Asetek Forte Wheelbase Review

Asetek Forte Wheelbase Video Review

I’ve used the La Prima, I’ve used the Invicta, time to meet in the middle and try the Forte. At around £900 including tax, it sits far below the £1300 Invicta but a fair way above the £650 La Prima. Is the 18nm Forte worth the extra over the La Prima, will you regret not shooting for the moon with the Invicta, and is Asetek the best fit for you? Hopefully, I can answer all of that.

Before we get into it, please be aware that Asetek has provided the Forte wheelbase free of charge in exchange for review, but this is a review, not an ad, all words are my own. I’ve criticized Asetek fairly in the past, they’re not sensitive, I wouldn’t collaborate with any brand that was. Please read the review in full, but if you do proceed to buy, you’ll find links and discounts for various Asetek retailers below.

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Full reseller list (not affiliate links): https://www.asetek.com/simsports/authorized-resellers

The best way to describe Asetek is that they have successfully combined serious force feedback, a decently sized but easy ecosystem, and flawless software, topped off with a CEO that loves to get involved, and all of that makes them a fairly appealing choice. They market themselves quite strongly, and sometimes when a company does, you could be fooled into thinking it’s to overcompensate for an average product, but that’s not the case, they have a genuinely convincing lineup and seem to be passionate about all this. They still have their clangers, believe me, the button colour kit was just unacceptable, the LMP handles are still bad even after a revised design, but on the whole, they’re doing really well.

The Forte then is the middle option wheelbase, between the lower tier La Prima and range-topping Invicta. Middle is the wrong word to use here, for some other brands 18nm is almost equivalent to the top option, so it’s a mistake to frame the Forte this way. I’m testing this after using VRS’s 20nm DirectForce Pro for a long time, so I’ll have a great reference to go by.

One of Asetek’s big strengths and weaknesses is the quick release connection - it works great to allow very quick and very solid wheel connections which feel super tight, but these QR pins are fragile, one careless or sloppy move and you could crumple them, which will require one of these replacement boards to fix, so take Asetek’s advice and keep the plastic cover on until you’re ready to connect a wheel.

Mounting an Asetek wheelbase is slightly unique in nature, there are multiple official mounts available from Asetek, but the only reason they exist is because Asetek decided not to follow the established bolt patterns of Logitech or Fanatec or any of the older more prevalent brands. This is annoying and an unnecessary extra consideration to make, one that you do forget about once it’s all installed, but still, I consider it a mistake on their part not to have made an effort to follow established patterns because it adds hassle and cost.

The front mount is pretty cool but expensive, the bottom mount I’m using here is just a flat plate and still costs a fair whack, GT Omega has their own Asetek adapter plate for £15 which does allow you to mount an Asetek wheelbase using existing holes intended for Fanatec and the likes, so if you’re looking for the cheapest possible way to mount it, there’s that.

Power and Safety Stop switches are included, these are mounted off to the side but there’s nothing stopping you choosing where they go, within reason. Be aware that the light they emit can’t be turned off, the power switch is also required to switch the base on or off, there is no onboard power button anywhere on the wheelbase so don’t lose them.

Finally, good news if you have accessories, modules, flag boxes, etc., the Forte and Invicta wheelbases have an integrated USB hub at the rear, this is a very useful benefit and shouldn’t be overlooked.

Once mounted up and connected, the power button stands the wheelbase to attention and the LED sidebars slide into life. Asetek’s RaceHub software is excellent, it’s so nice and reassuring that it actually reinforces that feeling that you’ve made the right choice, it feels premium and it makes the hardware feel premium as a result. All of the Forte wheelbase’s attributes and effects are found here, and all are explained in plain terms you can understand.

Here a Forte formula wheel is connected to the base, and together you can alter the LED configurations, so you can change the color of pretty much any of the onboard lights, or choose from one of the idle modes to make the rig feel like it’s up to something when you’re not using it, some of these effects are outrageous and I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy, some of them are nice, I hope one day we’ll get the option to customize and program these effects ourselves. Nonetheless, these effects demonstrate the flexibility of the LEDs onboard, and as they are currently something fairly unique to Asetek, we’ll come back to these later.

So when it comes to driving, what is an Asetek wheelbase like to use? To answer this question, I will typically begin as I always do, in iRacing with zero damping or filtering, just the pure force feedback with nothing to round off the edges.

Upon turning my first lap with the Forte, one thing struck me. I forgot how boisterous and sharp Asetek’s force feedback is. Kerb strikes and suspension shocks feel bigger and harsher here than with any other wheelbase I’ve tried. Mid-corner weight transfer is great, as expected, but definitely the biggest difference I feel with an Asetek base is the intensity of the surrounding activity. In fact, with the Forte I feel like I’m going to have to do something I don’t usually have to do, and that’s add damping and reduce the slew rate. Whatever Asetek does with the force feedback behind the scenes, it seems to want to exaggerate the hard shocks and amplify things. The cars aren’t real, yet I actually feel sympathy for the suspension whenever cutting over kerbs or rumble strips. Maybe it’s not the cars I feel sorry for, but my own bones and muscles. I feel like I am being trained to avoid slapping the edges of kerbs, like Pavlov’s dog.

