Logitech G9 Gaming Mouse Review

When I heard Logitech was releasing a new gaming mouse, I was pretty excited. The previous G7 gaming mouse is by far the best mouse I have ever used, so I was excited to see how they have improved upon it and what it looks like.

The Logitech G9 is an extremely nice mouse; however, it takes about three steps further and two steps back when compared to the G7 or G5. The G9 is much smaller and not wireless, but it is loaded with many neat features and technology.

To start off, the size of the G9 is significantly smaller than the G7. Take a look at the image below. You can see that the G9 is much shorter, but around the same width as the G7. I’m not sure why it was made shorter, but when holding on to it, it doesn’t fill up your entire hand. This leaves the back of your palm just hanging there, which is definitely a weird feeling. No other mouse that I can think of does this, so it is something that you will have to get used too.

Another problem with the design of the mouse is that it often drags on the mouse pad when tilting the mouse to move the mouse pointer long distances. When the mouse is tilted the edges of the changeable grips on the mouse rub against the mouse pad and there is a lot of friction and scraping involved. It isn’t pretty. It depends a lot on the mouse pad and grip you are using, but it can be extremely annoying if the combination doesn’t work well. By messing around with different mouse pads and grips it is easy to minimize this problem, but this shouldn’t be a problem in the first place.

Other than those two significant problems, the mouse is awesome. It feels great and all needed buttons are extremely easy to press and use. The best part is that it comes with two interchangeable grips. One grip is mega smooth called the “wide load” and another is rougher and provides more grip called “precision”. The grips are very easy to change. There is a button on the very back of the mouse that will unlock the grip and allow you to pull it off and swap it with the other.

The precision grip is plastic like the rest of the mouse, but the surface of it feels almost like sandpaper. Obviously it isn’t going to wear down your skin or anything, but it makes it very easy to grip without your hand or fingers slipping. Most would probably find that the precision grip works best while gaming and the smooth wide load grip feels best while doing everything else. The smooth wide load grip is extremely smooth and has a bigger curve on the left side to hold your thumb.

Unlike previous Logitech gaming mice, the G9 includes a new scrolling wheel called the “MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel”. The scrolling wheel basically has two modes: normal and frictionless (or hyper fast scrolling). The normal mode is just like every other mouse, the wheel will click into place after each scroll. The other mode takes out the clicks that keep the wheel in place, so the wheel can spin many times over with just the flick of the finger. This is a really awesome new feature for the scroll wheel that Logitech developed, but I honestly haven’t found very many uses for it.

On top of the changeable grips and high tech mouse wheel, the G9 also has tuning weights that allow you to change the weight of the mouse. Included in the box is a case of 8 weights (four 7g and four 4g weights) that you can load into the mouse’s weight tray (located underneath the changeable grips). The weight tray holds 4 total weights, so you can even make one side of the mouse heavier than the other if you really wanted to. Again, this is a really neat feature, but the average gamer probably won’t find it very useful.

The G9 gaming mouse also comes with a few other interesting features worth mentioning.  The mouse has an onboard memory that can store up to five profiles of settings (including keyboard macros, dpi settings, and LED color.) The laser on the mouse has been upped to 3200 dpi, from the 2000 dpi that was in the G7 mouse. The dpi can obviously be changed just like the G7 and has three different settings that are shown on the mouse. The Logitech site also says that different grips will be available for the mouse soon, so that is definitely something to look forward to if you own or plan to buy the G9 mouse. Hopefully they will create some grips that are a little more stylish, because out of the box the mouse is only pure black plastic.

The G9 is a great new mouse for many reasons, but I can’t seem to get past its few problems. The mouse itself is too short and feels kind of weird. The grips scraping on normal mouse pads can be extremely annoying and because of this reason I prefer the G7 over the G9.

The price of the G9 comes in at $100. The G9 does have a lot of cool technology, but unless you really need a hyper scrolling wheel, weights, or onboard memory, you will be better off finding a good deal on the G7 or G5 for about $50. If the new features have you sold though, definitely shop around online until you find a good deal. The G9 is overall a very nice mouse, but not worth it unless you really need the additional features. As for me, I’m sticking to the G7!