Moza TSW Truck Wheel Review: The Best Way To Turn Your Desk Into A Truck Cabin

Moza TSW Truck Wheel Review: The Best Way To Turn Your Desk Into A Truck Cabin

For the sim racing enthusiast, no matter your budget, there are seemingly endless ways to immerse yourself more in the racing. Be it an entry-level belt-driven wheel to high-torque direct drive setups with gated shifters and load cell pedals plus anything in between, you can pretty much make the pretend race car of your dreams in any exacting fashion.

What about those who prefer to take simulation at a slower pace, though? Say, for example, those who like to sink into the virtual cargo market and take on the world of truck simulators.

Well, there hasn’t really been much in the way of dedicated options. Sure, racing wheels are supported by Euro Truck Simulator 2 – pretty much the de facto choice of virtual truckers – but the smaller rim and positioning of those have never quite felt immersive enough.

Moza TSW Truck Wheel

Moza TSW Truck Wheel

That’s where Moza Racing has stepped in with this, the TSW Truck Wheel. Measuring 400mm in diameter – compared with sub-300mm for most racing wheels – it’s close in size to a real truck wheel.

It looks and feels the part, too. Though the frame of the wheel is made from aluminium, it’s wrapped in synthetic leather and with a centre made from robust-feeling hard plastic. It doesn’t feel especially special, but at £299, it doesn’t need to – most importantly it feels well-made.

There’s a decent selection of controls across the wheel too, with 14 buttons, two scroll wheels and a pair of four-directional nubs. Each button comes pre-labelled, but it’s worth noting that you’ll still need to map each within your chosen game.

Moza TSW Truck Wheel, compared with 300mm Fanatec WRC Wheel

Moza TSW Truck Wheel, compared with 300mm Fanatec WRC Wheel

That’s handy for making your mind up on what to map where, but does still require a bit of setup – although the flip side is you’re not strictly bound to the labels. You do get a few sticker sheets with the wheel to customise them, but the flip side of this is you lose out on the LED backlighting.

Speaking of which, Moza’s press materials did show these as customisable with multiple colours but at the time of writing, we’re unable to change them from the default blue. There’s also a customisable RPM light strip, but it seems a bit needless for a truck wheel. Oh, and we’re also a bit sad there’s not a giant horn button to press in the centre of the wheel.

Your gameplay experience with the wheel will largely be affected by your chosen wheelbase. The TSW wheel works natively with Moza’s ecosystem of wheelbases, although you can also mount it to those from other manufacturers with a compatible wheel hub and directly plug it into your PC.

Moza TSW Truck Wheel, left-side buttons

Moza TSW Truck Wheel, left-side buttons

I’ve been using the TSW wheel with Moza’s R9 wheelbase, which offers a peak of 9Nm of torque. Getting the settings for ETS2 was a breeze – with Moza’s Pit House app detecting the wheel and offering a pre-made setup for truck sims which worked neatly.

9Nm of torque feels a good amount for the wheel considering the weight of it. It certainly feels slightly numbed compared with smaller, lighter wheels but that’s a worthwhile tradeoff for the immersion the more realistic-feeling wheel brings. That said, I wouldn’t want to go much lower on the wheelbase power – this could feel a little too big even for the 5Nm Moza R5 base.

Along with the TSW wheel, Moza separately sells a clamp which allows you to mount any of its wheelbases in a more truck-like position. It costs an extra £40, which feels a shame not to be bundled with the wheel at a discount, but it’s a worthwhile inclusion for the immersion just giving yourself a little extra space.

Moza truck clamp

Moza truck clamp

Moza has pretty much no competition when it comes to the truck simulator market at present, so even if this was a middle-of-the-road product, it’d still be the best option for those wanting more immersion.

Delightfully though, it’s a good bit of kit and if you’re looking to invest in a simulator ecosystem specifically for truck driving, it’s immediately the go-to choice. Better still, you’ll soon be able to buy a stalk unit to go with it, adding more realistic controls for lights, cruise control, wipers and indicators. Welcome to your new money pit.
 

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