Test Drive: SIMAGIC GT NEO Review

I’m a sim racer and amateur racer with a passion for Motorsport, good racecraft and the technical and setup aspect of sim racing.

SIMAGIC’s GT NEO is, judged by price alone, one of the most disruptive sim racing wheels to appear in years. At $269/£245.83, you’re looking at roughly a fifth of what premium wheels cost. So what’s been cut? From what I can tell, nothing obvious.

Today, I’m closely examining the GT NEO, from SIMAGIC.

I’d been watching the GT Neo for months. Eventually caved and grabbed one. I’ve just come out of another session with it on my Simucube 2 Pro – still the best budget wheel I’ve used, not even a close call.

SIMAGIC are a relative newcomer to the sim racing stage, but they’ve approached establishing themselves in the right way. They’ve partnered with series, earned accreditations, and been visible in the community – the kind of groundwork most newcomers skip.

They’re a startup masterclass, that appears to be targeting the mid to higher end of sim racing with surprisingly budget pricing. Their direct drive wheels are servo motor based direct drive units that are eerily comparable to Simucube’s 2 series units.

What’s in the Box?

Simagic GT Neo steering wheel
Simagic QR50 quick release (pre-installed on the wheel)
USB Cable
Allen key and Tweezers
User manual
Sticker sheet for customizing button labels

The wheel is manufactured with a composite shell and a plate mounted hub adapter. After taking some initial photography, I set about removing the plate ready to install the supplied MAGLINK adapter, and of course an SQR hub for my Simucube.

GT NEO (rear) with QR50 hub pre-installed

Installation

I have the MAGLINK adapter, which replaces the standard USB-C mount plate with a magnetic adapter, similar in concept to the QCONN from Cube Controls.

maglink box and cables with replacement hub adapter plate — Maglink box and cables with replacement hub adapter plate

Installation is reasonably simple, firstly remove the existing plate with the QR50 hub attached:

Whatever hub you’re using, it’s mounted from the inside of the place using countersunk M5 bolts. My SQR hub mounted perfectly to the plate, although I had to find some nuts as my hub extension isn’t threaded:

SQR hub to MAGLINK plate mounting in progress

Be sure to attach the USB connector to the wheel’s internal PCD before screwing the plate in place:

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Once the hub is mounted to the wheel, you’re ready for software setup.

The GT NEO’s picked up by both SimHub and SIMAGIC’s SimPro Manager. SimHub gets you most of the way – the one gap is clutch calibration, which is SimPro Manager only:

As you might see in the screenshot above, SimPro manager immediately detects the GT NEO once installed. Here’s the device setup screen:

By default, the clutch is calibrated. Each paddle offers a 50% clutch activation, so depressing both gives you 100%. As the two paddles are calibrated to exactly 50%, it doesn’t matter which one you release at launch. Naturally, if you adjust the balance between the two you’ll need to plan for which paddle you release first.

Remembering the price of the wheel, this is a lot of software support for the money!

Simhub is very familiar to all of us, and I was pleased when I discovered SimHub supports the GT NEO:

Clutch calibration is missing from SimHub, but the RGB customisation is more capable there than in SimPro Manager. SimPro Manager doesn’t need to be running for the GT NEO to work, so you can run both – grab what you need from each.

Materials

The composite shell is well-made. Composites were a contentious choice when they first appeared in wheel bodies – sim racers weren’t thrilled. But composites can be stiffer than aluminium, which matters for FFB.

As I’ve covered in the Cube Controls GTX-2 review, composite wheel bodies have a higher Modulus than aluminium – which means more FFB comes through. The GT NEO proves that. Running it on my Simucube 2 Pro, I could feel detail I’d have expected from a much pricier wheel. Where the GTX-2 pulls ahead is the top of the FFB frequency range – you do feel the difference in the finest detail. Then again, it costs four times as much.

I’ve tested sim racing wheels that are 3 times the price of the GT NEO that wouldn’t stack up in comparison.

Build quality is genuinely good. The composite has a carbon-look finish that doesn’t feel like a budget decision:

GT NEO closeup - carbon look is very nice

All of the buttons and rotaries feel perfectly acceptable at this price point, they’re within easy reach during use and the RGB illumination looks good throughout. Nothing about the push buttons, joysticks or rotaries feels cheap – if anything, they punch above where you’d expect at this price.

Pick it up and the stiffness hits you immediately – this thing doesn’t flex, and it communicates FFB well because of it. The rubber grips are another matter – too stiff for my taste. Past a certain point the stiffness works against you; after a long session my hands felt it. Simagic clearly agreed – they switched the grip material from TPE to TPU in September 2024, addressing both the stiffness and a reported discolouration issue with the original material. Newer units are better for it.

Rear paddles are aluminium – proper aluminium, not a suggestion of it. They’re stiffer than what I’m used to, but satisfying to pull. Quiet, too. Composite wheel bodies are notorious for rattle and clack; these aren’t.

Conclusion

Stock levels have been a problem since launch, and it’s not hard to see why. At $269 you’re getting wheel that feels closer to the $750 bracket – the 300mm diameter and stiffness make it especially well-suited to formula content, IndyCar and F3 in particular.