The Thrustmaster F1 Wireless Gamepad has clearly been designed with racing fans in mind. It certainly looks the part, and it's an official Ferrari product.

Unfortunately looks aren't everything and the product itself feels a bit cheap and insubstantial, a far cry from the quality and precision of cars bearing the Ferrari logo.

It's the buttons that let the Thrustmaster F1 Wireless Gamepad down, as they don't offer the same solid resistance that you get from some of the better gamepads.

The feel of a gamepad is so essential that it is such a shame that the Thrustmaster F1 Wireless Gamepad is let down by this.

In other respects this gamepad is very good. Its shape is modelled on Sony's DualShock controllers, and while it might be a design that isn't to everyone's taste it works perfectly well here.

It's also wireless and compatible with both the PC and PS3, and if you look around you can find it for a bit cheaper than Sony's official controller.

You can also configure the buttons for better control, although two of the buttons (R2 and L2) are positioned in a place that makes them uncomfortable to use, therefore making them all but useless.

You might be forgiven for thinking at first glance that this is an official Xbox 360 controller.

The shape and design are almost completely identical, and the build quality is absolutely top-notch. There are a few subtle differences however, which prove to be extremely important in separating the Razer Onza Tournament Edition from Microsoft's offering.

To begin with the D-pad is much improved and is actually useable - something that Microsoft's official controller can't boast. This is essential not only for 2D platformers, but also for fighting games.

Another great addition is the glowing face buttons that can help to make gaming in the dark - or low light levels - a lot easier.

The Razer Onza Tournament Edition also comes with two buttons carefully placed at the back of the pad that can be used to re-calibrate on the fly. You can also twist the analogue thumb sticks to tweak their sensitivity without pausing your game.

The gamepad itself feels incredibly comfortable, using the same ergonomic design as the official Xbox 360 pad. It's quite a bit lighter, as well - due to the lack of wireless functionality removing the need for batteries.

While it would have been nice to have it wireless, the long cord goes some way to compensating for this.

Mouse and keyboard control is very handy in strategy and FPS gaming. Try as they might, console kids with speedy thumbs will struggle to beat hardened mouse-aimers to the draw.

Sacred as the native PC peripherals are though, gamepads have superseded them in sports and racing games, such is the lure of analog sticks and triggers, and feeling the sickening vibration when you hit the bar or write off your car.

SpeedLink's Strike FX is a PS3-alike pad that appears to have been designed by Lucian Freud himself.

The aesthetic difference to the official PS3 pad is subtle, but something about it suggests SpeedLink wants you to play games where you walk in straight lines through grey corridors.

It's fairly comfy, contoured at the rear around your fingers. The L2 and R2 buttons are also shaped around your trigger finger, and this beats most PS3 pads in that you don't constantly feel about to slip off.

However there's a smaller angle between zero and maximum depression, so you lose a little in racing games in terms of easing the accelerator and brakes.

Wireless functionality is nearly as good as the £35 official pad. The Strike FX turns itself off very quickly if left idle, saving battery but occasionally annoying during long cut-scenes.

But on the whole we don't have any major grumbles with this pad.

Everybody's hands are different and yet so many gamepads still manage to feel comfortable to hold for many different people. The Grandias, though, is certainly not one of them.

The instant you pick it up you can feel the lack of quality; reaching the thumbsticks stretches your opposable digits to their limits making small movements an unreasonably tricky thing. The tiny, slippy nubbins on the end of the sticks do nothing to help in the heat of the game either.

Switching to the D-pad isn't going to help, as that feels about as responsive as using your mouse on a baking tray full of custard. Lazy analogy I know, but hardly as lazy as the design attempts that went into making the Grandias.

For the same amount of money you can pick up one of the official Xbox 360 controllers, a far superior pad in so many ways. For another tenner you can buy one of the excellent, fully wireless Xbox 360 controllers, complete with wilreless receiver.

About the only positive thing I can say about the Grandias is that the buttons aren't hideously unresponsive and the wireless connection works.

I pity the poor folk whose loved ones, tasked with buying them a wireless pad for a birthday, get lumbered with one of these. That's the only way these will get sold: by mistake.

Having toyed with the Grandias joypad I was expecting very little joy from Genius' latest force feedback joystick. But it's not bad. Unfortunately, that's about as high as I can go with the praise for this feat of engineering.

The build quality isn't the highest, as I've come to expect this month from Genius products, but what it does, it does adequately. Even though, it feels entirely too lightweight and plastic, it comes with a few neat additions which I didn't necessarily expect.

The shaft-fan is incredibly loud, but for the long flying sesh is pretty useful for keeping the palm fairly sweat-free. It's also got adjustable positioning for the top thumb buttons and hat-switch, as well as the now-ubiquitous throttle axis. However, the force feedback doesn't really stand up in-game, as the joystick is very lightweight and doesn't really add to the sensation of flight.

At £30 it's by no means the most expensive, but it's not the cheapest either. You can pick up just as functional controllers for half the price, but without the force feedback. Personally I prefer the fully adjustable Saitek Cyborg Evo, which is the same price and wireless to boot.

Modelled on the cockpit of a – wait for it – Ferrari F430, Thrustmaster's latest wheel is incredibly well built.

