Simgrade VX PRO Pedals – Detailed Review

Adjustability:

There’s a huge amount of adjustment on these pedals, and most of it is shared across all three. Physical positioning is covered first. Loosen two nuts and bolts and the pedal plate slides up or down by 14mm. Loosen two more and each pedal reclines by 8.5 degrees. Other pedal sets offer more angle adjustment than this, but most rigs have an adjustable pedal plate anyway, so we don’t see it as a deal breaker. Just check it against your own setup.

All three pedals have preload adjustment, which sets the tension on the spring at rest. Keep enough on to hold the spring captive, otherwise the assembly flops around. The adjusters are a little awkward to reach, but the effect on feel isn’t profound. Preload changes how much force it takes to get the pedal moving rather than its stiffness through the stroke, so it’s mostly set-and-forget.

Stiffness is where the design gets clever. Each pedal has rails with a series of divots that capture the spring’s bearings, and the higher you move the spring, the stiffer the pedal becomes. It’s completely tool-less once you back off the preload, though it’s a little awkward with the stiffer springs, and we never had the spring jump into another position unintentionally. At the top position it’s almost like pushing against a brick wall. At the bottom, with the super-soft blue spring, it becomes extremely vague. It’s one of the more innovative designs we’ve seen on load cell pedals over the years. A stiffer replacement throttle spring is also available, and because the springs are standard ISO 10243 die springs, you can fit any matching spring, softer or stronger.

The brake adds a two-stage system aimed at threshold braking. For sim racing, a consistent threshold point you can hit every time, then modulate around, is the most important characteristic of a brake pedal. In most sims other than ACC, we’d set it mechanically at about 80% braking force. Inside the brake’s spring stack, a set of plastic spacers bottoms out before the spring is fully compressed. Past that point, you’re pushing directly against the load cell with very little movement, which lets you modulate the brake very accurately. You can tune where it happens by adding washers or removing spacers, and the effect is far more pronounced with a soft spring.

Between the preload, the spring position, the second stage and the spring options, the brake can go from a very sloppy street car pedal to the brick wall you’d find in a lot of formula cars. Importantly, it does that without elastomers. Not every elastomer brake fails, but we’ve seen a lot of failures over long periods, and elastomers soften as they warm up. Springs weaken over time too, but in our opinion they provide a more reliable and stable braking platform than elastomers ever will. That sets the VX-PRO apart from most pedal sets we’ve tested. The only other one that comes close in that regard is the VRS pedal set.

The clutch has a rollover characteristic built into the curve of its profile. It starts stiff, softens at the bite point, then stiffens again, much like many real cars. Alternative plates with a flatter profile are included in the box, so you can have a more or less pronounced rollover. Moving a bolt between two holes sets maximum or reduced throw, and a second set of holes changes it again.

The throttle’s throw is adjusted with shims that slide in after loosening two bolts. The two sides aren’t connected and have no notches, so it’s easy to set them slightly offset. If you do, the pedal tends to twist at full travel, which isn’t good for the bearings. Fixed holes would offer less scope, but they’d make that mistake much less likely. On all three pedals, you can also remove a plastic cover for a little extra travel. We didn’t need it, as the default settings were pretty much bang on for our preferences.

The catch is the washers mentioned earlier. Day-to-day adjustments are relatively tool-less, but anything involving the shims is clumsy, and fitting the brake kit was quite challenging. If you’re constantly changing settings between cars, these probably aren’t the pedals for you. Other sets offer a similar amount of adjustability, though not more, and make it a lot more straightforward.