The shifter is the part a lot of people are questioning and unsure about, A lot of mixed reviews and impressions as well. The most notable thing that still holds true about it though is the build quality. It has the same good looks and build quality as the rest of the kit, it also has the mounting holes aswell for those of you with racing setups. Since there's a lack of buttons on the steering wheel (2 FYI), Its more than made up for it on the shifter. It has a D-pad 4 buttons, that are laid out the same as the X, triangle, square and circle buttons on the now infamous Dualshock 2 PS2 controller. I believe that they are mapped the same when you use the G25 on a PS2. It also has 4 red buttons along the bottom that can be mapped to whatever you want. Between this centre console bit and the actual shifter is a tidy looking switch, that switches between H-gate and sequential.

The H gate is all six gears and push-down reverse apparently this is very similar to the gearboxes of old-school classic sports cars and-Citroen 2CVs (I think). While its been asked so many times despite people reading over and over, Heres the answer: YES, IT IS A PROPER H-GATE GEAR SYSTEM, with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 all selectable when you feel like it. Should you have the desire too, you can go straight from 6th to 1st in one movement as you would with a real car. Though I believe real cars have a mesh or cog arrangement that stops mistakes and stupid people from doing this as it will kill your car. So the H-gate is proper and functional.

This though is where the greatness drops to great, while it is really nice to use and does feel good and rewarding to master in games you cant deny the fact it doesn't feel as solid as the rest of the set. It does feel quite delicate and has been the weak point of the wheel since day 1 with people breaking there's or it breaking within weeks or months of purchase.

It does have a really nice tactile feel and satisfying "click" as you put it into a gear. What's also a nice realistic touch is you can nudge it out of gear and it will ping into neutral position. I think the best and most accurate way to describe how it feels, is as you shift, the latch grabs it and pushes it against the tack switch, It really is quite a satisfying feeling but its far from realistic. It does the job nicely though and is really immersive. You'd have to be very fussy to fault it especially as it's the only mass-produced shifter available. It really is nice to use and looks smart on your desk. It complements the wheels and pedals very nicely.

Back to the weakest point and breakability of the shifter, I really do believe this is mostly because of the way people use it. When you finally get a chance to feel it you will realize how fragile it is and that you will have to take care when using it. I've seen videos of people on youtube yanking it almost off the desk. You can usually hear it louder than the car sounds of whatever game they are playing. People are generally very careless with it. I still get a lot of fun and satisfaction out of driving using the shifter. I really don't feel the need to actually yank the whole unit to change a gear. I've made sure I haven't been smashing it about and it still feels and works as solid as it did when I got it on December 25th 2006. You hear about people taking it back and complaining within weeks of purchase.

IT'S SIMPLE AS, TAKE CARE OF IT AND IT WILL LAST. Logitech have realized this and have made a lot of improvements to get round this as they are already aware it wasn't the strong point of the wheel in the first place. If you have a look inside the shifter and see all the workings you will appreciate what a brilliant piece of design it is and see how fragile it is too. Simply take care when using it, I just kept telling myself in my mind be easy with it and eventually it becomes a habit and you can shift quickly without thinking about it breaking.

You also have the ability to switch it to sequential gears, pull the stick down to shift up, push the stick forward to shift down. To change from H-gate to sequential, you just push down on the gear stick and turn the knob in the middle to the indicated sequential. I'm not entirely sure how this works, but it feels like it puts a metal plate making what would normally be 3rd and 4th up and down. It also doesn't lock into position when you pull it down, it springs back to neutral. So it's pretty much a perfect switch over from H-gate to sequential. It does work quite well, but it doesn't feel as tactile and confirming as the H-gate. Logitech were clever with this though and realized if you don't want to use it as a sequential gearbox, It makes a good handbrake.

The paddles on the steering wheel are numbered differently to the gears and in rally games it makes a world of difference and fun. I have gear up and gear down on the paddles and handbrake gear up on the sequential setting of the gearbox. So you pull the gear stick down to initiate the handbrake. It's very much like the hydraulic handbrakes in WRC cars and D1GP cars.