Time to claim warranty for the Logitech G602 wireless mouse

We are at it again. Another Logitech mouse needs replacement. This time, it is the middle mouse button. Compared to the last time, when the left mouse button of the G500 completely went dead, this time is not completely dead. It has simply become too stiff to click. I still can hear the click when I press it with a normal force, however the click doesn’t get registered. If I press it harder, it would register.

This is not the first time it happened and last time, it miraculously recover all by itself. In fact, it has already recovered this time as well. But I don’t want to deal with this issue every now and then. So it is time for me to ask them for a replacement. I don’t want to click the button twice to close Chrome tabs or more importantly, throw grenades at the enemies in Crysis 3.

However this time, I think it is not entirely Logitech’s fault. It probably is partially the kid’s fault. He drops it on the floor regularly. But the floor is carpeted so it shouldn’t hurt the mouse much. But it surely must have an impact.

Although this is the closest reason for going ahead with the RMA, there is couple of other issues as well. Firstly, the side thumb buttons – at least the top row – seems to have sunken into the mouse. So they are difficult to click, especially when playing Crysis 3 where the margin for error is very slim.

Secondly, the teflon feet underneath the mouse have worn off. It is OK on a hard surface, but cannot be used on a cloth surface like the Steelseries QCK mouse pads.

So it was about time I RMAed the mouse. Hence, I contacted Logicool Customer Support the day before yesterday about it. They got back to me asking for further details - not about the issues, but about my name, contact details and captures of the invoice. I sent back the details they requested yesterday and today I received an email from them saying that they will send out a new unit to my address on the 29th, that is tomorrow. Hopefully, I will be able to use the new mouse during the weekend. Happiness!

G602 battery died while I was in a game!

 

.Unless you are new to my blog, you should know that I'm using the Logitech (ahem, Logicool in Japan) G602 "wireless"  mouse with my PC. I love playing Crysis 3 multi-player on my PC as well. You should be thinking now that this combination is pretty messed up. Gaming and wireless mouse? That doesn't sound right. Right?

 

Well, this is not your typical wireless mouse, which you would get with those keyboard combos. This is a gaming mouse in that it has a lot of features to help gamers feel that this is not a wireless mouse in any way, except for the unavailability of cable drag which is indeed a plus. Namely, it is equipped with a better sensor than most mice (of course there are mice with vastly better sensors but those are on wired mice), has lots of programmable buttons, contains onboard memory (sadly for just one profile), can operate at 500Hz polling rate (again, sadly not 1000) and has built in high quality Teflon glides (wish they had bundled few extra as the ones on mine have started to peal off). Best of all,  you get a 250hrs of continuous gaming without needing to swap out batteries. You can extend that if you are not gaming by switching to endurance mode which can be done by a dedicated switch on top of the mouse.

 

Basically this is the best wireless gaming mouse you can get.

 

But today, for the first time, just when I was going to shoot someone in a Crysis 3 games, the battery died. If I had the Logitech Gaming Software installed, it would have warned me that the battery level was dangerously low, but I don't have it installed due to input lag issues. I thought the battery had the hardware to monitor it and notify me how much juice is left. There are dedicated LEDs to indicate the current battery level, however apparently the software is required for them to be useful.

 

Got rid of the mouse pad

You all know that I'm an avid Crysis 3 player and I believe I'm reasonably good at it. (Click here to watch my Crysis 3 gameplay playlist on YouTube, and please subscribe to my channel if you find it interesting.)

However, I had been having difficulty aiming at the enemy for almost the entire time I had been playing Crysis 3. At first, I blamed the high ping for that. After that, I found out that I was getting a large input lag and I changed the blame to that. But, couple of days ago I figured it could be something else as I've tweaked the system to lower the latencies to the level that I'm comfortable tweaking (without going insane like this fellow at OCN) and my aiming hasn't improved a bit.

I use either the Logitech G500 wired mouse or the G602 wireless mouse in performance mode when gaming. One might say that the G602 could be the cause of the high input lag, but honestly, I don't see any lag with the G602 compared to the G500 in the performance mode. In the endurance mode, there definitely is a noticeable input lag. That said, I'm sure there are people who can notice an input lag difference between G500 and G602 mice, because at the end of the day, the G602 is wireless and there are inherent processing delays, even if you assume zero retransmits.

Logitech G602 battery life

My Logitech G602 mouse was delivered to me on April 4, so it is 2 months and a week to-date. So how many times did I have to change the batteries?

Zero times!

The battery life of this “wireless” mouse is downright amazing. I’m still using the original batteries that came bundled with the mouse. According to the Logitech Gaming Software (the screenshot above), there is about half of the battery life still left.

I have to confess though, I didn’t have much time to play games in the past few days. That privilege was available in the weekend, and even then when the baby was sleeping. As a result, the mouse was mostly in the “Endurance” state, not “Performance” state. But still…it’s admirable. I was expecting to change the batteries at least once every two weeks.

