Logitech MX518 mouse review

[ThePerson98]

A few days back I got sick of the old cheapo mouse I am using. 3 year old 15 dollar microsoft mouse. Had pads from my old mouse on it so it didnt grip the mousepad. I had been doing research for awhile on a mouse. Looking for good price and good quality. I first looked into laser mice and was about to buy the Logitech G5 laser mouse, looked very nice. But 50 dollars for a mouse just to get 2000 DPI? Just no for now.

Started researching again for mice and decided for an optical instead of laser, since optical mice can still be perfectly good. I narrowed it down to the MX518 from Logitech. Many good reviews on Newegg, and other sites. I ordered mine from amazon with a new keyboard.

When I first looked at it it looked very nice. Box is pretty and all. (Cept I don't care much for boxes, I just want the mouse) I was looking at it's specs on the box as I headed to my computer to take it out. Specs are.

Resolution: 1600 DPI I made my computer go to 2048x1536 (Makes 1280x1024 scroll) and at 1600 DPI it zipped crazily across the screen
Image Processing: 5.8 megapixels/second
Max Acceleration: 15g
Max Speed: 40 inches/second
USB Data Format: 16 bit/axis
USB Report Rate: 125/second
USB Throughput: 8000 bits/second
Sleep Mode: Disabled
Weight: 106 grams Weight feels perfect to me, not too heavy, or light.
Button Life: 8 million clicks It's gonna take me awhile to wear this mouse down
Feet: 250 kilometers
All that comes with a 3 year warranty.

The mouse moves very smooth on my cheapo mousepad. And works okay on my wood desk. Use a mousepad . It fits in my huge hands very nicely too. Right as I switched from my old mouse to this it's as if my hand let out a sigh of relief. So much better. Easy to grip too.

The mouse has 8 buttons. 2 of them are the DPI adjusting buttons, you will probably keep those the same. One of them is application switch, and it couldn't be in more of a useless area (Second button down from the scroll wheel), it's a bit hard to get to. Of course the left, right, and mouse wheel buttons. And then two side buttons. The buttons are all in very nice places. The application switch one isn't though, but then again it isn't that bad.

The DPI changing feature comes with 3 preset modes, these are what you will use if you don't have drivers. 400 DPI, 800 DPI, and 1600 DPI. 1600 DPI is blazing fast. 800 will probably be your normal, and 400 for when you are in a slow mood (Or if you have that machine gun in Counter-Strike and want to mow down all the enemies Matrix style :grin:.) With drivers installed it allows you to get 5 settings that you may set yourself.

The software is fine. Likes to eat a bit of RAM (14 MB when minimized). But with me and having 1.5 GB, that isn't too huge of a problem.
One of the settings in the software is button assignment. You can set any buton to basically anything. What it comes set-up with is fine for me. I didn't bother much in that part



Next option is mouse movement. It allows you to set speed, how many lines to scroll, and speed acceleration. I don't get the smartmove thing, nor did it make a difference with what I saw. The mouse movement option is basic stuff.



Next is mouse game settings, it will get a bit more interesting here. :P This area allows you to set the mouse to go to specific settings whenever a game or program launches. It will go to different settings for different games. I perfer to keep it the same as not in a game settings, though.



Now the all-holy advanced game settings. This is the "advanced" area that allows you to change DPI settings. As I stated the defaults are 400, 800, and 1600. Here you get to manually set those. Minimum being 400 and maximum being 1600. The enable notification didn't do anything, sadly. I might be using it wrong. Probably so, I didnt mess with it that much. Recognized games I didnt mess with much either. It's where you can set special settings for different games.



That's about it for this mouse.

Pros:
Moves smoothly
Adjust DPI on the fly
Easy to get to buttons
Good ergonomics
Very sensitive
Software features
Decent price (About 30 USD on newegg)
Looks nice
3 Year warranty
1600 DPI
Made for gaming, but does other things very well.

Cons:
Program switch button is a bit odd to get to.
Software eats up a bit of RAM.
I couldn't get the notification working.


If you are looking for a good gaming mouse, and don't want to spend an incredible amount on a laser mouse. This is your best bet, and it's worth the investment. And the cons aren't horrible. In fact, that don't even matter to me. This mouse has flipped my whole world of gaming upside-down. It's much easier now.

Logitech's page for the MX518
Newegg
Tigerdirect
Amazon

[sjracer]

I agree. I bought this mouse a few weeks ago and I love it. My wife had gotten me the Microsoft Elite Combo for Bluetooth for Christmas. I LOVE the keyboard, but the mouse was not good for gaming. It was not smooth at all, so I saw this in the store. I figured what the heck, a wired mouse for gaming would probably be the best, so I jumped on it. Anyway I love it now. Being able to adjust the sensitivity on the fly is the best part. Set it faster for a normal trooper, and slow it down for a sniper. Works great!!

SJRACER