Logitech G500 review

Logitech's G500 is wired, has 11 buttons (including 10 that are customisable) and comes with 27g worth of miniature weights to alter its heft.

Its closest rival, Microsoft's Sidewinder X8, can be either wired or wireless, has 12 buttons (with seven customisable) and comes with three sets of feet that alter its friction.

Working out the best purchase at the high end of the gaming mice market can feel like tumbling down a rabbit hole into a very particular obsession. Let's start with the basics.

The G500 looks nice and sits comfortably in the hand, and the downloadable Logitech SetPoint software provides preset options (undo, paste, scroll and so on) that you can assign to each button. For more complicated programming, the Macro Editor records keyboard and mouse actions. Your settings are saved into the mouse's internal memory, so travel with you.

The weights are much less practical. You can slot a selection of the 12 included into the mouse's underside. They provide no real benefit, but packaged inside a padded steel case, they feel important and technical. Like expensive speaker stands do for an audiophile, the G500 makes you feel hardcore.

Squeaking into the lead

If you really are hardcore, you'll mostly care about the numbers. The G500 uses laser rather than optical sensors to track your movements, providing a more accurate 5,000dpi than the Sidewinder X8's 4,000dpi. Similarly, while the X8 has a polling rate of 500MHz, the G500 is twice as fast at 1,000MHz. Again, this provides no practical benefit.

A polling rate of 1,000MHz means your mouse cursor is being updated every millisecond. No matter how dedicated a Team Fortress 2 sniper you are, you're unlikely to notice any difference from even the default USB speed of 8ms. Step back from the field for a second and it's easy to question whether even hardcore gamers need this many baubles and doohickeys.

The G500 is a great mouse: it's comfortable, customisable and feature-packed. But for most users, including gamers, you're better off saving your cash and getting something simpler and cheaper, like Logitech's £35 M500.

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