[Rant] Oops! It wasn't the mouse pads. It was the wireless adaptor

I recently wrote two posts (this one and this one) mentioning that the Logitech G602 mouse had some issues with the mouse pads I owned. One from Razor called Sphex and the other from Steelseries called QCK. I tried switching to the bare wooden surface of the desk a couple of days ago but yesterday I found out that it also showed the same behavior with the mouse. The mouse pointer would skip and jump every now and then making it impossible to play Crysis 3 MP.

Then a thought struck me. Could it be a problem with the quality of signal reception? The mouse came with an extension cable for the USB receiver but I didn't use it because the mouse seemed to work just fine without it. Not to mention how much I disliked adding more cable clutter to the back of the desk.

But I had to give it a go as last resort.

And it seems that I nailed the culprit. It indeed was a reception problem.

So stupid of me for coming into false conclusions. I guess I should dig back one of the mouse pad then eh? I prefer the Sphex because it doesn't cause any resistance. Let's see if it definitely was a reception problem.

[Rant] Looks like the G602 doesn't like the QCK mouse pad as well

Few days ago I posted saying that my new Logitech G602 mouse didn't track well on Razer Sphex mouse pad and that I had to move to the old Steelseries QCK mouse pad. Guess what? The mouse doesn't seem to like it either. Still it was better than the Sphex.

I didn't feel like spending money on a new mouse pad. So threw away both (into the closet, not to the garbage can) and started using the bare wood surface. It seems to work the best. Now that I don't have much time to play games anyways, I might just keep using the mouse this way after all.

On the other hand…

The G602 has an optical sensor, hence the mouse pads made for laser sensor might not work very well with it. I just wish the wooden surface was smoother. Then it would be perfect. It is not that rough – because the mouse has those glide pads, but there is still some resistance. One of the reasons I got this wireless mouse was to reduce the drag caused by the cable, which also counts as resistance. So if I add resistance from the surface, there is not much sense in going with an optical mouse. So if you think about it, I might have to get a mouse pad after all.

[Rant] Logitech G602 tracking on Razer Sphex mouse pad

Remember me buying the Logitech G602  for a crazy low price of just $29? If not, check this article out.

So I've been playing Crysis 3 a bit with this new mouse and I had a problem. It was difficult to aim with the mouse. The accuracy went down the toilet. At first I thought it was because this is a wireless mouse and the input lag is higher than a typical wired gaming mouse. Plus, for some reason I couldn't set the USB polling rate either. It was greyed out in the Logitech Gaming Software user interface.

Edit: After reading a bit, I found out that the USB polling rate of the mouse is 500Hz and it is not changeable. It is higher than most typical mice, where the polling rate is 125Hz, but most wired gaming mice can “boost” it to 1000Hz so there is a 1ms lag caused by the polling rate over my G500.

Yesterday I noticed that the mouse pointer would skip and jump while using the mouse. Skips and jumps are not caused by input lag. They are caused by bad tracking. I was using the Razer Sphex mouse pad with the Logitech G500 and I continued to use it with the G602. I also have a steelseries QCK Mini mouse pad which has a cloth surface, hence the friction is too high and I gave up using it.

[Gadget] My G602 mouse is here

The G602 mouse that I only paid $29 for (OMG!) arrived day before yesterday but I hardly got any chance to play some games with it that day. But last night I did some gaming – like 15 minutes.So let me tell you my initial feelings about it.

There was one major concern. This is a wireless mouse. So input lag will be higher compared to a wired mouse. But I didn’t feel that was the case at all. The mouse was quite responsive. I didn’t feel any lag. Maybe pro gamers can feel the difference. I’m more than a casual gamer and I didn’t feel it was slow. However, I used the “Performance” mode which improves responsiveness sacrificing battery life. (Yet, the mouse supports 250hrs of non-stop gaming battery life).

[Rant] Ordered the Logitech G602 wireless mouse!!!

Few months ago, I wanted to buy the Logitech G602 wireless gaming mouse. This is the best wireless mouse to date, with very little input lag over a wired mouse. But the mouse costs about $70 in Japan. That's still cheaper than the US price which is about $80. However, I also have some points at Sofmap, so I could have bought it at about $15 using all the points. But even then, I felt I could use those points to buy something else - like a graphics card. I still monitored the prices for months from kakaku.com but didn’t see it drop below JPY6,700. So I gave up the idea.

Until today, that is.

I was going to take a shower and I got an email. I checked it from the phone. The email was from kakaku.com . It said that the lowest reported price of the Logitech G602 mouse that I was monitoring has gone down. I thought it would be something like $1 or 2. But no, it was all the way down to $39 (or JPY3,980). No way I was not going to jump on this deal. I quickly went into the website of the store that was selling the mouse to confirm the price. Sometime glitches on kakaku.com can cause these. But this time it was legitimate. I quickly decided to buy the mouse.

[Rant] How cheap would the G602 get?

