note: I started this review before the holidays, shortly after I bought these two mice. I put it on hold due to the sad fact that the Logitech G9 laser died on me. So, you lucky readers get a bonus anecdotal review of the Logitech support and RMA process near the end of the article.
I’ve been meaning to do formal reviews on drzy for awhile. But I get too lazybusy and usually just do a three-sentence blurb in a semi-related post. But after my Logitech G5’s middle button finally annoyed me enough to seek a replacement, I decided to upgrade. That, and the fact that there are some amazing deals on mice right now. Well, amazing deals compared to their suggested retail price, anyhow.
About 4 or so months ago, I started having problems with the middle mouse wheel/button on my Logitech G5. It became increasingly difficult to click the button without having the wheel register a move. This was compounded by the fact that the wheel also seemed to be “misaligned”. As in, the wheel doesn’t register a move just on the little wheel “clicks”, but also between them sometimes, which makes for a frustrating experience not just in gaming, but even in normal browsing. I put up with this for a few months, sometimes searching the web for quick fixes or at least people to commiserate with who have the same problems. I found the latter, but none of the former. I paid good money for this mouse when it came out, yet it was out of warranty, so I had no options to get the new “improved” G5 mouse except to buy it, again. I really hate buying the same thing twice. I am convinced the design problems with the G5’s mouse wheel have to do with over-engineering. They made it not just click down, but also click to either side as well. From the moment of buying one of these, you can feel the little wiggle in the wheel due to these “enhanced” buttons. As much as I tried to make them useful, these extra buttons are completely dead weight to me, as most games don’t even recognize them.
I won’t knock the performance of the mouse, although I wished they had made a better design than the old MX5xx series, the mouse was very accurate, and I had no laser-mouse-lag problems. (Keep in mind I game at low sensitivity normally, and am definitely in the “wrist-flicking” camp).
I heard about the Logitech G9 when they first announced it a year or so ago. It sounded boring, and the shape was… er, interesting. I had no intention of upgrading. I liked some of the other Logitech mice coming out, but I definitely didn’t want a cordless. I don’t care how many Mythbuster-esque tests people have run to refute it, I can definitely feel a response difference between wired and un-wired mice. Enough to make me uncomfortable with wireless mice, and therefore, never use them for gaming.
I had not heard of the new Microsoft Sidewinder or the new Razer line until I stumbled on both of them at an infrequent visit to Best Buy. I rarely retail shop nowadays for obvious price/availability reasons. But I will go if there’s a rare occurrence of a good sale, or if I’m buying something that never drops much in price, such as console-related merchandise. So, while I’m there I may as well browse. I went through the computer section and the first thing I saw was an endcap dedicated to Razer. They had three mice out on display: a Lachesis, a DeathAdder, (neither of which I had ever heard of) and a Copperhead. When the Copperhead came out was around the time I had bought the G5. I liked the Copperhead, but I didn’t like the gel feeling middle mouse and I had heard lots of bad things about Razer drivers (although Logitech has issues with theirs, as well). So I tried my hand on all of them, and while comfortable I wasn’t impressed. I have smallish hands and the Lachesis felt way too big. The other two were just too smooth. I like hard edges to hold on to. Still they were stylish and had impressive technical specs. Keep in mind, I wasn’t really looking to replace my G5 just yet.
So I wandered further and saw the Microsoft Sidewinder. People who have been computing awhile should recognize the Sidewinder name, as Microsoft used it for their high-end mice many years ago. I owned the first Sidewinder Optical. So, I guess they decided to relaunch the name with a high-end corded gaming mouse. The first thing that grabs you is the look of it. It has very unconventional shape and buttons. They didn’t have one out of the package, but you can reasonably see/grip the thing over the clear plastic container. I sat there pawing it a bit, and deciding if I liked it or not. The strange looks appealed to me as a sort of steampunk mouse. It had two round steel over-and-under thumb buttons, a sleek design broken up by sharp overhangs, and it looked like a mutated jellyfish.
