Gaming Peripherals Round Up

Saitek R440 Steering Wheel

The R440 is a whopping 4 years old . Veteran steering wheel it may be, but it has force feedback, is designed solely for the PC and is priced at £62.99. Not cheap, considering how old the technology is.

Not wanting to be ageist, I set the monitor up. The design is, in my opinion, a little bit cheap and tacky. On the wheel there are four buttons placed within bashing distance of both your thumbs. Behind the wheel are the obligatory paddles for gear manipulation. The wheel is grey and black and made of plastic with two grips placed on the wheel where you would normally hold.

One feature of the R440 that I particularly liked was the connection to the desk. A separate part clicks into the wheel and is then simply screwed into the desk. The process did take a little bit of time but once finished the wheel felt sturdy.

The same can be said of the acceleration and brake pedals which can be hooked up to an extension giving you a footrest as well as the extra bit of sturdiness. The pedals connected to the back of the steering wheel via what looked like a network cable. The steering wheel also has connectors to the USB cable and a power cord. It can get a little bit messy with all the cables, but that's steering wheels.


Once it was all set up the PC recognised the device, which is always a positive sign. I then installed the drivers and the problems started. Everything appeared to install fine but when I got into a game I couldn't select any options as the cursor just started scrolling through all of the options. Confused, I jumped out of the game to see what was up. The Saitek control panel informed me that I didn't need to configure my device. What the hell?

When I opened the calibration tool I noticed that the Y and Z axis were on by default. That was the reason when I went into games everything was going crazy without me touching it. I downloaded the latest drivers and still no success, so I have to conclude that the R440 can have problems. As there is no way of calibrating the device we were left a little bit stumped.

I soldiered on though as I wanted to see whether the steering wheel had any quality and besides, once I was in game and had the accelerator pressed down there wasn't a problem (only if I wanted to stop still did the car start driving by itself). I am pleased to inform you that the steering wheel performed well, the force feedback felt good under my fingers as I slung my car around the track. Everything felt tight and as it should in a steering wheel - apart from this one problem which rather cripples it.