The actual desk clamp has a slightly flimsy feel to it, but all the control rods, gear shifts and pedals are finished in lovely metal, and there's also the solid feeling buttons dotted around the centre of the wheel.

On-the-fly

These – and the four more on the body – are all fully programmable too. Our favourite control – three words we never thought we'd see together – is a switch which is designed to quickly flick through car settings while in-race.

Dubbed the 'Manettino' after a similar dial in real life Ferraris, it has five settings plus a push button that can either change the level of driver assistance you receive or fine tune the car configuration for things like traction control and rear axle differentials.

Want to tighten your suspension for the next lap? Just turn the dial to the left. Need help with cornering? Flick it to the right.

The included drivers come with pre-configured profiles for some games, and are, of course, programmable for others. Best of all, though, is the proper, wheel-locking force feedback, just like we used to have in the days before consoles with USB ports.

And not forgetting that you get all of this for under £80. Step aside Lewis Hamilton, I think we have a real winner here.

Now, it has to be said that I find most of these keyboard extension doohickeys thoroughly unpleasant, ever since I had the misfortune to use the horrific WolfClaw game board. The Belkin Speedpad n52te, though, in contrast, has gotten me through some tough times.

The toughest of those times were the tormented hours I spent playing through Space Siege for the review last issue; thanks to the extra buttons the n52te placed at my disposal, my progress to the end of that mangled mess of a game was eased considerably.

Comfortable design

It's nicely designed and sits well in the hand giving you easy access to the myriad buttons on offer.

Thanks to the Razer technology backing up the Speedpad setting a game profile is a simple matter and if you're into those keystroke-heavy MMO thingies such extra button action is a positive boon. With such a mass of keys at your disposal you'll be desperately looking for commands to fill up the space with.

If your favoured flight-sim joypad doesn't have the requisite throttle action the Speedpad will take most of the strain, and with the responsive and well positioned wee thumbstick/D-pad you can do the Exorcist thing and rotate your head…

Likewise, if you're one of the few laptop gamers out there, then you'll find this far easier to use in conjunction with a mouse than the standard notebook keyboard. Well worth your cash for when a joypad just won't do.

Time to eat a little humble pie here and admit something.

When I first clapped peepers on the FPS Gun in press releases, and even out at CeBIT on the Zalman stand, I thought it looked like a bit of a joke.

I wanted to get it in to have a quick play around with it and laugh at their absurd idea of trying to make a mouse shaped more like a gun, specifically for first-person shooters.

A unique mouse design

Well, paint me purple and call me a dinosaur but this thing actually works. It did feel faintly ridiculous trying to manoeuvre the cursor around the desktop with this malformed mouse, but as soon as I got into a CoD4 deathmatch it all made sense.

The actual sensor is located in the foot that stretches out in front of the base of your fist, this means that it instantly feels different to using a standard mouse in-game.

The FG-1000 acts much more like a gun with your left and right movements operated by swivelling the wrist rather than moving the whole hand across the desktop. It takes a while to get used to, but once mastered it could give you far more lateral control over your crosshair.

A new gaming experience

My only real gripe with the FPS Gun though, aside from the handle being slightly too short for comfort, is that lack of fully configurable buttons.

You can change between the standard mouse functions but you cannot add keystrokes to the configuration, something I'd really hope to see in later revisions.

At the moment it might be a little pricey to encourage you to pick up on a whim, but give it a go in a shooter and you might just change your mind.

Budget twig ahoy! This cheap and cheerful offering from Thrustmaster is designed to work straight out of the box with Flight Simulator X thanks to a preassigned config - though we've rarely found a waggler that didn't get the basic setup (pitch, roll, throttle and so on) correct. It's also Playstation 3 compatible, which will no doubt have all four of you PS3 owners dancing in the streets.

Sturdy stick

Still, for 20 notes you get yourself a sturdy stick, positively bristling with buttons and boasting Thrustmaster's increasingly standard nifty in-built button remapping options. No force feedback, of course, but there's a variable resistance knob on the nether-side which gives you a degree of control over the stick feel.

It's quite a soft ride whatever resistance you choose, unfortunately, meaning control can feel more sluggish than, say, the Saitek AV8R, which is positioned directly against this offering. It's not a bad stick, but on balance Saitek's more precise effort edges it.

We wonder if devs are complicit in wearing PC gamers down until they finally accept that using an Xbox 360 pad is a best way to play a PC game. The number of times we've been asked to hit a green B button is greater than the number of cooked evening meals we've enjoyed.

If this is the shining vision of the future that we all have to subscribe to, it's comforting that the console's technically impressive Wireless Racing Wheel is also compatible via Microsoft's Wireless Gaming Receiver.

The wheel itself boasts two separate motors for detailed force feedback, reasonably sturdy construction and plenty of buttons. Unfortunately, while this is all used to impressive effect on the Xbox, the PC drivers (arf) currently don't support the force feedback or even individual axes for each of the pedals.

Until Microsoft sorts out its drivers, which it has promised to do, you wouldn't want to buy this specifically for the PC - a real shame considering what the hardware is capable of, and the sub-£100 (including the receiver) price point. Keep an eye on that driver update page.