The mouse contained an actual LCD panel, to display it’s sensitivity settings. Sensitivity doesn’t impress me much, as again, I am a low sensitivity player, but usually the higher the sensitivity it is designed to handle, the better the accuracy of the mouse, and usually the slickness of its pads increase as well. Ground lighting was also something that didn’t impress me, and I didn’t even know it was there until I bought it.
Oh, I let that slip. Yeah, browsing is a dangerous thing. I didn’t buy it there however. After mulling it over and checking out the improved G5, I went home from Best Buy. I wanted to read some reviews on these new mice from various trusted sites and also some buyer reviews. I especially wanted to review comparisons between them, such as this review eventually will be. I found some common themes.
First, the Sidewinder was big. Honking big. I didn’t exactly note this myself in the store, but not being out of the packaging is probably the culprit. To me, most Microsoft mice are too big, and that’s why I normally only buy Logitechs (or, when ball mice were king, I bought Kensingtons, which were wonderful ball mice), but this particular one didn’t seem excessively big. Boy, was I wrong. I sidled it up next to my G5 and Sidewinder wasn’t that much longer than it, but the problem lies in the width of the thing, and the fact that its “butt” is huge. The ass-end of the mouse is the tallest and widest part, and makes it nearly impossible to be a wrist-resting mouse user, as I am. This ended up being the deal-breaker. I knew it after a few hours of use, but I gave it a week or so, and it didn’t get any better. (You’re welcome, all you Call of Duty 4 players who took advantage of my overweight mouse problem).
More observations: The buttons on the Sidewinder were remarkably nice. They clicked decisively but without much pressure needed. The two thumb buttons were feared at first, and then loved. The sensitivity was spot on and the mouse was very responsive. The mouse wheel itself was probably the thing most people liked. It was large, machined, detented, and had a great easy click and mouse wheel action. The smoothness of movement was noticeable and nice. It was very precise, even at 800 DPI. I didn’t like the hollowness of the mouse. It was plenty heavy, but felt hollow when moving it around, and the weight wasn’t very evenly distributed.
As for the Logitech G9, the few comparison reviews I found said the G9 was smaller, flatter, and of course, more expensive. The G9 retailed at a whopping $100 and the Sidewinder was still a hefty $70. Although I was still not in the market for the G9, the Sidewinder had to go back. But, while perusing my favorite deal sites for other rodents, I came upon my second great mouse deal in a row.. a G9 for $40 less! Of course I committed and received it a few days later.
The first thing to do was to line the two meeses up and compare dimensions. A picture showing such a comparison would be good right now, but I forgot to take some photos before I brought the Sidewinder back. The G9 is very flat, in fact flatter than any other mouse I’ve used in the past 6 or so years. It’s a big departure for Logitech, as their mice tended to get taller and longer as the years went on. The Logitech portable mice of today approach the size of Logitech mice of last decade. Because of it’s only slightly rounded shape, it fits beautifully in the hand for “fingertip” mouse users, but would be just fine for people who like to “palm” it.
The left and right button are fantastic, and the trigger finger of the left is performance tuned in that it is once again an entirely separete button, that pretty much will only grasp your fingertip in it’s little concave bowl. This give it a lightness and crispness when pressing it. The right mouse button is still seamless with the rest of the chassis. The mouse-wheel button is a little disappointing. It is metal, and more detented than the G5, and it has a rubber strip in the middle, but its button mechanism still exhibits some of the mushiness of the previous Logitech mice. The mouse-wheel can be set to click-stepping mode or to free movement (spin it as fast as you can!). The free movement is a gimmick, in my opinion… it’s fun to play with, but I can’t imagine keeping it on that mode without getting annoying. The two thumb buttons are very close to each other but are easy to distinguish and are also crisp in performance.
The G9 comes with two shells, as the mouse chassis itself is quite small. The main shell is rubberized and has a little thumbrest. The “speed” shell has no thumbrest and has a hard rougher plastic shell akin to many mouse pad surfaces. It also has little air vents. I’ve tried the speed shell and it is ok, but the rubberized one is so immediately comfortable that I went right back to it. I don’t really see a necessity for the second shell unless you don’t like rubberized grip.
