Good, but with some disappointments
This is my first review on Amazon, so I hope you'll cut me some slack... :-) Anyway, I'm a casual gameplayer (I like World of Warcraft), so I wanted a mouse that would be reliable, responsive, comfortable, and affordable. Basically everything anyone would want in a mouse, but even more so for gaming.
By the way, if you search Amazon for "logitech g7" you'll get multiple listings for this exact same item so, not knowing what else to do, I'm going to post this review on every listing. Wouldn't you do the same? I dunno...
So, first of all, I read lots of reviews to try and decide what would give me the best equipment for the money. This is a pretty expensive mouse, but I made it more affordable by buying a refurbished item online. That might have been a mistake, or it might not -- I'll never know. Anyway, keep that in mind here. Maybe "factory new" units will be less likely to display the problems I noted below.
So, here's the long and the short of it:
Pros:
- Nice heft and ergonomics.
- Laser seems to work well on all surfaces (except glass desktops -- forget it).
- Good software for customizing and adapting to particular games (i.e. you can customize the effect of clicking the thumb button, scrolling the wheel, tilting the wheel, etc.)
- Battery level is indicated via LED's on the mouse itself. Also, when low charge is critical, the software will pop up a window to tell you so. (However this window will not always intrude into the game you're playing, so beware.)
- Double lithium-ion batteries ensure that you're never up the creek without a mouse. While you're using one battery, you're recharging the other.
Cons:
- Scroll wheel has an annoying ratcheting sound & feel when spun.
- Left/right tilt function of scroll wheel failed before very long. Now when I push the wheel to the right, it just sticks there, instead of snapping back to center.
Neither here nor there:
The mouse provides a pair of buttons, "+" and "-", right behind the scroll wheel, for increasing or decreasing the sensitivity. For me, once I've got the sensitivity I want (which I can do through the Windows Control Panel), I really don't ever need to change it, so those two buttons are a waste for me. Although I guess I can reprogram them to do something more interesting. Ah well; to each his/her own.
And a note about the batteries:
The double battery system works fine for me, and it will work fine for you, as long as you realize that recharging a battery via a USB port (which is your only option) is a very long process. Basically, you'll want to keep the charger attached to your PC all the time, so that when your active battery runs out, you can swap 'em. By the way, of the two batteries I received in my refurb, one seems to take a lot longer to fully charge. In fact, by the time I've discharged the one battery through use, the weaker battery will only have just reached full charge in the charger. Not a real problem, but I figured you should be aware.
Bottom line: Good mouse if you're not a major gamer and can get a good discount price for it.
