Just came back from my first drive with the box... "freaking awesome" would summarize my findings and impressions pretty well but here's the detailed review, I know there's enough testimonies from so many owners here but owe it to myself to write a long one as I had been skeptical over pedalboxes for years, until tonight.
Simply put, the car is a new beast below 3500 rpm where in fact I use it most of the time being a daily driver. I dare say that the transformation is as significant and obvious as a stage 1 remap with one difference: The remap can easily go un-noticed when not driving with your foot down and makes its presence very clear when the revs start to build up after 3.5K. The box is exactly the opposite: It's all about requesting throttle from low rpm and in a low-ish gear (say <4th), not flooring it but with the intention of accelerating decisively (say 40% of pedal travel). Where you'd normally just hear engine noise and feel as if you're down 100bhp, the car now launches forward immediately feeling like it's good for each one of its announced horses.
That instant, forward kick even if you half-depress the pedal, a feeling which you would have probably expected on a performance car but failed to find on any VW of late is the most appreciated difference. Stock GTIs don't have it, stock R's don't have it, stock Clubsports don't have it and even a 360bhp mapped Clubsport doesn't have it, because it's not about how much power you make but how much of that is accessible to you early in the pedal travel. Think of it as an over-protective governor that only allows you a fraction of the power you've got until you really convince him you can handle it (which is by using lots of revs and lots of pedal at the same time). The pedalbox cancels that and just gives you access to exactly as much as you want right from the start. No lags, no need to drop down a gear and use more revs. It honestly reminded me of my previous car which was a stage 2 twincharged 1.4 TSI. If I missed one thing from that car is the supercharger and how instantly it picked up speed from low rpm no matter what. Well, I now have this and it's just an excuse to slow down and accelerate just for the heck of it, it feels that good.
Before tonight I had been wondering, can't you just depress the pedal more and have the same effect as a pedalbox? Well not really. I turned it off and tried to see if I could replicate the pedalbox acceleration by just putting my foot deeper down and I failed. I just got noise and revs but not as much acceleration. The beauties of drive by wire and its algorithms I guess...
So, will this give you more power?
Obviously not. Will it make you hit better acceleration times as in 0-60 or 60-120? Again probably not because when you do those you're already starting from high rpm and use full throttle so the ECU is already fully obeying your foot. BUT, it will make everyday driving so much more enjoyable and remind you what your car is really capable of because it's at exactly those everyday moments (and there are so many, probably orders of magnitude more than your "racing" moments) that you're not racing or in the lowest gear possible, but just want to make swift progress "politely", and the stock throttle map denies you that. It's at those moments that you will enjoy a much quicker, direct response and consequently a faster car. For me, I think it has made city driving (an occasion ruled out as a fun one) so much more pleasant.
