This thing looks very impressive. It is also very expensive, and HEAVY. It comes in the biggest box I've ever seen a mouse come in (undoubtedly just for show, so people will be even more impressed).
Opening the big mother of a box up, one finds five things inside. 1: Mouse, obviously. 2: Base station/charger, with built-in bluetooth hub. 3: Power wall-wart for the charger. 4: 2 AA-size rechargeable NiMH batteries. 5: CDROM + printed quick start guide.
The mouse looks basically just like all the other better MX-series mice, in shiny pearl-grey and...well, dark not shiny grey, except there's a bluetooth logo silkscreened onto the butt of the mouse as well. It has two main buttons, a clickable scroll wheel and two "cruise control" buttons above and below the wheel, which basically do the same as the scroll wheel. There's also an application switch button on top of the mouse, and two browser forward/back buttons near the thumb rest. A small LED behind the app switch button (which by the way is the only button not doing anything without the driver software installed) will blink red if battery power goes down to around 33% or less. It will blink green while charging in the base station. That's all the mouse will do then by the way - it's literally disconnected from the computer and won't react to any input in charger mode. There's also a small "connect" button on the bottom side of the mouse which one uses to connect it with the computer - duh.
There's also a matching blue-glowing connect button on the charger base-station, but the function of that is a bit more obscure. It is to be used in case the connect button on the mouse did not work, it seems.
The installation procedure is very straight-forward. Connect wall-wart power adaptor to the USB plug (nifty solution that helps with cable clutter on the desk), stick USB plug into computer or any USB hub, though the connection cable is rather thick and heavy, so it best be a sturdy hub in that case, like one built into a monitor or something. Also, hubs cause a minor bit of lag as well. Finally, insert batteries, then stick wall-wart into wall socket and mouse into base station. Charge for...well, a while. 4 or so hours, I guess, I've actually not timed the mouse, as it's been charging while I've been asleep.
NiMH batteries don't have any discernible memory effect, so topping up the charge is not supposed to be a problem, though I guess it's best to drain them completely and then charge to full, at least in the beginning, since it takes a couple charges for the batteries to reach maximum capacity. They're rated at 1800mAh, which is pretty high. I did not expect that of Logitech, I assumed they'd send along cheaper 1300-1500mAh batteries instead, but since the bluetooth connection seems to draw more power than the RF link used in the MX-700, maybe that made them more generous, what do I know? I have no idea what batteries the MX-700 comes with...
Battery life is pretty good from what I can tell. First charge was only about 2 hours (with some residual energy left in them, might be added) because I wanted to start using the mouse, and on that it ran for a full day, transmitting nearly 5MB of data to the host system. Second charge, the mouse ran for two days and transmitted almost 14MB of data. I'm now into second day of third charge, over 10.5MB transmitted and the battery light has yet to start blinking. I think it is safe to say, battery life is not going to be much of an issue. One can always put the mouse back in the base station when leaving the pooter, and it will top up the batteries only if needed.
Other aspects of the hardware is that it seems to be of good quality, it's certainly well-designed - very stylish color scheme and excellent build precision, with a bit of a question mark about the scroller wheel, which was always sort of a weak spot with my old MX500 mouse (may it rest in peace). Logitech tends to make sort of flimsy scroller wheels, but the mouse has 5 years warranty after all, so it should be sufficiently well-built I think.
All buttons can be reconfigured through the rather ugly Logitech-provided driver software. It also monitors battery status, and will show a warning icon in the systray when about a third of capacity remains, if it is set to show up in the systray. Unfortunately the battery icon will not replace the standard icon, so you'll have two mouse-related icons cluttering up the tray. Bit of an oversight there I have to say. None of the extra buttons can be used in games, unless the buttons are set in the driver software to perform a keypress, and then configure the game to use that keypress for that function. Bummer! To be fair, this is true to the extra buttons on all mice, to my knowledge anyway. One issue here is I can't get the middle mouse button to work in any games either, but that is undoubtedly a minor bug.
The mouse will in fact work even without installing the driver software at all. Or at least it did on my WinXP Home system, where I had had a Bluetake bluetooth dongle installed previously using the exact same bluetooth stack as Logitech does in their driver - though I did uninstall that one first. Dunno if that made a difference. Anyway, the mouse was detected and worked from the get-go despite it is wireless. Don't ask me how it was possible, I have no answer to that! Only AFTER installing the software did it STOP working, and then only until I rebooted the system, then it was finally there for good.
It does NOT work in BIOS emulation mode though. This means no mouse in a DOS environment or in the windows install program or such, unless there is a corded mouse connected to the system (usually needs to be attached to the first USB root hub).
Logitech has always made lots of hoo-haah about their "MX optical engine", which samples at 8kHz, and supposedly captures twice the amount of pixels compared to other optical mice (at the time of the MX series' release anyway, dunno now). Don't really understand why, because the hype seems a bit over-exaggerated to me. A bit of my own optical mouse history will now follow:
I first owned the original Microsoft Explorer optical mouse which sampled at 1.5kHz. It got confused at very fast turns in FPS games, where it either stuttered more or less in place, or zoomed off in one direction leaving me standing with my gun pointing up in the air, spinning around like a madman. Keeping mouse movements to a reasonable speed by bumping the acceleration/sensitivity settings a bit made it quite useable as a gaming mouse though, and I killed many a scumbag with it too with no problems whatsoever.
The standard Dell mouse pad confused it a bit though with its series of tiny beveled edges in the surface, especially around the edges of the airbrush-like printed button motif at the middle of the pad. On the edges, the mouse would mistrack or again make me spin round and round. Next upgrade was to an Explorer 3.0 optical mouse sampling at 3kHz. It tracked flawlessly on that pad, never even once did I get any stuttering or jumping about, no matter how quickly I moved the mouse.
