Last updated: September 6th, 2023
Today we’re taking a close look at the XF1-Sport sim racing wheel from Leoxz. Leoxz, founded by Leo Evans and his team in 2020 are a sim racing equipment manufacturer producing an offering of sim racing wheels, a brand new DDU and various accessories. The XF1-Sport is their mid-range product, available in a 2,4 or 6-paddle configuration. As you can see from the photos, I’ve been sent the 6-paddle wheel by our friends at Raceanywhere.
Initial impressions
I’ve opened up many new sim racing wheels for review in the last few months. I think first impressions really count – made the moment you lift the wheel out of its box, you realise how compact the main chassis is and, how little it weighs.
It’s small and light and looks very neat and tidy. In fact, the wheel diameter is 275mm which is the smallest diameter racing wheel I’ve tried in the sim.
Ergonomics
Holding the wheel, you notice the ergonomics immediately. The thumb rotaries are so ideally positioned (for me) – Leoxz couldn’t have got this more right. While I mentioned the wheel is small, the polyurethane grips are nice. They have a silky smooth feeling but they’re very grippy my sim racing gloves on.
I like the grip design, particularly the way the design incorporates a slightly raised “rest” for your thumb that you can lean on while you’re using the paddles. You notice how useful that tiny design detail is, especially while shifting and using the top “option” paddles.
The shifter paddles have been positioned so that they line up with your 2nd and 3rd middle fingers, leaving your forefinger free for the “option” paddles at the top of the wheel. I found myself preferring the option paddles for the clutch rather than the lower paddles. As I understand it, some modern F1 cars have a clutch paddle above the shifter paddle too.
Features and Pricing
The wheel comes standard with a pair of magnetic shifter paddles, and optionally, you can equip it with a pair of clutch and two additional “option” paddles. These are all hall sensing and feel good to use. If you add more paddles, the price increases – so at the base package level, this wheel retails at approximately €499.95. For what this wheel is, I think that is a very good budget option. If you want to spend less, the XF1-USB is available at approximately €399.95.
Reaching the 3 momentary buttons at the top of the wheel is comfortable, as are the two buttons directly under the thumb rotary. Further down the wheel, the remaining buttons below being a slight reach – although I found I got used to this very quickly. There’s a nice little 4 axis joystick that also acts as a push button for the right hand.
How it Looks
As I mentioned earlier, the design is very compact but neatly arranged and tidy. The back cover and paddles feature black anodized CNC machining, while the front panel is fashioned from 5mm 3K carbon fibre. The paddles are made from 3mm 3K carbon fibre.
There are 15 momentary push buttons, 1 x 5-way switch (4 axes + push), 3 pressable rotary encoders, and two metal blue anodized thumb knobs, which as I mentioned earlier are really nicely positioned.
Mounted in the centre of this wheel is a 4.3″ IPS screen, with a resolution of 480×272 pixels rendering at 60fps. The screen hosts 15 built-in dashboards, each displaying various telemetry signals.
Installation and Use
The screen is bright and clear and offers a crisp, colourful display that is easy to read, navigate and configure. In fact, I say “configure” but this version uses the Leoxz SimBridge plugin that comes with Simhub – so it actually needs no configuration at all – you can page through the various dashboards with the little buttons mounted on the front of the wheel. Very easy!
Leoxz Simbridge takes care of the device setup including managing the display screen which means that there’s no need to install device drivers of any sort. As a Formula wheel with a built-in display, this is quite a refreshing feature – usually, every wheel requires a driver and Simhub configuration.
SimBridge is remarkably powerful in its simplicity – if you can’t see the SimBridge plugin active in your left hand menu in SimHub, you can activate it via settings > plugins:
The wheel can come with no QR hub or QRs to fit most of the popular direct-drive wheels including wheelbases from Fanatec, Thrustmaster, Moza and Simagic. For Fanatec and Thrustmaster users, the correct QR hub draws power from the wheelbase, so provided your gaming PC supports Bluetooth, you can go completely wireless. That’s an extremely attractive option, particularly for a Fanatec user who wants to buy a wheel from outside of their ecosystem.
As you’ll note from the photography, I’ve installed an SQR hub and for reference, the drilled M6 bolt holes are 70mm PCD on the rear of the wheel.
The RGB LEDs are preset controlled too. There are 12 fixed colour RPM LEDs (4 each of green, red, and blue) and 6 RGB flag LEDs. Four additional status LEDs are included, specifically designed for indicating ABS and TC. This is ideal, leaving only spotter lights missing from the list – which you can easily solve by adding standalone LED eyebrows.
Conclusion
For the price, this wheel is incredibly competitive compared to similarly priced gear from other, bigger manufacturers. If you’re solely interested in Formula racing then this wheel is compelling – the narrow diameter definitely lends itself to Formula racing. I think especially if you’re looking for a wheel that will work quickly and easily with a Fanatec DD wheel, but you don’t want to buy your next wheel from Fanatec – this is a very interesting option.
At this price, the XF1 Sport really is an impressive and quite adventurous offering, and well worth a look if you’re looking for functionality on a budget.