Remember a while back I was considering getting a Logitech G602 wireless gaming mouse? I didn't want to get it back then because the prices were a bit too steep. I wanted to play the waiting game. Back then, the price of it was hovering around ¥8,000. I've kept a constant look out for price drops ever since and it is getting cheaper by the day - albeit few ¥ here and there.

Now the price of it is around ¥6,700 (as of 2013-12-06). That's a quite a nice price drop, right? I can get it now or wait for the prices to drop even further. It is just like buying stock. You never know when the prices will go up again. So you will have to make a decision at some point whether to risk waiting further or be happy with the current price and never look back afterwards.

You can take a look at how the prices have changed in the last 3 months by clicking this link.

Hmm.....

Since this is not a much needed upgrade, I've decided to wait. As I'm upgrading the display to a 1440p display (which has already arrived and am playing with it right now), there are more pressing matters like getting a faster graphics card because the GTX670 doesn't quite pull the pixels at the rate that I'm comfortable at. But that upgrade is also put on hold until manufacturers come out with non-reference designs for the R9 290 graphics card and also Mantle performance figures. I might still go with NVidia, but I want more options.

What so you guys think? Will it get cheaper? Or should I get it now?

[Article] Finally we have the perfect wireless mouse - Logitech G602

Wireless keyboards and mice are not on the top of the list in any gamer's buying list, because they don't work well with competitive Multi-player gaming. The biggest issue is the input lag that they produce, but additionally there is the risk of running out of juice (battery I mean) when you are in the middle of a gaming session without even knowing. Hey, who has time to monitor the battery status when you are glued to the screen, right? Besides, frequently needing to charge the wireless products is a pain in the arse. The chances of you forgetting to do it in the night and finding out that you are almost out of juice is common place. 

Looks like wireless input devices are not practical. So why am I even writing this topic? Simply because, THERE ARE advantages of using wireless input devices (not so much with keyboards though). There is no wire drag with wireless mice. Wire drag is where the wire of the mouse gives a resistance against freely moving the mouse because it drags along the surface (i.e. desk). Most mice these days are braided and that adds more resistance. There are products like Roccat Apuri that tries to bring zero drag resistance to wired mice, but not everybody can get one in their country nor have the space on the desk to keep it. But indeed it is a cheaper fix to the solution. 

But if you are a minimalist like me (news flash!), you'd want to go for the real thing. Meaning, a proper wireless mouse. Additionally, it gets you one step closer to getting rid of that wire mess. But does a proper wireless mouse exist? 

The answer is PROBABLY. The Logitech G602 comes almost close to that throne. The biggest difference with this mouse is that it allows you to use the mouse for 250hrs non-stop compared to most gaming wireless mice that need charging everyday. That's a high speed mode which is suitable for gaming. If you put it to endurance mode, which is good enough for everything else, you get over 1000hrs of non-stop battery life! Holy McDonald!The batteries inside the mouse are standard AA sized batteries; not anything proprietory. Looks like you don't get any charging mechanism built in to the mouse. You have to charge your own batteries or put new AA batteries every now and then. Costly, unless you have a few Sanyo Eneloop batteries lying around. I do, because I bought 8 batteries for my old Canon SX1-IS camera. The mouse even works with a single battery, so you don't lose the connection if you change one battery at a time.

 

Just like all other Logitech's modern gaming mice, this also comes with a million buttons that you can assign macros or custom keystrokes which comes real handy in games. I cannot believe how you can play games with a generic 3 button mouse these days. However, when it comes to marketing, the high DPI is not a marketing point with this mouse. The max DPI (or CPI) is limited to 2500, which actually makes sense. Even that is too high. Most people are fine at around 1000 DPI or even less.  Maybe that helps save battery life. (Means, it is a technical compromise). However, the mouse comes with a new sensor, called Delta Zero. Maybe saving battery life is the main feature of it rather than performance.

The wireless link is between a dedicated nano receiver that plugs into your USB port. it operates at 2.4GHz spectrum and the mouse works up to 3m away. That's good enough for me. It's not Bluetooth, so you will have to carry that nano receiver wherever you go. But remember, wireless is still laggier than wired. That cannot be fixed. They can make the difference smaller, but it will always lag behind wired mice. Most people won't notice it, but some gamers might.

The only issue this mouse has is the Logitech's Gaming Software. With version 8.50, they have improved it a lot, but it still misses the active application every now and then and uses wrong settings for the application you want to use. Minimizing the application and bringing it back might work. Or maybe you'll have to open the Gaming Software window from system tray. Worse case would be to kill it from Task Manager and relaunch. But that's a lot of hard work. I also set the default configuration for games. So if I close all the programs running while gaming, I won't have an issue. It's the application switching that doesn't work well.

The suggested price is $80 for the mouse. That is a lot of money for a mouse. I checked the prices in Japan, and the lowest I could find was JPY8,440. That's too much. I hope the prices will drop by my next birthday. 4.5 months to go. :) Maybe this will be my first step towards going wireless.