CAMMUS C5 Direct Drive Racing Wheel and CP5 Pedals
design
In a rather contradictory way there’s a lot to discuss with the design of the Cammus C5, while actually not having a huge amount to pick apart and there’s an element of guesswork involved too. Cammus is far from forthcoming with a lot of detailed specifications for the C5, the product pages on both Amazon and Cammus’ own website are noticeably lacking in information which doesn’t give off the greatest of impressions.
The wheel itself is a deceptively sneaky little unit, at first glance the Cammus C5 is a pretty basic looking thing that bar a flash of coloured trim at the top, does little to set itself apart from competitors. The 28cm flat bottomed wheel is wrapped in what I assume to be PU leather that feels fine to hold and is soft enough to remain comfortable for longer racing sessions. The inside stitching is neat and while not the smoothest, wasn’t harsh enough to cause me much discomfort when racing barehanded. There is a small amount of profiling along the crossbar for those taking quite a wide grip, but in practice I didn’t feel it particularly supporting my thumbs and wouldn’t have known it was there without looking.
The large central face of the Cammus C5 carries a faux carbon fibre texture that looks elegant enough, along with a suite of plain black plastic buttons and rotary encoders, a small screen and a set of LED rev lights. I found a good number of the 16 buttons were within reach without adjusting my hand position, though only the direction and ABCD buttons carry any kind of labelling. There’s also no backlighting which leaves you relying heavily on muscle memory and guesswork in darker setups. The buttons themselves are OK with a short travel and tactile click, but are noticeably mushier than the mechanical inputs on something like the MOZA R12 and with a bit of wobble on each.
The three rotary encoders lack any kind of positioning information except for a small notch in their mould, which without backlighting, means they don’t offer a huge amount of information at a quick glance. I understand that backlighting is the kind of feature that may stray the Cammus C5 too far away from its budget friendly goal, but other wheels like the Thrustmaster EVO 32L achieve some level of visual data with a simple sticker so there are cheaper options Cammus could have employed. The dials themselves offer a nice amount of resistance however and I didn’t find any issue with accidentally overshooting while making adjustments on the fly.
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Around the back of the Cammus C5 is a pair of the most comically small plastic paddle shifters I’ve ever tested on a sim racing wheel. Seriously, it’s like they forgot to put the actual paddles on and these are just the internal mounts. They’re just four centimetres long and mounted much too close to the back of the wheel itself for my liking, making them almost unusable and definitely uncomfortable as a result. It’s confusing because there’s space for Cammus to have played with here, I can’t find a logical reason they needed to be this tiny and it’s not like an extra gram or two of plastic was going to blow the budget.
It may seem like I’m finding a lot of fault here, but truth be told these shortcomings are quickly explained away by the C5’s low price point, and it’s something to bear in mind across the board. The Cammus C5 is admirably cheap for a direct drive wheel and ultimately something is going to have to give in order to make that possible. After all, I’d rather a direct drive wheel with no backlights than a belt-driven Christmas tree.
Comical paddles aside, it’s the back of the Cammus C5 is where things get impressively interesting. Integrated into the rear housing of the wheel is a 5Nm direct drive motor that’s just 3cm deep. The wheel itself rotates around this static back panel that features a large integrated fan and ignoring any depth added by the cables that also mount here, makes the Cammus C5 just 8cm front to back. When you consider the Logitech G Pro wheel rim alone is nearly 14cm deep, plus a connector and a further 30cm for the base, it’s a remarkable achievement. The all-metal hardware feels far more premium than the C5 price tag suggests and makes the unit surprisingly heavy overall.
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Cammus offers a simple yet fiddly mounting bracket for the C5 and while it’s not actually included in the box, it’s not possible to buy the C5 itself without it. Official called the CS5 Desk Clamp and despite what Cammus told me during testing, I also needed to use this hardware in order to bolt the C5 to my Playseat Trophy racing seat. The pair of arms that attach directly to the back of the C5 wheel itself do line up with standard holes in the Trophy mounting plate, though they fouled the included cable connections in any position I tried. I’m sure you could get around this with your own right-angled cables but out of the box you’ll need to use the extra space provided by the angled CS5 clamp. It’s solid metal and sturdy though, both bolted directly to the Playseat or using the clamp on my desk as intended I was happy with how secure the wheel felt and the range of customisation in angle built into the frame is a nice touch.
