After 21 years of heavy use of the great Logitech MX 520 mouse (I'm surprised it still holds the nice rubberized scroll wheel. and that it still works at all after all this time), I tried an upgrade. I'm a little embarrassed so far. Sure, it's a hi-tech mouse, it takes some getting used to. But.
The old MX fits perfectly in the hand, the buttons are exactly where they should be. Perfectly accessible, yet it almost never happened that a person pressed them by mistake instead of another button or when "flicking" the mouse. Versus the G 502 Hero: Buttons, ergonomics:
G Hero has more buttons, so it's a problem where to put them all. Unfortunately for me, it didn't turn out ideally.
The G7 and G8 buttons follow smoothly and closely on the left side of the left button, easily interchangeable with it. There is no clearer tactile separation (the only difference is that they are made of glossy plastic, whereas the main left button is a bit matte - but this is not enough to distinguish them). By default, I was increasing the DPI every so often (and confusingly for me). The G6 button (typically the "shift" button to change the functions of the other buttons or temporarily lower the DPI - "sniper mode") is too far forward and hard to reach. The thumb has to stretch more. If it's used as shift + some other button, the hand kind of cramps up. Most of the buttons cannot be shifted with it: definitely not G9 on the top of the mouse back, hardly G7 on the back of the top left edge, and certainly not G4, G5 on the side of the thumb - most people have only one thumb, and that's the one holding the G-shift. G4, G5 buttons on the side for the thumb (typically: browser back and forward) are again too far back and big, so especially because of the rear G4 the thumb has to wiggle a lot. Also, the tactile differentiation (both between the buttons and the buttons on the side edge of the mouse) could be better. But it's a better situation than the G7 and G8. Scroll wheel for vertical scrolling
The scroll wheel is a bit too large for my taste and has a bit of a "jerky and jerky" operation in stepping mode (it's also noisier). The button press could also be softer. But the switching between "stepping" and "smooth running" mode (where the wheel's flywheel behaviour is fully applied) is great. The side-to-side wheel wobble is cool and can be shifted (so you can introduce vertical and horizontal scrolling). It's just a pity that you can't use G-shift to give new functions to rotate the wheel (such as scrolling sideways or zooming). The only thing missing for complete satisfaction is not having to switch between stepping and continuous mode with an extra mechanical button. Ideally, the wheel could switch modes according to acceleration and acceleration force. Software, customization
The great thing is that you can assign a lot of functions to the buttons (including shortcuts and macros). And that the number of functions can be increased by using a "shifter" - a button that can be defined as a G-shift" (typically a button on the front left side for the thumb).
You can switch up to 5 different DPI sensitivities in the profiles (and each profile can have a different number of DPIs and different values). The active DPI level is indicated by backlit "dashes" on the side of the mouse.
It took me quite a while to understand some of the basics (nowhere is it mentioned). In general - with such a "top of the range" mouse it is a shame that there is no proper user manual or at least well written help. At first I was confused about the profile switching and DPI (why does the mouse suddenly have a different sensitivity and why does it change color? ).
Also, it's pretty crazy that there are "hardware" profiles stored in the mouse (there are 5 of them, but the outdated sketchy documentation only talks about 3 that were in the previous firmware version). And secondly, there are software profiles. A profile that includes color and lighting effects, a set of DPI sensitivities, DPI switching options, button function loading. And that you can't combine the SW and HW profiles. That HW profiles are automatically activated if the Logitech G Hub control software is not running. With the Logitech G Hub software running, you can switch between HW and SW profiles (switched by an inconspicuous and incomprehensible icon on the mouse image in the dashboard of installed devices. and it's cryptically called "On-board memory mode on/off"). Turning off Logitech G-Hub always crashes on those HW profiles. In Logitech Hub you can set the behaviour of SW profiles, but not HW ones. You must use the Onboard Memory Manager for these.
Well, and to make things worse, the profiles can somehow switch spontaneously depending on what application (game) is running at the moment. I'm still in the dark. Conclusion:
It lacks little things to make it perfect, but there are quite a few missing little things.
