Best Logitech G603 Black Friday 2021 and Cyber Monday Deals
Wireless gaming mice are excellent. Once you have PC gaming without dragging a tether around your desk, there's no heading back. There's just one single problem: The high sensitivity, accurate tracking, and rapid report rate of premium gaming mice are at odds with battery life. If you game for many hours a day, the battery will require charging in under a week.Logitech includes a solution using its POWERPLAY wireless charging mouse pad, but that's a $100 accessory that currently only works together with two mice (the G903 and G703). Fortunately, Logitech now includes a third solution using its new G603 mouse (View it on Amazon) / (View it on Amazon UK). Because of an all-new sensor and electronics, it offers 500 hours of continuous gaming on a set of AA batteries, or an impressive 1,400 hours of non-gaming use. According to Logitech, at least. That is potentially a radio gaming mouse with a charge measured in months, not days. We've put it through its paces to determine how it stacks up.
The condition of the G603 is practically indistinguishable from the G703. It's got the same generic, mid-profile curve that works fairly well for all those that prefer a palm grip and the ones who prefer a claw grip. It's made exclusively for right-handed gamers, with the thumb buttons on the left and a gentle slope down toward the proper side. It's comfortable, but just a little generic.
The left side includes a couple of buttons that I came across simple to reach with my thumb, and also have an excellent click action to them. You can execute those additional gaming commands without pressing so difficult the mouse moves around, but they're not sensitive that you'll activate them accidentally.
At the top is a scroll wheel and an individual button (by default set to cycle through DPI settings). The wheel includes a nice wide rubbery grip and a clicky scroll action. The left and right buttons have a good audible click to them, with firm actuation force well-suited to a number of games. But those that like really short-throw, soft-touch action for extremely rapid clicking (like RTS pros) will dsicover it just a little on the stiff side.
The G603 is without any lighting, unlike almost all of Logitech's other gaming mice. The complete point of the mouse is its extreme battery life, and lighting drains the batteries quickly. If the insufficient RGB lighting is an advantage or a drawback is determined by your individual taste.
The very best shell is held on with magnets: inside you'll find space for a set of AA batteries and just a little slot to stow the tiny USB radio receiver if you are traveling. The receiver is optional, incidentally. The G603 also works together with Bluetooth, if you don't get top-tier gaming performance.
On underneath you'll discover a switch to toggle the mouse between "Performance" (1000Hz report rate) and "Endurance" (125Hz report rate) and a button to flip between your faster LIGHTSPEED wireless receiver and Bluetooth. Everything you won't find is a door to play the tiny round disc used for Logitech's POWERPLAY mat. That accessory is perfect for mice with sealed, rechargeable batteries, not removable AAs.
The G603 uses the same Logitech Gaming Software that works together with all its other peripherals, and gets the same essential features (minus RGB lighting) as the G703.
The primary page shows the battery life and which mode the mouse is in (Performance or Endurance). You can tend to utilize the mouse's on-board storage for an individual group of DPI and button assignments, or use a profile-based system that loads up DPI and button settings predicated on which game you launch. The program is properly functional, but honestly without lighting to tweak there's little dependence on it, although the customization options that can be found are certainly welcome.
You can store up to 5 different DPI settings, with one of these designated as a "shift" speed.
Though you don't get yourself a lot of buttons to utilize, the customization options are plentiful. You can set either of the thumb buttons, the DPI button, or the click wheel to play back any kind of mouse button press, keystroke, multi-key macro, media function, shortcuts to launch apps, even audio tracks volume functions.
Logitech's software is intuitive, lean, and works especially well assuming you have a whole lot of different Logitech gear.
The G603 may be the first mouse to use Logitech's new HERO (High Efficiency Rated Optical) sensor. The business has spent many years designing this sensor and the related electronics to provide it performance add up to the beautiful PMW3366 sensor within its other high-end mice at a fraction of the energy draw.
The sensor tracks up to 400 inches per second from 200 to 12,000 DPI, and applies no smoothing or filtering. Combined with 1ms report rate and low latency, you get super responsive and incredibly direct control that never feels as though it's swimming, wobbling, or losing tracking. I played Overwatch, Diablo III, and PUBG and it felt like using the G703. Which is to state, easily as precise and responsive as the very best wired mice I've ever used.
There's a downside to a mouse that uses AA batteries rather than an interior battery though, and that's weight. The G603 weighs 136 grams with the included Duracell AA batteries installed. That's somewhat on the heavy side. But I've very good news: The mouse works just fine with an individual AA battery installed, which drops the weight to 113 grams (right consistent with a great many other wireless gaming mice that use sealed rechargeable batteries). And alkaline batteries are type of heavy. With an individual Amazon Basics AA rechargeable Ni-MH battery set up, the mouse weighed only 104 grams. Not to mention, a weight differential of simply a few grams is only going to matter for very serious gamers. For daily driving the difference is negligible.
Of course, the big question is does the battery really last for 500+ hours in Performance mode on a set of AAs? I haven't had the mouse long enough to totally test the battery run-down time. However, after over weekly of using the mouse all-day each day, the battery meter didn't move at all. For a number of days I only had one battery installed, too. Maybe you'll manage to play games for four months, maybe you'll get half a year, or nine. Regardless, plainly this mouse lasts ages longer than any other wireless gaming mouse with similar performance.
The Logitech G603 Wireless Gaming Mouse comes with an MSRP of $69.99, and as a brand-new product it's holding at that price for the moment: