Logitech has always been a friend of the PC gamer – releasing several iterations of PC gaming peripherals over the last twenty years or so. Its latest ‘G-series’ of gaming peripherals offers their most robust array of features yet. The gaming mouse component of this new series is the G700 Gaming Mouse. Looking like something from their more business-oriented MX series, the G700 offers an impressive array of features.
Looking like something from their MX series of business/personal use mice, the G700 features an all-black, heavy plastic body with a chrome-clad mouse wheel. A very impressive mouse in the looks department, the G700 does not have a ton of lights blinging out from every direction. It is, in fact, a very classy-looking gaming mouse.
The black plastic around the main mouse buttons is smooth and features a small silver Logitech logo. The side plastic parts of the mouse body are have been ruggedized with a very effective friction-generating texture. This means you will not lose your grip on the unit while playing. From a ‘feel’ standpoint, the G700 is exceptional.
The mouse comes packed with a USB extender cable, a USB power/interface cable, and Logitech’s small, Nano-Receiver which will allow you to use the G700 in its wireless mode. Installing the mouse is very simple – just plug either the Nano-Receiver or the USB cable (mouse connected) into the PC and watch it go. If you want to unlock the full feature-set of the unit, you will need to install the SetPoint software package. These extra features are well worth the installation, as the G700 has 13 programmable buttons lining its body, as well as three programmable sensitivity presets which can be accessed on-the-fly.
After we got everything installed and setup, we began running the mouse through games of Left 4 Dead 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and World of Warcraft. The G700 performed very well, with two quirks worth mentioning. First is that, while the thumb buttons on the G700 are very useful for assigning functions to, they are far too low on the mouse body to avoid being accidentally clicked by a larger thumb. I found myself accidentally depressing the two bottom thumb buttons of the four button-array several times over the course of the more frantic action found in the two FPS titles that were used in testing.
In World of Warcraft, we did not experience this issue at all.Eventually, I just disabled the thumb buttons when playing the shooter titles to avoid the problem. The G700 seems more ideally-suited for MMORPG usage, where its comfort and smooth glide will keep you gaming for hours, comfortably.
The second quirk of the G700 is its sensor alignment. Being a clutch mouse-user (that is, resting my palm on the mouse body), moving the unit on the yaw axis of my wrist should yield a horizontal cursor-sweep. On the G700, a yaw movement yields a diagonal cursor sweep. This is because the unit’s laser sensor (at least on our review unit) is slightly off center when held in a clutch fashion. It should be noted, that claw-usage (palm off the mouse body) is not possible on the G700 due to the exposed thumb buttons and recessed thumb rest for comfort. While not a deal-breaker, this second quirk definitely takes some getting used too.
Ending on a positive note, gamers will experience some of the smoothest glide-action they have ever felt in a gaming mouse before with the G700. It has much larger Teflon-coated pads on its bottom than most gaming mouse sport, and this is very apparent when gaming. Also of benefit to gamers is that while on wireless mode, the G700 runs off of one replaceable, included, and rechargeable AA battery.
The Logitech G700 gaming mouse hosts a very impressive array of features. While its $99.99 dollar price point may not be cheap, its closest competitor is thirty dollars more expensive. While not perfect, Logitech has made a very solid gaming mouse (especially got MMORPG players) that, so long as you heed the quirks we have mentioned, should serve you well for years to come.