Windows Experience
In Windows, the Sidewinder and G9 are almost equal. I give the Sidewinder a slight edge because of it’s superior mouse-wheel button, which is used alot when opening tags in such things as Firefox. I did some scooting in Photoshop to check their precision at their lowest through highest settings, and there’s just no denying that these are both extremely accurate, well tuned mice. I will make one remark: the Sidewinder’s laser is situated towards the front of the mouse in the center, while the G9’s laser sensor is nearer to the middle of the mouse and slightly off-center. depending on how you swing your mouse around this could be an issue. I believe most fingertip mouse users treat their mouse almost like a pencil and the more forward and center laser sensor is more natural. You really would only notice it in a broad sweeping gesture. But really, once one becomes acclimated to the movement of the G9, you adjust to its laser position instinctively. Both of the new laser mice were decidedly more precise and responsive than the G5. I never noticed the G5 being clunky or unresponsive, but after using the two new ones, it decidedly felt so.
Software
Both software/driver packages were far too involved for a mouse. Logitech and Microsoft both have always done this with their devices. Installing managers, profiles, skins, etc with all kinds of overhead is just overkill for mice. I know they want them to seem feature-rich, but bloat and an ever expanding taskbar is not welcome in this house. I usually use the native Windows drivers for all mice unless it precludes me from using some feature. Although I did install both packages, to test them. One thing about the Logitech drivers is that they would not install with any Microsoft extra drivers present, ie: the ones that got installed with the Sidewinder.
The Microsoft drivers went in fine and were clunky and bloated but worked well and allowed me to ignore them and go one with my business of headshots and gibs. The Logitech ones suffer from classic Logitech driver syndrome. They do things you don’t want and force you to remove them. Luckily the one reason I installed the Logitech drivers seemed to still work after I turned off the control panel: The pretty purple color of the LEDs. Apparently the setting gets saved in the mouse’s own memory, so no the control panel is just needed to change it, not to maintain it. (It even stayed purple in my dual-boot of Ubuntu linux.) What forced me to remove the control panel from ever loading again? No matter what i did, I could not get the mouse to leave “use enhanced precision” off. This is a setting in the regular mouse drivers in Windows XP. it is basically a mouse decelerator. When you slow down the mouse precision goes up by leaps and bounds, supposedly to enahnce you clicking accuracy. To me it is annoying and I always leave it off, even on my laptops. Logitech has apparently decided that it should be on at all times whether you like it or not. I could manually go into mouse settings and turn it off, but changing profiles, or rebooting, or even just spontaneously, it would turn itself back on. Removing the control panel did away with that annoyance.
I may reinstall it to mess with another interesting feature: variable stepping for resolution. Logitech has a section where one could make more or less steps in the mouse resolution and even make custom levels of resolutions. While I mainly stick at 800dps, I could see a slight jump to 1000dps being beneficial in some games, but much higher than that would require me to move the mouse more than I’d like, and would only be useful with sniper weapons. Tweaking to a custom resolution, instead of predetermined ones, that I can change with a button flick is pretty appealing.
Gaming Experience
The true test. No one buys a performance mouse for plucking around on the web.
The three games I was embroiled in (and arguably still am) whilst making this review were Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty 4, and Eve Online.
Team Fortress 2 was the impetus for me to look longingly at other mice. The mis-clicking, double-clicking, or non-clicking of the middle mouse button caused many a casualty of myself, or when I was a medic, my teammates. I would choose the wrong weapons, not fire them at the right time, or not fire them at all. Frustrating is an understatement. I was willing to just buy a cheap mouse temporarily, but decided I should buy a quality one. I just was upset with the gradual decline of both the button and the wheel action on the G5 and consequently was a little peeved at Logitech because it was apparently a design flaw that they fixed in the next generation of the G5. Unfortunately mine was out of the warranty period.
