Onto the mouse...
The MouseThe G50 isn’t the most attractive of gaming mice. The outside of the mouse, where your thumb and little finger sit, is finished in black whereas the centre panel has silver/grey specks dotted all over it. It’s not a looker at all. One or two freckles looks cute, but too many and you begin to look a little like Bianca Jackson from Eastenders. It does, however, feel very sexy when you have it in the palm of your hand. The groove on the right side of the mouse allows you to slip your little pinkie in comfortable while the left side groove allows you to slot in your thumb. It feels very comfortable and the plastic is designed in way that provides a sturdy grip and doesn't make your digits sweat.
I’m used to palming my mouse so the G500 has taken a little getting used to. When trying to palm the G500 I’ve found that my middle finger touches the wire at the back of the mouse. This has meant that I’ve had to adjust my style to accommodate the mouse by resting part of my palm on the desk. It’s taken a little getting used to, but it now feels extremely comfortable.
The three programmable buttons sit on the left hand side of your mouse just above where your thumb sits and it’s a simple and intuitive movement to move your thumb slightly upwards to gain access to them. The buttons don’t offer much resistance so they only require a light press which is good. The way the buttons are designed isn’t perfect though. It’s almost like there’s one huge button split into three parts. It takes a little getting used to click on the right button, especially when you have a big thumb, but having spent a few weeks in its company I’ve now totally mastered it. Nevertheless, I think maybe having the buttons not so close together would have suited my personal preference a bit more.
Moving onto the surface of the unit, and you’ve a '+' and '-' button that sits to the left of the scroll wheel. This allows you to adjust the Dpi on the fly. You can program in five different Dpi settings between 200 and a ridiculously high 5700 via SetPoint, and then you can move between them immediately. It works superbly. The index finger hovers over the buttons automatically anyway so it requires little effort to switch Dpi and it’s been a blessing when I’ve been playing Bad Company 2, being able to lower the DPi for sniping and then crank it back up when I’m running on foot towards one of the M-Com stations.
The scroll wheel on the otherhand a bit of a disappointment. It feels a little loose and requires a bit of mastering to tame. While switching weapons in Bad Company 2 I’ve inadvertently gone past the item that I wanted to choose because it can be quite over-sensitive. Once again, like thumb buttons, you have to spend time with the G500 to get used to its quirks. Middle-clicking has a nice feel to it though and there’s little resistance there to cause any problems during gaming. There’s a button underneath the scroll wheel that Logitech has named the MicroGear button. It allows you to toggle between free-spin scrolling as well as click-to-click scrolling. The first gives you frictionless, hyper-fast scrolling motion that allows you to travel up and down long documents quickly, whereas the latter is the traditional scrolling function. The MicroGear button has been positioned really well. You can toggle it without even moving your finger from the scroll wheel, by just applying a bit of pressure in the middle of your finger. For my personal situation, the MicroGear button is best used for switching profiles, you just have to make sure you’ve changed that in the SetPoint software.
Finally, you’ve got a set of red lights down the left hand side of the main panel that handily indicates your current DPi setting. In truth, you’ll probably know what it is anyway due to the speed your pointer’s moving across screen, but it does add a little bit of colour and attraction to an otherwise grubby looking mouse. It's a feature that reminds me of when my wife puts her make-up on in the morning. She looks much more radiant and, dare I say it, more attractive after the make-up has been applied. Erm, hang on sec, that'll be the postman, probably with the divorce papers.
The mouse weights obviosly make the G500 more appealing to the gaming crowd and they do give you plenty of ways to customise the feel of your mouse by choosing six of the weights, placing them into their holder and slotting them effortlessly into the base of the mouse. The mouse weighs 116g naturally, but you can boost that up to 150g with the accompanying weights. Performance-wise, the lazer-sensor worked magnificently and whether I was using on the mouse mat, or over the wood of my computer desk, it handled rapid acceleration and fast movements extremely well.
In conclusion, the G500 does have a few quirks that I didn't immediately like. The thumb buttons could have been designed better, it could have looked a bit nicer and the scroll wheel took me a bit of getting used to. But, just like my wife who I lived with for 12 years before marrying her, it has grown on me with age and I've started to feel extremely comfortable in its presence. It's not the perfect mouse, but I've been quite happy to use it for both gaming and every day use. It performs very well when gaming and I've enjoyed being able to swiftly switch Dpi settings, customise it via the excellent software and move between profiles when playing different games.
Pros
Customisable resolution 200-5700 DPi on the fly
Customisable buttons
Weights
Feels very comfortable
Nice positioning of DPi switching buttons and Scroll Wheel toggle
Cons
Doesn’t look great
Getting up and running with the SetPOint software took me too long
Scroll wheel a little oversensitive
Not keen on the design of thumb buttons, quite easy to press wrong one by accident
