So, I really like Burnout Paradise. I love just driving around the city setting new speed records for others to try and beat. I enjoy it so much I decided to pony up the $100 to get the Microsoft Wireless Racing Wheel but when I got to GameStop there was another option: the Logitech DriveFX, and it was $50 cheaper. “What’s the difference?” I asked. “The Logitech one isn’t wireless.”

I looked at the box and thought… “For $50 I don’t care about wireless.” And, Logitech tends to make good hardware. Then I got it home and found its fatal flaw. You can’t hold it in your lap. It’s got these two clamps that allow you to easily clamp it to a table. The only problem is that everyone I know only has a coffee table, about knee-high, in their living room. This means you’d have to lean over it like an adult crammed into a kids go-kart. Then there’s the pedals. Where are you supposed to put the pedals? You can’t sit on a couch, pull a coffee table close enough to use a steering wheel clamped to it, and then somehow put your legs out under it. You’d need to add a backwards knee half way down your shin.

The clamps don’t come off, and stick out uncomfortably from the bottom. Even if i was willing to dismantle the thing to get them off it’s not wide enough to really sit on your lap so you’d have to clamp it between your thighs which would get really uncomfortable really fast. If you try and set it on your legs, instead of between them, there’s nothing in the design to hold it steady so it’ll just keep shifting around.

It’s going back tomorrow and I’m shelling out the extra $50 for the Microsoft one, which can optionally clamp to a table but is designed to sit on your lap. Thus putting the steering wheel where you need it and the pedals out at the end of your extended legs, just like oh, I dunno… a car maybe?