Logitech has been a household name for years, well known for its quality computer mice and keyboards. But it's not just the mundane peripherals where Logitech has made a name for itself. The company's G-series of gaming peripherals is a perennial best-seller, and the latest mouse to join the party is the Logitech G500s Laser Mouse, a wired mouse that will have you shooting, casting, swiping, and bashing in no time.
Design
The Logitech G500s takes a fairly mundane looking design and ratchets it up a few clicks with gamer-friendly features, like a precision laser sensor, adjustable weight, and adjustable DPI, complete with a glowing built-in meter. It's more of an update to the previously successful G500, but there's no point in messing with a winning formula. The new iteration gets a more accurate laser sensor and an updfated paint-job, but it's otherwise unchanged.
The contours of the mouse make it a comfortable fit for right-hands, and the side-grips are covered with a rough textured coating, similar to the Roccat Savu. The mouse measures 1.73 by 3 by 5.1 inches (HWD), which is a little bigger than most similar gaming mice, but not uncomfortably so. Logitech spices up the otherwise bland grey and black design with grey and white stripes, but the look won't appeal to everyone. While the mouse looks a bit wild, the feel in hand is fairly normal, other than the grippy sides.
The mouse itself has 10 buttons, with the usual right- and left-click buttons, a clickable scroll wheel, and a button the switches the scroll wheel from free-spinning to ratcheting. On the outside edge of the left-click button are two buttons for on-the-fly DPI adjustment, and two thumb buttons let you navigate forward and back in your web browser. A third thumb button is unassigned, but (along with all of the other buttons) can be assigned to any desired function. The G500s is a wired USB mouse, with a 6.6-foot nylon braided cord preventing tangles.
Flip over the mouse and you'll find an ejectable weight cartridge. Logitech includes twelve weight inserts?six that are 4.5g each and six that are 1.7g each?meaning that you can adjust the weight between six ounces (when empty) and a maximum seven ounces. You can also mix and match weights and try different placements of those weights to shift the center of gravity and find a balance most comfortable to you. For a more customizable design, consider Logitech's other laser gaming mouse, the Logitech G9X .
Features and Performance
Much like the Roccat Lua or the Editors' Choice Corsair Vengeance M65 , the G500s is a fairly straightforward mouse, made with first-person shooters and similar action games in mind. It's perfect for games like Bioshock Infinite, which largely use left and right clicking as the primary interaction.
The G500s can be customized by programming buttons in the downloadable Logitech Gaming Software (Version 8.45), but you likely won't need to do much with the software. The plug and play functionality is quite good, though you can use the software dashboard to remap some of the extra buttons to specific functions, or to adjust the DPI settings.
In actual performance, the G500s delivers exactly as expected, with smooth consistent tracking, worry free clicking, and a scroll-wheel that can be used either free spinning or ratcheting. The on-the-fly DPI adjustment is useful in those instances when you need to switch from the fast movements of close-quarter melee combat to the tightly controlled accuracy of a sniper's shot. The G500s handles it all with reliable aplomb.
Conclusion
For a mouse that only differs from its predecessor in terms of sensor accuracy, the Logitech G500s is a surprisingly good mouse. While I didn't particularly care for the paint job?it looks like it's trying way too hard to convince me that it's cool?it's hard to argue with the actual performance. The Logitech G500s is a solid, accurate and straightforward gaming mouse. For the G500 fan that needs an upgrade, it's a no-brainer. For everyone else, while the Editors' Choice Corsair Vengeance M65 still leads with a slightly better design, the Logitech G500s is still worth a look.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/JCOO8Hr1Bd8/0,2817,2418132,00.asp
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