Moza’s New Budget Direct Drive Bundle – R5 Bundle First Look

Moza Racing R5 Racing Simulator First Look

Moza has officially lifted the curtain and unveiled their latest range of products, and they include the R5 Racing Simulator bundle.

This new bundle features a 5.5Nm direct drive wheel base along with a brand new steering wheel, new pedals and a table clamp.

In this guide, I’ll bring you all of the information you need to know about this new Moza Racing R5 Racing Simulator bundle.

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How much does the Moza R5 bundle cost?

Starting with the price, the Moza R5 bundle costs just $599. This seems incredibly well priced for the sheer amount of quality hardware that you’re getting.

• Moza Racing R5 Racing Simulator costs $599

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Moza R5 Racing Simulator launch date

The Moza Racing R5 bundle is available to buy right away from today. It has officially launched today and can be picked up from Moza’s online store here.

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Watch our in-depth Moza R5 bundle review

Thanks to Moza, we have had the R5 wheel base and bundle to test and play around with for a while now. That has helped us formulate an opinion to help you guys decide whether you should purchase this direct drive wheel base and bundle.

Watch our full review of the R5 Racing Simulator below.

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What is the R5 Racing Simulator bundle and what’s included?

The R5 bundle is designed to bring a complete plug-and-play direct drive sim racing experience at an incredibly accessible budget. It includes everything you need to go sim racing on PC right away.

What’s included in the box?

As soon as you receive the box for this sim racing bundle, you’ll see and feel that there is a lot included. The box is pretty large. Inside you’ll be greeted with the brand new ES Steering Wheel.

Underneath that, you’ll find the new R5 direct drive wheel base and the SR-P Lite pedals as well as a table clamp.

R5 wheel base

I want to start by talking about the new Moza R5 wheel base. This is without a doubt the most intriguing part of this new sim racing bundle.

The R5 wheel base is a smaller, slightly less powerful version of the popular R9 wheel base. While the R9 produces 9Nm of torque, this R5 produces just 5.5Nm of torque.

It is still a direct drive wheel base and it utilises the same technology as the more powerful R9.

The wheel base design as a whole follows suit of the products Moza have been releasing recently, but the R5 is packaged in a smaller body. The exterior design is relatively similar, with the grooved metal outer body acting as a heat sink to dissipate heat from the motor inside.

In practice, this wheel base works well, and the 5.5Nm of torque feels very impressive. The strength of force feedback is good, as is the fidelity. You can feel minor bumps and vibrations in the road and exactly how your car is handling on track.

Over prolonged a race session you will feel some heat coming from the body of the wheel base, but that is by design. As mentioned the outer body acts as a heat sink as there are no internal fans. This will keep your wheel base quiet during use but means the excess heat from inside needs to be dissipated through the outer casing.

Find out more about the Moza Racing R5 wheel base

ES steering wheel

The steering wheel that is included is Moza’s most budget-orientated steering wheel yet. The ES steering wheel does away with a lot of traditional Moza features such as magnetic shifters and rotary encoders.

Instead, we’re left with a nice-looking budget steering wheel. It still features a rev bar across the top of the wheel which is fully customisable. And there are a good number of push buttons across the wheel face.

These buttons are completely configurable with any PC sim racing game and can be set to control various in-game functions.

The shifters on the back of this wheel are no longer magnetic or constructed from carbon fibre like the majority of Moza Racing wheels to date.

They do feel good to use, with a very positive click and a decent amount of resistance. However, there is a little excess flex in the shifters if you pull them hard.

This wheel also comes with Moza’s brilliant quick release allowing you to easily remove and re-attach it within seconds. This quick-release allows for other steering wheels to be used instead of this ES wheel if you fancied it.

Check out the Moza Racing ES wheel in more detail

SR-P Lite pedals

The SR-P Lite pedals are a good-looking, stripped-back version of the load-cell SR-P pedals that were released earlier this year.

They feature a lot of similarities including the same footrest and metal pedal construction. Where they differ a lot is with the brake pedal technology.

The load cell from the SR-P pedals is gone leaving the brake pedal essentially the same as the throttle. These pedals all feature contactless hall-effect sensors which is good and a step above potentiometer pedals.

And the brake pedal utilises a slightly stiffer spring than the throttle. But that is where the good ends. There is no real resistance with the brake pedal, and there isn’t any progression when using it. This makes the braking feel very linear and wishy-washy. It can be hard to find consistency.

Table clamp

It is great that Moza has included a table clamp, and this really helps those who are mounting this racing wheel to a desk or table instead of a sim rig.

This table clamp, along with the steering wheel and stripped-down pedals really highlights that this sim racing bundle is aimed at a more casual audience. Or targetted towards those looking to start sim racing for the first time.

The table clamp mounts to the underside of the R5 wheel base with a few bolts and is incredibly secure. Then underneath, there are two clamps that can be wound up or down depending on the thickness of your table.

Once in place, these clamps make the wheel base incredibly secure with very little flex. Although, you may want to run a cloth or some rubber underneath your table as the clamp ends are metal.

This means that when you tighten the table clamp very tight, it can make indentations or marks on the underside of your mounting surface.

Buy the Moza Racing R5 Racing Simulator

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Compatibility

Much like all Moza products to date, this R5 bundle is compatible with almost all racing games on PC. You can connect the R5 wheel base and pedals directly to your PC via a USB cable, or you can now connect the pedals to your wheel base, and use a single USB from your wheel base to your PC.

When in-game, you can configure all of the buttons on the ES steering wheel to control different in-game actions.

But the big news really should be that this bundle may be console compatible in the future. The addition of the pedal to wheel base direct connectivity means that if firmware and software permit, this whole bundle could be connected to your console via a single USB cable.

This hasn’t been confirmed yet but is promising.

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Should you buy the Moza Racing R5 bundle?

This brand new sim racing bundle consists of four completely new products and is heavily targeted toward entry-level sim racers.

With a price of $599 this is one of the cheaper sim racing bundles you can buy, and is the cheapest direct drive bundle on the market.

The real value is in the wheel base, which performs incredibly well, and is on par with products from other sim racing brands. The included steering wheel, pedals and table clamp allow you to simply plug and play, and start racing straight away without the need for any other peripherals.

And as you grow as a sim racer, you can start to upgrade parts of this setup. The steering wheel is fully interchangeable allowing you to use any other Moza steering wheel with the R5 wheel base. And the pedals can be upgraded to a full three-pedal set or swapped out for one of Moza’s more premium pedal sets.

Overall, this is a great option if you are looking to try direct drive on a budget, and the performance easily beats out other more budget-orientated sim racing bundles.

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