Logitech G9 (and soon, G9x)
By RyanJW 2 Comments
In photos it looks very odd, but it doesn't look nearly as weird in the flesh. It's made very well, the materials feel good — it has the same anti-sweat stuff as the G5, rather than the grease-gathering MX510's smooth plastic — and in regular lighting it looks pretty slick. I think the pictures can be a bit misleading because it's actually a very small mouse that lies low to the desk, and for people who primarily move their mouse with their fingertips like me the shorter grip (it has two) is a godsend.
While being able to change the DPI is pretty much a standard gaming mouse feature nowadays, it's worth pointing out that the G9 handles it really well. You can have up to five DPI settings in total, ranging from 200 to 3200. I can't actually see why anyone would want to use anywhere near 3200 DPI, seeing as even on my chosen 800 DPI I can still annihilate the servers in Team Fortress 2 and literally can't see how any more DPI would help. In fact, it does completely the opposite because I can spin my character 360° about 20 times by moving my mouse from one end of the mat to the other. Is this just marketing nonsense or what?
Speaking of Team Fortress 2, if you like to have a lot of stuff bound to buttons on your mouse the G9 is ideal. In total it has seven bindable buttons, nine if you don't mind sacrificing the DPI-changing buttons. As such I've crammed as much stuff on as possible, such as the Spy's 'last disguise' being bound to one of the side buttons, 'reload' being bound to one of the side-scroll buttons, the 'cheer' voice bind to the other side-scroll button for maximum annoyance when meleeing, etc. :D
I like my gaming mice to be as light as possible, and the G9 is clearly manufactured to fulfil that need — by default it's even lighter than an empty G5. However, as I'm sure everyone knows you can stick extra weights into a tray at the back to make it heavier. I can't imagine many fingertip/claw people like me doing this, but I guess palm grippers might. The cord is also good: it's made of some fabric type stuff rather than the usual rubber, which means it has essentially zero friction and is very light too.
And that finally brings me to the grip. The mouse comes with two grips, but the one that isn't attached by default is by far my favourite. It's made out of the same rough texture as the sides of the 2007 G5 (not the original), which never wears down and never becomes slippy. It's also a smaller grip, which is ideal for those who don't like to rest their palm on the mouse. However, for those that do the original grip is suitable for this as it's fatter, longer, and softer.
Overall this is a really good mouse, and considering they go for less than £40 now it's terrific value too. Those who've owned a G5 will probably find a lot of the above points describe their mouse too, and indeed as an owner of two G5s myself I can confirm that this mouse is truly the direct successor in all ways. At first I thought it was just some weird experiment and that Logitech would return to the classic old shape that's been around for like eight years, but looks can be deceiving: this is every bit as comfortable as the G5, and more so.
The next Logitech gaming mouse is due within a month or so, and is called the G9x. It's almost exactly the same as the G9, except instead of a 3200 DPI laser it has a 5000 DPI laser. Otherwise it seems to be identical, both visually and functionally — but if you can wait you probably should.