What it is
The Cube Controls CSX-3 is a 282mm formula wheel, hand-built in Italy, and it’s about as much wheel as you can strap to a base. Carbon fibre faceplate, a 4-inch 800x480 Vocore touchscreen, 17 individually customisable RGB LEDs, and north of 49 discrete inputs. The input count is almost silly when you sit and count them out: 12 backlit buttons, two 7-way hats, four traditional rotary encoders, two thumb rotaries, two scroll wheels set into the grips, and two backlit toggles. Magnetic shifters running Hall sensors, dual clutch paddles, and a new magnetic USB quick-connect cable.
At around $1,480 this is Cube Controls’ formula flagship, and it replaced the CSX2 with better shifters, SimHub-powered software in place of the old UGT app, and that magnetic cable.
Who it’s for
You’re the buyer if you want maximum input density with on-wheel telemetry in a formula shape. If you race prototypes, open-wheelers or complex formula cars in iRacing or rFactor 2 and you want every adjustment mapped to the wheel rather than reaching for a button box, the CSX-3 has more than enough to cover it.
The SimHub integration is the part I’d flag hardest. If you already run custom SimHub dashboards, the CSX-3 shows them natively on the touchscreen with the whole community dashboard library open to you. That’s a real edge over the rivals locked into their own proprietary software, and it’s why I’d point a serious tinkerer here over a prettier closed system.
In use
The grip depth is the first thing I noticed. The profile lets you wrap your whole hand around the handles, and you get better leverage under high-FFB cornering than the shallower wheels give you. The shifters are a clear step on from the CSX2, with a longer mechanism, less rotation in the throw, and a crisp, positive click through the billet aluminium and carbon fibre blades.
The magnetic USB cable is the kind of small upgrade you don’t think you care about until you have it. No more fighting a plastic connector behind the wheel; it clicks in cleanly and holds.
The per-button colour customisation earns its keep. Assign different colours to different function groups and your muscle memory in the dark gets a lot easier. The scroll wheels in the grips are handy for brake bias and traction control without taking your thumbs off the wheel face. And the touchscreen swipes between dashboard pages smoothly, with SimHub’s full library of pre-built layouts behind it.
What to watch out for
It’s not perfect, and at this money the flaws sting a little more. The screen bezel sits raised and recessed, and it looks more like an afterthought than the flush integration on the CSX2 and the GT-X series. In a high GT seating position the recess can partly block the screen, and at 4 inches and 800x480 the display does its job but won’t wow you next to the current best.
A few smaller ones. The toggle backlighting is fixed green, not customisable. The buttons can’t show true white, they come out pink, which looks like a software limit. Clutch bite-point adjustment has lost the hardware shortcut the CSX2 had, so you set it through a separate Cube Controls app rather than on the fly. The thumb rotary groove spacing is a touch too wide for consistent single-detent scrolling, and the rotary encoders don’t click down, which costs you a little mapping flexibility.
Verdict
The CSX-3 is the input-density champion, plain and simple. Nothing else I’ve used offers this many mappable controls in a formula shape with a SimHub-compatible touchscreen behind them. The shifter upgrade and the magnetic cable are clear wins over the CSX2. The screen integration and a handful of ergonomic niggles are what keep it off a perfect score. But if you need the inputs and you live in SimHub, this is the formula wheel to beat, and I say that having tried most of what it’s up against.