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Oct 16, 2024

MOZA TSW Truck Wheel and Desk Clamp Review: The First of Its Kind

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The MOZA TSW Truck Wheel is the first of its kind to cater to the truck sim niche, and it might be the most fun thing released since the sim driving boom.

The MOZA TSW Truck Wheel is the first dedicated truck simulator wheel with accurate dimensions for full trucking immersion. It boasts a 400mm rim size with lots of buttons, joysticks, and thumbwheels for all the functions you'll need to drive your virtual truck.

MOZA has had many sim racing/driving fans excited for its truck wheel ever since it was teased at Gamescom 2023. Not only has MOZA released the truck wheel, but it also released a desk clamp for you to angle your wheel base like a real truck wheel.

Most companies have ignored this niche in the sim market, but truck simulator fans are getting some love this time around. Let’s take a close look at both the TSW Truck Wheel and the desk clamp for the truck wheel.

I know truck wheels are huge, and I also know how big 400mm is, but it did not prepare me for how enormous the thing actually was.

It came in MOZA’s typical blue and white themed box, but the box was quite big; wider than the R5 bundle’s box even. MOZA was pretty clever about how to take the wheel out of the box, putting a cutout at the center of the foam, allowing you to grab hold of the wheel and pull it out instead of shimmying the foam out of the box like most products.

It comes with stickers that I will personally never use because it already looks great the way it is, especially with the customizable lights on the buttons, matte silver accents, and textured plastic housing.

The wheel uses synthetic perforated leather for the grips with a mix of non-perforated leather as well. It feels soft and comfortable, and I didn’t have any problems with it even after a few hours of trucking.

While this isn’t MOZA’s FSR wheel with its plentiful buttons and knobs, this truck wheel has quite the amount. I appreciate that MOZA have kept it simple and the wheel follows a realistic button layout similar to real truck steering wheels.

The joysticks and thumbwheels are also placed quite well, not sticking out and detracting from the look of the wheel. I have small hands, but I really appreciate how it’s really easy to reach without having to let go of the wheel. Looking around with the joysticks is really intuitive, but the low profile of the joysticks make it hard to hit accidentally.

However, not all the buttons are easily accessible. The buttons around the center of the wheel are pretty hard to reach. I have to let go of the wheel in order to reach the indicators, wipers, and the cruise control. I wish MOZA would’ve placed the indicator icons nearest to the edge since it breaks the immersion when you bind the indicators to “RES+” and “VOL+.”

Speaking of immersion, it also would’ve been really nice to have the center face be the horn so you can smash your palm against it when an NPC driver decides to do something crazy. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking though.

If you’re a desk user or don’t have an adjustable cockpit, the optional truck wheel desk clamp is a great purchase to add to the trucking experience.

It allows you to adjust the angle of your wheelbase up to almost 90-degrees upwards, giving you lots of freedom on how you want to drive your virtual truck. I always wanted to try out what it’s like driving a truck with the steering wheel in that position, and this is a pretty good experience.

However, I do have complaints about the desk clamp. For one, I appreciate the adjustability and being able to set it lower, but the metal mounting brackets jutting down are just too long. During my usage, I have hit my knees multiple times while positioning my chair in front of my pedals. A very painful experience, it made me think about grinding those off, since I don’t use the bottom part anyway.

Thankfully, the desk clamp is pretty customizable, so you can just take the angle adjustment part and find a way to integrate it into your cockpit. You will need to make sure that the wheelbase does have space to move though.

I tested this wheel out on Euro Truck Simulator 2, probably the most popular truck simulator title out there, alongside American Truck Simulator. Setup was easy, with the buttons easily mapped to the right functions.

Since the modern trucks in ETS 2 are automatic, I set it up as real automatic with the SGP shifter to shift between drive, neutral, and reverse. You could also map those functions to the wheel’s buttons of course.

My favorite features of this wheel are the thumbwheels and joysticks. I don’t need to fuss around with a mouse and take my hands off the wheel. I can simply look left and right with the joysticks, and even reset the camera by binding up to reset the camera position instead of looking up.

To adjust cruise control, I simply use one of the thumbwheels while using the other one to scroll between camera modes with my favorite camera modes bound to the side buttons on the wheel.

It is so much fun palming the wheel around and around while doing advanced trailer parking maneuvers. It makes you really feel like a professional, with such a large wheel allowing you to make very tiny adjustments to your reversing to get the trailer in place.

I’m very happy with the usage experience overall. Heck, I even tried rallying and drifting with it for the memes.

I see that many want to see sim racing products get opened up and torn down to see the true build quality inside. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s to open it.

There are quite a lot of screws in the back and the one thing that worries me is that it’s all self-tapping screws into the plastic housing on the front. I wouldn’t suggest opening up the wheel often, or at all if you want to avoid stripping the holes.

Sandwiched in between the plastic housing is the aluminum frame, which is quite thick at around 4mm. I’m quite sure this is what’s contributing to a lot of the weight, but it does add a lot of rigidity.

If you’re just going to use the wheel as intended, I don’t really see a problem with the plastic housing since it’s not actually under any stress. All your turning force is going into the aluminum frame and none of it actually transfers over to the PCB or the housing.

The electronics itself look to be efficient and straightforward. After all, they’re just buttons and encoders which all connect to the pins in the quick release or the RJ45 terminal to use with the MOZA Universal Hub.

Overall, pretty good build quality despite the housing being mainly plastic and using self-tapping screws into the plastic. They’re not kidding about the sturdy aluminum frame on the inside and this wheel can definitely handle higher torque wheelbases.

If you’re not into sim racing, but you are into other types of simulators like trucks and heavy equipment, the MOZA TSW Truck Wheel is perfect.

Even though MOZA was the first to release something like this, I’m glad they didn’t price it an insane amount. Only $299 for something that has this much functionality is a bargain compared to the usual $400+ that add-on steering wheels go for from other brands.

The desk clamp is a must if you’re a desk driver or don’t have an adjustable cockpit. It’s only an extra $49, and I think it’s very much worth it. I wouldn’t suggest using it in its default configuration though, integrating it into your rig or using an alternative configuration would be better so you don’t hurt yourself like I did.

The MOZA TSW Truck Wheel is the first dedicated truck simulator wheel with accurate dimensions for full trucking immersion. It boasts a 400mm rim size with lots of buttons, joysticks, and thumbwheels for all the functions you'll need to drive your virtual truck.

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