In LMU, where the force feedback is incredibly active and detailed, the sentiment continues. It’s very bumpy, lumpy, sharp, and detailed, though at times almost overwhelming and you’ll want to turn that wheelbase acceleration rate down.

Hearing this will elicit one of two feelings from you, you’ll either consider that great news or it won’t sound like your kind of fun. You can certainly calm things down by adjusting force feedback settings, so no need to fear. I’ve added a splash of damping and inertia, as well as curtailing the overall force down to 15nm, reducing the frequency and cutting the torque acceleration rate down to a mere 1Nm/ms (the Forte is capable of 6.7Nm/ms) all in an effort to tame the signal somewhat, and it does the trick. There are also a couple of things missing from the Racehub software which I now think could be needed, one is a smoothing slider, and one is a force feedback equalizer like what Moza has. Adding smoothing and damping in any big way is unthinkable to me on most other wheelbases, but something about the Forte feels like it’s trying to hit me with as much intensity as possible all the time. I like strong, sharp espressos, but only one a day.

And here’s another thought, one which could be totally in my head but I’ll say it anyway. The La Prima felt exceptionally agile and crisp, the Invicta felt powerful and unstoppable, but the Forte seems to have all of those things. It’s a shorter wheelbase than the Invicta so perhaps there’s a little less internal magnetic viscosity and resistance in the wheelbase itself, so to speak, which gives it that lightweight and agile feeling, maybe it’s all just my imagination and I hope there are no electrical engineers in here because that probably sounds hilarious, but I am convinced of it.

However, no one base seems to nail everything and one potential negative I notice is the presence of some stepping or cogging in the wheel when swishing it side to side. If you don’t know what this means, in plain and simple terms it simply means it doesn’t feel as smooth as it could during big, wide steering movements under load, such as when weaving during warm-up laps. In a nutshell, it’s strong, sharp, and fast, but I found it wasn’t necessarily silky smooth all the time. I certainly perceive my previous wheelbase, the VRS DirectForce Pro, as a smoother drive. Remember though that reviewing direct drives is feistily slippery and subjective, and in the pursuit of trying to describe the tiniest differences between them all, it can lead to small volumes of complete drivel, I could just be imagining it. The one overarching truth that cannot be denied is that Asetek Wheelbases are serious.

So naturally it only makes sense that if you’re Asetek and you have a very boisterous and sharp wheelbase with one of the most intense interpretations of force feedback I know of so far, then you should of course decorate it with pretty lights.

The active LED strips on the side are to be enjoyed in or out of the rig, or not at all if you turn them off. I have mine set to the Aurora theme when I’m not racing and to be fair, it does make the rig look a bit more enticing and attention-grabbing in a somewhat classy way.

During racing, however, I will say the same thing I said when I was testing the Invicta. The light bars are not obviously useful, because you can’t see them all that well from your seat. There are cases when they may be handy, but on the whole, it’s almost as though they’re not meant for you; they’re just meant to make the rig look more interesting from the outside, to observers. I think the potential of Asetek’s active LED system is untapped, because wouldn’t it be great to have these features, but in a light bar you could actually position according to your own wishes?

So to touch upon the ecosystem, because a wheelbase can be a lot less desirable without good stuff to put on it, like how Logitech’s new DD was hamstrung for over a year due to lack of accessories. You won’t have much trouble here; Asetek has a broad, varied, and deeply customizable array of fairly good value wheels you can attach to your base. The Forte formula wheel with rubber handles would be my personal recommendation, but if you want to put a third-party wheel onto it, you can do so quite nicely with the thoughtful Invicta quick release, featuring its own integrated USB port to keep third-party cables as low profile and tidy as possible. Broadly speaking, despite Asetek having a big ecosystem of its own with multiple wheels and types, they make no attempt to keep you on reservation, and in fact, make it more convenient than most to attach other brands.

Final thoughts - I like the Forte the most out of the three Asetek wheelbases because I think it brings together the best that both the La Prima and Invicta have to offer, whilst sitting between them in price. It feels like it has the lightness, crispness, fine detail, and low inertia of the La Prima wheelbase, but with a level of power and might that’s effectively indistinguishable from the Invicta for most people in most scenarios. Pretty much everyone will never justifiably yearn for more force than the Forte can give, and yet it delivers it with the intensity of a bar brawl on fast forward. It might be the middle option, but there’s nothing middle about it whatsoever; it’s excellent and is a good example of Asetek backing up the big marketing claims with genuine quality stuff.