The Sidewinder was beautiful because of the preciseness of the clicking, the very accessible side buttons, and the overall responsiveness. But, the clunkiness of the mouse in-hand, and the fact that it took up most of my mousing surface’s real estate, made movement awkward at times. I really think if they just kept the design but took it down to 75% of it’s size it would have been a contender. My hand would literally ache after play sessions, even after using the mouse for a couple weeks.
The G9 was better in every way except for the clicking action of the mouse-wheel, as expected. The precision and movement of the two mice are hard to pit against as they both perform admirably well at all resolutions, and switch between them easily. But the shape and feel of this mouse, the ease of my hand getting to the buttons made the process more enjoyable.
Call of Duty 4 had much the same experience. More precision is needed in this game due to the more realistic weapons, and really both mice performed well. Switching between precisions was flawless
Eve Online doesn’t need a fancy mouse, frankly. And all I can say is that both mice worked well in the game.
Logitech’s Return Process
So, I started this review in December 2007. I had been using the G9 about a week, and thought it a perfect opportunity to compare two brand new mice that I wouldn’t get again for some time. One day I was doing normal work at my machine when the little mouse arrow on the screen just stopped moving. Buttons all seemed to work fine, but the mouse wouldn’t budge. The lasers used in these mice are invisible to the naked eye, so I couldn’t check if it was on or not. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it still didn’t work, and using different ports, and rebooting the machine didn’t help. I went and plugged it into my laptop and still had no pointer movement.
I then went to the Logitech forums to see if anyone else had this problem, looking for a quick fix. In one thread with the exact same problems, I found out that the quick fix is to contact Logitech for a replacement. Ah, well. I went through their little form for support and pretty much typed in the paragraph above. Logitech gave me no hassle and apparently that was enough information for them , because they immediately asked for my address and info to send a replacement. They arranged for a pickup of my dead mouse, but I did not have to wait for them to receive it to get my replacement. The had sent the replacement right after acquiring my address, and I thought that was very cool. It wasn’t a refurbished or anything. I got a brand new mouse and it was sent 2-day air.
But now I am a little wary. I have never had a sensor go out on a mouse before. For a brand new mouse, it was a little disconcerting that there was actually a thread on this exact same thing on their official forum. This compounded with the fact that I had bought the mouse to replace my old ailing Logitech mouse. I expressed my concern to the support personnel handling my return case, as I wanted an answer if this was a problem that was known and fixed, or if it is just a “Replace and hope it doesn’t happen again” kind of deal. I didn’t get much info back.
Conclusions
First generation laser pointers worked well. That is, true laser pointers. I bought the G5 because it was new and a supposedly more precise technology that got away from the infra-red pointers. I didn’t know that laser mice had precision problems, and upgrading from my Logitech mx518, I didn’t notice it being any worse on quick movements. But while searching for solutions for my faulty middle-wheel, I found that many people had problems with the first gen laser mice such as the G5. This mainly affected whole-arm mouse users, ones that jacked the precision to the max and flung their mouse at breakneck speed across their desk. I did not experience this problem because of my relatively small movements at relatively low resolutions. Why does someone like me need a 3200 dpi mouse? Well, I don’t, but to get a finely tuned gaming mouse in all other aspects, I can’t get it any other way. Plus, I know if it can handle 3200 dpi, its lower resolutions are probably rock solid.
The two mice in this review performed remarkably well at all resolutions I tested. I only tested the pre-programmed ones, and have yet to test the custom resolutions on the G9. The differences between the two mice come down to preference, aesthetics, and hand-size… not in performance. As far as looks, honestly the Sidewinder first attracted me because it looks like some kind of cyberpunk spaceship. I can definitely see how it can be perceived as ugly, but I didn’t view it that way. The G9 is probably Logitech’s least-flashy current mouse. It is all black and satin finished. Sure it has a programmable LED light, but that’s it as far as panache. It doesn’t have the Sidewinder ground lighting, or LCD screen flair. If you have long fingers, or big hands and like a mouse with back, you can’t go wrong with either. If you have small hands, or are a wrist-flicker, or prefer a mouse with two different textures go with the G9.
