Date: April 20th, 2005
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Hardware Reviewer)
Product was submitted by: Logitech
<--SHOP FOR A LOGITECH MX518 GAMING MOUSE HERE
PRODUCT COMPOSITION
So, for the US$49.99 pricetag, what do you get other than the snazzy box?
The package doesn't of anything special. As with any other mouse, you get the usual software and installation manual, a USB to PS/2 converter and the actual mouse itself. Nothing too special here, let's move on.
PRODUCT PICTORIAL & WALKTHROUGH
So, let's tickle your eyes with an actual walkthrough of this mouse.
Starting off, the mouse has quite an interesting exterior finish. Although it looks like someone took a hammer to it, it actually is just the knurled metallic finish which is exactly what we saw with the preceding red MX510 gaming mouse.
The right and left mouse buttons are incorporated into the iridescent cover and the click feel is crisp and clean and has the same moderate click noise seen throughout Logitech's mouse lineup. With this being said, it isn't too loud but is a little louder than anything tested within Microsoft's mouse lineup. The one thing I did like is the relatively smooth finish which allows for easy cleaning and removal of the funky gunk that seems to collect on the main mouse button after extended periods of use.
The two long buttons next to where a right-handed person's thumb would be placed is for quick jumping forward and back through your surfed webpages and allows the user to surf a lot more efficiently without having to constantly go up to the main menu to use the navigation buttons. I found this quite a handy feature seeing I do a LOT of surfing and research on any given work day and I found myself using these two buttons religiously once I had gotten used to them. When I changed work machines and was using a mouse without this feature, I found my thumb constantly reaching for these two buttons. It is one of those feature that once you have gotten used to, it is hard to go back to just any normal mouse.
Turning our focus to the scrolling wheel, you will see there are a positive and negative button immediately above and below it. Although I will delve into these two button more in upcoming sections, I won't let the complete cat out of the bag right now. Let's just say they allow you to adjust the mouse's optical precision on the fly. Whether not this feature is more a toy rather than a useful feature will be brought forward then.
Last but not least is the center task switching button which will bring up logitech's task switching menu which is much more useful than the ALT-TAB feature incorporated into windows.
The heart and sole of Logitech's new mouse if the updated optical assembly which still has the 15G acceleration and 5.8 megapixels/second bandwidth as the MX510, but its' optical resolution has been upgraded from 800dpi to a extremely precise 1600dpi. Double the resolution means double to precision. Although you might not see the difference in normal everyday computer work, you will definitely see a difference during gaming. More on this later.
