Thrustmaster T300 RS GT review: the console sweet spot

The T300 platform has been Thrustmaster's mid-range workhorse since 2014, and the GT Edition is its most complete form: an 11-inch GT-style rim with a brushed-metal centre spoke, rubber-textured grips, and the full PlayStation button cluster laid out where your thumbs actually rest. Nothing about it is flashy — and that's rather the point. This is a tool that has outlived three console generations because the fundamentals were right the first time.

The base is large but undramatic: a matte black housing with the servo motor up front and a 1080° steering axis behind it — three full turns lock-to-lock, auto-scaled per game, so a Formula car gets its darty 360° while a truck sim can wind on armfuls of lock. Under the shell, the parts that matter are genuinely engineered: a brushless servomotor pushing close to 25 watts, a dual-belt transmission, and Thrustmaster's H.E.A.R.T contactless magnetic sensors reading the steering position at 16-bit resolution — 65,536 discrete values, with no potentiometers to scratch or drift over the years.

Build quality lands exactly where the price says it should: the rim and paddles feel a class above the plasticky entry tier, while the base's fan and slightly dated button styling remind you this isn't the 40-watt T-GT II. At 2026 prices — indicatively AED 1,299–1,499 in the Gulf — that trade reads as fair.

Out of the box you get the wheel, base, the T3PA-GT three-pedal set, and a built-in clamp that fits desks and tables without tools. On PS5 the handshake is as simple as console peripherals get: plug in, press the PS button on the rim, and GT7 recognises it with sensible default force-feedback settings. On PC, Thrustmaster's driver panel unlocks rotation, force and spring adjustments per title.

Two Gulf-specific notes from living with it. First, give the base breathing room — its cooling fan works harder in a 26°C majlis than in a European winter, and boxing it into a tight shelf makes it audible sooner. Second, buy the console-specific SKU: the T300 RS GT is a PlayStation/PC product. It will not authenticate on Xbox, and no adapter changes that — Xbox racers want the TX Leather Edition, its platform twin.

This is the section that decides the purchase, so let's be precise about what the T300 does and doesn't give you. Force feedback quality has three ingredients: strength (how hard the motor can pull), smoothness (whether forces arrive as clean torque or notchy steps), and detail (how small an effect survives the journey from game physics to your hands). Gear-driven wheels are strong but grainy. Direct drive is everything, at a price. Belt drive is the compromise that made sim racing affordable — and the T300 is the best-sorted belt system in its bracket.

In practice: the dual belts filter out the cogging you feel in a gear wheel, so self-centering is a continuous, elastic pull rather than a ratchet. Kerb strikes arrive as sharp, distinct thumps instead of generalized buzz. And because the brushless motor holds its output without fading, hour three of a Nordschleife session feels like minute one — no thermal droop, no fatigue in the effects.

The included T3PA-GT set gives you three full-size metal-faced pedals with a conical rubber brake mod in the box — a real advantage over two-pedal starter sets, because heel-and-toe downshifts and left-foot braking are on the menu from day one. The throttle and clutch are light and progressive; the brake is the honest weak point. It measures travel rather than pressure, so consistent trail-braking takes practice that a load-cell pedal would simply hand you.

The good news is the upgrade path is native: Thrustmaster's T-LCM load-cell set plugs straight into the base, and it's the single biggest lap-time upgrade a T300 owner can buy. Budget for it in year two; you don't need it on day one.

Here's the argument that separates the T300 from every same-priced rival: the base is a platform, not a product. Rotate the locking collar and the GT rim comes off; in its place you can mount Thrustmaster's Ferrari F1 rim for open-wheel racing, the Sparco R383 for rally, a leather 28GT for grand touring — the add-on catalogue runs deeper than some brands' entire product lines. The TH8A H-pattern shifter and TSS handbrake bolt onto the same base for drift and rally builds.

That matters financially. A G923 owner who outgrows their wheel replaces everything. A T300 owner who falls for rally buys a rim and a handbrake, and the base — with its no-wear magnetic sensors — just keeps going. It's the difference between buying a wheel and buying into a system, and it's why the T300 keeps winning value verdicts a decade after launch.

Two things to know before you buy. The fan is audible under sustained load in a warm room — not intrusive with game audio on, but present in quiet menus, and Gulf summers make it work. And while the belt system itself is famously durable, the base wants ventilation; treat it like a games console, not a book-end. Balanced against that: the H.E.A.R.T sensors are contactless, so the most common failure mode of older wheels — scratchy, drifting potentiometers — simply doesn't exist here. Our long-term view, echoed by a decade of community use: this platform outlasts the consoles it's plugged into.

Against the Logitech G923 (AED 999–1,199): the T300 wins the driving — clearly — while the G923 answers with a tank-grade build and tri-platform coverage. The full round-by-round is in our T300 vs G923 head-to-head. Inside the lineup: the T248 saves roughly AED 400 and adds a race dashboard screen, at the cost of hybrid-drive smoothness; the T-GT II is the same idea executed with a 40-watt motor and Gran Turismo-native controls for nearly double the money; and the T818 is the PC flagship — 10 N·m of unfiltered direct drive that makes every belt wheel feel polite. The T300 RS GT is the balance point of the range, and that balance is exactly why it's the default recommendation.