Excellent Mouse for High Action Gaming & Graphics Design - 6-Month Owner

The Logitech G7 is a serious mouse.

The G7 is an incredibly accurate cordless mouse comparable to any analog ball mouse on the market. In the 6 months I've used it for gaming and for graphics work for my web design business, I haven't had any problems as far as pointer sensitivity. As far as I can tell, it's as accurate and as sensitive as any analog mouse I've ever used, and noticeably more accurate than my old optical mouse.

The accuracy is a result of the new laser sensor, which is understood to provide twenty times the tracking power of an optical sensor. Both laser and optical mice work by taking snapshots of the tracking surface, 1,500 per second. But the laser is capable of taking snapshots at greater resolutions than opticals, thereby substantially increasing the amount of data it's able to read on movement, which translates into far better sensitivity. Wikipedia

The end result is a smooth riding mouse that can handle pretty much any assigned task, including those where miniscule mouse movements are intrinsic, such as shooter gaming and high-detail graphics design.

Feel of the mouse

It's obvious that a lot of thought went into the shape of this mouse. Unlike symmetric models, or even the logically shaped MX1000, which is highly arched and has had some complaints of causing joint pain over extended usage, the G7 molds to the contours of the hand without any awkwardness, and is in my opinion the best effort made towards grip comfort so far in a mouse.

The mouse does have a nice weight to it, maybe weighing two or three times more than the feather-light mice that come with most computers. Although I'm sure the weight is simply a result of the hardware inside, I've actually found that it helps keep the bottom of the mouse flush on the tracking surface during intense game play.

However, in order to compensate for the weight of the mouse, a rubber grip should have been implemented, but has not. Along with the absence of a rubber grip, the entire surface of the mouse is coated with some new kind of non-stick finish that often makes the mouse incredibly slippery. Casual application usage isn't greatly affected by this. But it does have a substantial impact when gaming as the palms generate moisture during tense action, which on the non-stick coating feels like an oily lubricant. This sometimes causes the mouse to slip uncontrollably out of grip like a bar of soap. So I would recommend finding some self-adhering rubber grips to complement this mouse; google "rubber mouse grips."

Click action

In total, there are 8 buttons, all of which can be custom assigned:
- 1. Left click
- 2. Right click
- 3. Thumb click
- 4. Sensitivity +
- 5. Sensitivity -
- 6. Left wheel tilt
- 7. Right wheel tilt
- 8. Wheel click

All of the buttons are very accessible and easy to click, with the exception of the wheel click, which feels like it needs something in the range of 1 to 2 pounds of pressure. Being ridiculously hard to press, without accidentally left or right tilting at that, you probably wont be using it at all. -- To clarify, by wheel click, I'm referring to the down-click of the wheel and not the scroll or tilt. Some people have criticized the wheel scroll as well, which is noticeably stiffer than what people are normally used to. It did feel funny to me in the beginning but I've gotten used to it. Not a big deal to me.

The thumb click is assigned to "Navigate Back" by default. But because there is no button for "Navigate Forward," which I still don't understand, you probably want to reconfigure it to something else. What I did was assign the left wheel tilt to "Back" and right wheel tilt to "Forward." The thumb click I assigned to "Close Window." The thumb button, by the way, is not directly under the thumb, so you don't have to worry about clicking it accidentally.

The sensitivity buttons, which are the small circular buttons located just beneath the mouse wheel, can come in handy as they enable you change the mouse's sensitivity on the fly without having to go through the control panel. This is probably most useful in gaming, as you switch to and from sniper weapons, as well as in graphics design as you zoom in and out of your work area. Still, I assigned these two to "Minimize" and "Maximize" because I found that it works better for me. This is just an idea of the flexibility you have with button assignments.

In order to have your custom button assignments operative, however, you need to have the Logitech Setpoint software, which is included in the box, loaded at all times. The only drawback to this is that the program's reaction to your button clicks is determined by your computer's overall performance. So your system may not immediately respond to your clicks if you're on a sluggish computer; you may click a button and see nothing happening for a couple of seconds, in which case you're probably better off using the default button assignments. I'm on a 2.5GHz CPU with 1GB RAM and the software response, for me, is instantaneous.

Battery operation

This mouse comes with two removable rechargeable batteries. The batteries are relatively short-lived, having to be charged about once a day. But the beauty of this system is in using one battery while charging the other. As opposed to cordless mice with the batteries hard built into them, you will never have to retire the entire mouse overnight to charge it up. Instead, when the battery indicator goes red, you simply pop the dead battery out, slip the charged battery in, and retire only the dead battery into the charger. This, to me, is brilliant, because the mouse will always be in action.

There are two charging modes, Normal and Boost. Normal is a ten-hour charge, made for unpowered USB ports. Boost is a two-hour charge, which is what you want to always be using, but requires a USB port that provides sufficient voltage. I believe the USB port will provide enough power for the Boost charge as long as it's a direct extension of the computer and not on an external hub, though I'm not absolutely sure about that. The setting for this is located on the underside of the charger.

The G7 also has an automatic shutdown timer that powers the mouse down when idle for a few seconds -- currently, this is not adjustable. It then powers back up as soon as movement or a button click is made. This is obviously to extend the life of the battery.

A battery nuisance

When battery power gets low enough, your pointer speed may decrease. In my experience, this only happens when I boot into my system with an almost dead battery and not when the battery gets low while I'm already booted up.

Turning the mouse off and then back on restores the pointer speed. But rather than using the power button on the underside of the mouse, which requires a one-second hold-down, I found that it's quicker to reset the power by removing then reinserting the battery.

The cordless receiver

The receiver plugs into the charger, and is good for up to about twenty feet. The receiver and the mouse do not have to be in line-of-sight of each other to work since the data is transmitted by radio signal. However, any other cordless devices, such as phones and other computer peripherals, in the vicinity may interfere with it. Specifically, the mouse may go completely dead until usage of the other devices has stopped; this happened to me a few times when phone calls came in.

The G7 uses a frequency of 2.4GHZ, so if you have other items in the house that use the same or a similar frequency, you can expect some periodic glitching. I believe most modern cordless devices use a frequency close to 2.4GHz. But this doesn't necessarily mean the G7, or any cordless mouse for that matter, is shot. You can simply keep a corded mouse plugged into your computer for backup purposes. For whatever reason, the mouse doesn't seem to have an adverse effect on the cordless phone; calls come in fine.

No red light

This may be a plus or a negative to you. But because the laser negates the need for the LED that optical mice depend on to illuminate the tracking surface, there's no red glow discharging from the bottom of the G7.

Heads up about first time installation

When I first installed this mouse, the pointer shot around the screen wildly by itself. I was little worried that that might be a persistent problem, but it proved to be a one time thing that happens only on the initial hookup.