth it. Sometimes you just have to accept a product might not be targeted at you. My mate will buy this. He’s a millionaire. It’s affordable for him. I'm not a millionaire so I won't be buying it. It doesn't make this any less cool though.
It is also packed with features that most sim racers would find useful and I have also seen it confirmed that this wheel will be compatible with the CSL DD which is pretty cool.
- Multi-layer (8 layers) full carbon fibre body
- RGB LED-backlit front buttons (colour-adjustable and dimmable, interchangeable caps)
- Customisable via FanaLab
- Two custom-designed, 12-step thumb encoders with Hall sensors
- Dual-action (push/pull) magnetic shifter paddles
- Fanatec QR2: all-new quick release allows operation in the 2022 BMW M4 GT3 race car
- Communicates with 2022 BMW M4 GT3 via CAN bus
- 310 mm diameter
- 1400 g (approx)
- Designed and developed in Bavaria by Fanatec and BMW Motorsport
- Rubber hand grips molded over carbon fibre structure
- 14 push buttons (12 front-facing, 2 rear-facing) with 700 g activation force
- 1” OLED display
- Three backlit 12-position rotary switches with encoder functionality
- 4-way D-pad under the BMW logo
- Two dual-Hall sensor clutch paddles
- New-generation firmware, upgradeable via integrated USB-C port
- Compatible with Windows PC
- Compatible with all PS4 and PS5 systems when connected to a PlayStation-licensed wheel base
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What do you think about the product and the respective price? Let us know in the comments.