On the Cammus website you’re given two options for buying the C5 – with or without the CP5 pedals. Unless you absolutely must and have no other option, please don’t go with the CP5 pedals as they do the experience as a whole a complete injustice. They’re flimsy, under-featured and just all round basic. The C5 wheel gets so much right as a budget offering, the CP5 pedals get everything wrong. Cammus does offer a more impressive looking pedal set, the LC100s, though I’ve not had a chance to go hands (feet) on with those.
performance
Until you’ve used a direct drive racing wheel, the step up from a belt or gear driven option is honestly hard to fully appreciate. It’s a night and day difference not only in realism, but also immersion and overall car control. It’s what makes the Cammus C5 such an exciting new addition to the market for me because it’s bringing a direct drive entrance point to the budget-minded masses. Everyone deserves direct drive, regardless of how much they have to spend and the C5 is trying to make that possible.
I’m pleased to say, despite a couple of caveats, the Cammus C5 is an excellent direct drive racing wheel for beginners and amateurs. The 5Nm of torque on offer provides enough oomph to fight you through corners and big moments without ripping your desk to pieces in the process. Don’t be sucked in by top-level options offering forces up to 25Nm in some cases, more isn’t always better in this situation, particularly for home racers and 5Nm is already double the maximum force of the non-direct drive G923 anyway.
The Cammus C5 offers a good amount of detail in force feedback, though admittedly this is an area where more expensive wheels like the MOZA R12 or Logitech G Pro do start to pull away. There’s enough there to get a sense of what’s going on under the car, particularly when moving between obvious surface changes like track to grass or gravel, but it does lack some of the finer nuance of others. Again though, and I’ll keep saying it, it’s a night and day improvement over a belt-driven wheel and this is a budget wheel, it’s not meant to be a market leader in this area.
I’m going to start from the bottom and work up in terms of specific game performance, so stick with me, it only gets better from here.
I’m primarily an F1 sim racer, you’ll find me logging most of my laps in EA Sports F1 24 but in my testing this was the kind of racing the Cammus C5 was least successful at. Here comes that disclaimer again, it’s considerably better to play F1 24 with the C5 than a non-direct drive wheel, but it never had me feeling properly connected to my McLaren MCL38 as I lapped around Silverstone. Regardless of my configuration in the Cammus app, the C5 always felt like it was trying to pull the wheel back to centre with a rubber band, it was an odd sensation. The first 30 degrees or so of turn in each direction had a different feeling than angles beyond that which started to feel more realistic. It made navigating fast, sweeping corners surprisingly tricky and I always felt at risk of losing the car, whereas slower, sharper corners felt much more responsive.
In titles like Forza Motorsport and EA WRC however, the Cammus C5 felt far more at home on track and came alive. In road cars this wheel is superb to use and one I can easily recommend, movements felt genuine with a serious step up in realism compared to something like a Logitech G920. There was plenty of torque and force feedback coursing through the C5 and it became a wonderfully fun wrestle at times while rallying in EA WRC. I can’t help but feel the Cammus C5 is tailored for this broader style of racing than the more specific, extreme downforce of Formula 1, and that’s totally fine.
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It wasn’t until late on in my testing that I remembered something pretty major; the Cammus C5 is delivering all of this enjoyment as an all-in-one unit. For all intents and purposes it’s just a wheel, and that’s pretty remarkable. I’m fortunate to have a dedicated sim racing setup so size isn’t a major concern for me, but for an entry level racer to be able to get this kind of performance out of a unit so compact and having made just one purchase (or two, if you take my advice about the pedals) is really exciting. I’m not sure every brand is going to suddenly compress their wheelbase into a wheel rim, but I’m sure Cammus won’t end up being the only one. It’s a great system.
As is so often the case though, you’ll need to be willing to compromise in a few areas as a tradeoff for the lower price point a challenger brand can bring. For the Cammus C5 in my testing, this largely meant needing to manually configure every button and action in each game I tried. It’s a one time thing in each title and native compatibility is improving all the time (F1 24 specifically notes added compatibility for the C5 in Patch 1.6, for example), but unlike more established brands this is rarely a plug and play wheel.
You’ll also need to put up with a pretty rough around the edges native app and firmware update process. Everything works, it just lacks the polish you’d see from the app of a more established brand. Some messages are less than helpful in their wording and it all feels a little janky to try and configure. I also felt like making setup adjustments in the Cammus app resulted in only minor changes to actual feel, even with huge swings in an individual setting. These are software issues though, and we can forgive software issues because they can, and usually are, being improved all the time.
summed up
There is so much to applaud with the Cammus C5 and with Cammus’ approach to things as a whole. The idea of a combined wheelbase and wheel is an excellent one, the engineering that’s clearly gone in to making it happen so successfully is admirable. Not only that, they’ve managed to create it at a price point that has the C5 sit right at the lower end of the sim racing market.
This isn’t a gimmick, this is a genuinely good direct drive racing wheel for newer sim racers. No, it’s not going to compete with the likes of a MOZA R12, but it’s also half the price of that wheelbase alone. The Cammus C5 delivers enjoyment and value in spades and is well worth investing in.
