Tobold's Blog
Thursday, January 26, 2023
 
Heavy Metal Mouse

Last year in October my old gaming mouse broke and I had to replace it. I didn't want a cheap $10 mouse, as those aren't very suitable to play games with. But as I am not into e-sports or games with very fast reaction times, I didn't want a $100 high-end gaming mouse either. I ended up buying a Razer Deathadder Essential for $30, thinking that it would go well with my Razer keyboard, with which I am quite happy. 3 months later, the Razer mouse started malfunctioning: When I use the scroll wheel to scroll down, sometimes there is a wrong signal and the page jumps up instead of down. Quite annoying!

So I looked up the problem on the internet and found that other people had the same problem with the same mouse. And while one could fix it by disassembling the mouse and cleaning the contacts of the scroll wheel, the mouse wasn't built to be disassembled. You need to first remove glued on stuff from the bottom to even access the screws to open the mouse. People reported that cleaning the mouse on the inside also caused some irreparable damage. So I decided that I'd rather buy another new mouse. And this time I was doing more market research, looking for a solid product, and one with a good scroll wheel.

I ended up with the best-selling mouse on Amazon, the Logitech G502 Hero, for $40. And it is a heavy gaming mouse, which I didn't even know was a thing. The weight of a mouse affects its performance, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both very light and very heave mice. It turns out that for the games that I am playing, where precision is more important than speed, and for my large hands, a heavier mouse is better. The G502 Hero even comes with a pack of additional weights which you can use to make it even heavier, but I haven't tried that out yet.

But the feature I like the most about the G502 Hero is the metal scroll wheel. While you can use it like a regular scroll wheel, you can also unblock it, and it becomes an "infinite" scroll wheel. That is to say that it is so heavy and so well balanced that if you give it a flick to spin it, it will keep spinning for quite a long time. Enough to scroll to the end of even the longest document. That works pretty brilliantly for my purposes.

So right now the Logitech mouse is already a big improvement over the Razer mouse. I will have to see how long this new mouse lasts. But the 24,000 Amazon reviews, of which 80% are 5 star, make me think that this is probably a solid product.

Comments:
I have the predecessor G502 since 2014 and yes, the unlockable scroll wheel is why I would buy it again. I haven't seen it anywhere else, so it might be proprietary Logitech.
 
For the way I play games - and indeed for everything I ever do on a computer - just about the only thing that matters is whether the mouse fits comfortably in my hand. I've used basic $5 mice and had no problems. I've used a lot of mice over the last thirty-plus years and I've never had any parts failures or glitches with any of them until the point where something literally fell apart from use after many years. I've had a few that just felt wrong in my hand, though, and i can't use those at all. No way to find that out beforehand - I just have to try them for size, like shoes.

My current mouse is a Gigabyte 6900 which was a gift so I don't know how much it cost. It's also completely unavailable anywhere now so I can't even say what it would cost to replace. I'd guess it was about the same as the one you just bought, though. It has a couple of programmable buttons, which I've ever used, and three speed setting, of which I've only ever used one. I'd be happier if it had none of those things, really, since occasionally I accidentally press something I didn't mean to press. When this one dies I'll try and get a simpler one to replace it.
 
I also have the logitech 502 (do not remember which version) and owned its predecessor for 8 years ( until it dies due to the rain).

Logitech is known for it very high quality parts, with a lot of testing etc... Their drivers were bad 10 years ago, but now they just work - I am not using all the light/macro fonction.


 
FYI Logitech has cheaped out on the switches in recent years. Your G502 won't last anywhere near as long as older ones will. Eventually the left and right click will stop being as responsive which gets really annoying when playing. Logitech does offer a solid warranty and replaces them but it's still annoying. I went through 2 replacements that all had this issue within a year. Cleaning the switches with alcohol helps but it's impractical.
 
I have used a G502 Hero for several years and I am very happy with it. I can see why it is the best selling gaming mouse. I stumbled across a post on reddit with a very clever arrangement of weights which actually makes it feel lighter in the hand. I have no idea how this magic works but it does. You can try it for yourself here: https://www.reddit.com/r/G502MasterRace/comments/c2paw8/does_your_g502_feel_too_heavy_try_placing_your/
 
I also had issues with clicking and dragging as the switch wouldn't hold my click. When I Googled about the issues I saw tons of similar reports all dating from 2020 and onward. Read somewhere supposedly Logitech changed switches around that time which is why people with older mice don't have these issues. After my second replacement developed the same issue I gave up on it and bought an older Logitech mouse (the mmo one with all the side buttons forgot what it's called) and have had 0 issues with it.
 
Logitech makes great mice. I have one of their $20 wireless USB mice, and it has held up to heavy use for years now.
 
I've had bad luck with Logitech in the past, the mice seemed to be well made but stopped working and re-installation didn't seem to help. Maybe it's the driver problem that Ettesuin mentioned. My last couple have been Advent and have been okay.
 
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