Great mouse with an annoying program attached

I had a few quibbles with this mouse, but overall they were pretty minor. When it comes to working well, this mouse only had a brief lag problem (couldn’t identify the cause) and seems sharp, easy to use and comfortable, when gaming or using my PC for normal functions. The requirement to install the Logitech program for control (and indeed the design of the program itself) didn’t thrill me, but the mouse itself is a big upgrade over my old, rubbish one and it has a lot of features that will surely appeal to pro or hobby gamers.

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Features:
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BUTTONS: One of the selling points of this mouse is the high number of programmable buttons, 11 in total. Some of these are easier to reach than others, but after a few weeks to get used to them all I’ve found they’re easy to use. At first it can be overwhelming though. When I first started using this mouse I found myself getting mixed up and needing to double-check which buttons were which. With my thumb and index finger I can reach as many as eight different buttons on this mouse without moving my hand at all. Most of them are spread out, but some are still quite small and can be difficult to find at first. I’m sure gaming pros will find them easily, but for those just getting into it, it’s definitely a learning process.

When it comes to gaming, having this many buttons on a mouse can be very useful. Not all games benefit from them, but fast-paced games and shooters in particular often do. I found myself programming four of the buttons in most of the games I tried, which made it much easier to play without having to find a button on the keyboard during a fast-paced match.

If you don’t play video games, you can still find uses for these buttons but it’s not nearly as easy to customize. Some programs will allow you to use buttons like this for some functions (Undo in some photo editing software, for example) but it’s clearly designed with video games in mind based on the sheer number of buttons.

BATTERY: Most wireless mice that I’ve owned require AA or AAA batteries, which can be a pain to worry about and replace, not to mention an extra expense. Thankfully this mouse is rechargeable, just plug the bluetooth receiver into the little USB adapter, and then plug that in to charge. A few hours of charging gave 100% battery, and that has lasted me for almost two weeks now with frequent gaming. Crucially, you can also plug the mouse into charge via wire, while using it. One annoying thing is that you can’t actually tell what your battery life is without installing and checking the program on your computer that Logitech has made to sync with your mouse.

PROGRAM:

Speaking of, the Logitech program that you are encouraged to download along with this mouse is not intrusive or hard to understand, but it does cover a surprising amount of functions that are impossible to do without it, which I don’t love. If you want full customization of the DPI on your mouse, you need to use the Logitech program and set it up that way, then you can use the buttons on the mouse to switch between 3 pre-set speeds. If you want to see how much battery life you have left, same thing. Even customizing the lights on the side and front of the mouse can only be done with this program. I don’t like being forced to install a program for this kind of basic functionality and I found it pretty annoying.

My DPI would also randomly drop sometimes (all the way down, so it wasn’t an accidental button press) and I didn’t know why. The program isn’t super beginner friendly. I feel like if you don’t know tech well, or are a beginner to this and gaming (I’m not, more like a middler) you will struggle.

Also when you first plug this in (it’s plug and play) the default speed before installing the program, is irritatingly slow. Not sure there’s a good reason for that, it should be mid-range speed by default, surely.

DPI/SPEED: On the subject of the DPI (basically the cursor speed), you can adjust that setting to an absurd degree, far more than anything I’ve seen in other mice I’ve used. You can make it so slow I can’t imagine anyone would ever use it, to 16,000 DPI, which is so fast it’s practically impossible to use. On the much more sensible part of the scale, you can have three pre-set options which you can cycle through with mouse clicks. If you want more than that, you’ll need to keep the Logitech program open in the background and manually switch. I personally found three settings was plenty, but some users might wish they had more than that.

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Design
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I do like the design of this mouse. My partner found the angular shapes uncomfortable, but I didn’t mind and found it comfortable. Looks-wise, it’s not overly flashy, but not boring either. I prefer a different colour to black, but that’s the sort of standard colour these days.

WEIGHTS: One feature that comes with this mouse which I didn’t use a lot, and which I don’t have much interest in, is weights. You can include weights of different sizes inside the bottom of your mouse to change how heavy it feels, and how quickly it moves. Apparently this is something that some people really appreciate, but personally I don’t care and in trying them out I didn’t appreciate the difference. I do understand though, that for pro gamers this might be an important inclusion. So it’s there if you want it.

LIGHTS: The lights on the front and sides of the mouse can be customized using the Logitech program. The options aren’t too complex, you can adjust the colour, whether or not it flashes or remains static, and you can have the two lights be different colours or the same colour. The ability to remain static was crucial for me, as I hate flashing in the corner of my eye.

One thing that really bothered me and partially a reason for reducing the rating of this mouse, is that it promises full colour customisation. However, the pink shades are barely off-white. Other shades, blues, reds and greens, all show up beautifully. That makes it feel like someone was like “No one would want a hot pink mouse” and just didn’t bother checking or fixing that setting. No matter how bright, dark or ‘mixed’ you make it, you can’t even get salmon, just white with a barely even there shade of pink. At this price, people should be able to pick any of the colours and have the mouse deliver.