Then the MX series appeared, and I bought the MX-500 since I did not like the RF technology used in the MX-700, it was also cheaper than its cordless brother. Despite all the hype of extra resolution and 8kHz sample rate, it had terrible tracking performance! On the same standard Dell mouse pad the Explorer 3.0 handled without a hitch, the pointer stuttered about very erratically, often going in a different direction or even backwards than the one I wanted, so I had to replace the mouse pad with a different one.
The MX-900 is much better in that regard, though not perfect. It still mistracks on the upper right corner of the pad, though it only seems to be at a very small spot, so by sticking to the center of the pad, it works just fine. I haven't had any mistracks when gaming, so it's not any kind of real problem. Still, that it exists at all is a bit of a puzzle and a slight disappointment. To be fair, the Dell mouse pad seems to be very evil to optical mice, and using the MX-900 on one I used the MX-500 with was of course no problem at all.
So can cordless mice be gamed with? Even cordless BLUETOOTH mice?
Short answer: YES.
Longer answer: hardcore gamers want to stay away. Why? Well... The mouse is HEAVY, which means more inertia, and it does tire your wrist more than a standard mouse. I've had a bit of ache in my hand after a long gaming session, something that's never happened before. I suppose it's a getting used-to issue, and lighter batteries can probably fix the weight issue to some extent, but it will never be as light and quick-footed as a corded mouse. Also, the mouse power-saves quite heavily, which means if you leave it still for a short while it will start blinking the LED, and probably shut off its bluetooth transmitter too and such, because there is a slight delay of maybe half a second when the mouse doesn't move when it is nudged. It's very short, but it's definitely there. Also, there's a very VERY minor lag in mouse pointer movements. I am very picky and I can just barely make it out, it's on the order of 1/10th of a second AT MOST, very very tiny really, but again, it IS there. A power gamer will likely get used to it like I did, but might just as well get upset with it or annoyed by it. Finally, pointer update rate is not an even 125Hz, like it is with corded USB mice, it's slower and not as regular. Now, it's still pretty quick, quicker than the standard 40Hz rate of PS/2 mice, but once more, it is not AS quick as a corded mouse. I turned on mouse smoothing in the games I play, and that fixed that issue. Casual players probably won't notice any of this, serious gamers should still be able to enjoy the mouse even with FPS games, hardcorers should have a try-and-see approach.
Cordless mice means more freedom, but why cordless BLUETOOTH mouse? MX-700 RF connection is supposed to be fast and lag-free!
Well... Because bluetooth stuff is cool. I'm a nerd, okay? Means I like gadgets, and there are lots of gadget uses for bluetooth. So why not kill two birds with one stone I thought, I needed a new mouse anyway as the MX-500 was worn out. I have a Sony-Ericsson T610 cellular phone with built-in camera in it. Now, the camera is pretty rotten, but it still has its uses, and with bluetooth I can easily fetch the images stored in its tiny 2MB flashrom memory to prevent it from filling up without even having to get the cellphone out of my jacket pocket.
Also, I own a Sony-Ericsson HBH-35 bluetooth headset which I use with the phone sometimes, and now also the PC. Pairing the headset with the PC is easy, and then it is just a matter of selecting bluetooth audio as the input/playback device and press the connect button on the headset to activate the audio link when for example voice communicating over the internet. It's not recommended to use it for general sound playback, it's mono for starters and the sample rate and frequency range is atrocious. It's about the quality of a GSM phone call, which means 'pretty darn bad, really'. Listening to music through this thing is almost painful actually.
Anyway, the option is there if one wants to try it. It works, one doesn't have to fiddle with cables behind the computer etc (since most lack front-mounted headphone/mic jacks). It's actually easy to use too, I had no problems detecting the headset or getting it to play sound, which means the software should handle most bluetooth devices without too much trouble I hope. The bluetooth software has lots of support built into it right from the start, not just the audio device bit, but also printing, networking, modem emulation etc.
So, in conclusion...
Positive:
Good quality
Flashy, smart design
Many reconfigurable buttons
No need to change batteries - recharger in base station
Won't overcharge batteries - smart charger
Bluetooth hub works with devices OTHER than the mouse
Painless software and hardware installation
Long warranty - 5 years
Neat overall
Negative:
Heavy
Slight lag in mouse movements at times
May mistrack on difficult surfaces
Expensive!
Opening the big mother of a box up, one finds five things inside. 1: Mouse, obviously. 2: Base station/charger, with built-in bluetooth hub. 3: Power wall-wart for the charger. 4: 2 AA-size rechargeable NiMH batteries. 5: CDROM + printed quick start guide.
The mouse looks basically just like all the other better MX-series mice, in shiny pearl-grey and...well, dark not shiny grey, except there's a bluetooth logo silkscreened onto the butt of the mouse as well. It has two main buttons, a clickable scroll wheel and two "cruise control" buttons above and below the wheel, which basically do the same as the scroll wheel. There's also an application switch button on top of the mouse, and two browser forward/back buttons near the thumb rest. A small LED behind the app switch button (which by the way is the only button not doing anything without the driver software installed) will blink red if battery power goes down to around 33% or less. It will blink green while charging in the base station. That's all the mouse will do then by the way - it's literally disconnected from the computer and won't react to any input in charger mode. There's also a small "connect" button on the bottom side of the mouse which one uses to connect it with the computer - duh.
There's also a matching blue-glowing connect button on the charger base-station, but the function of that is a bit more obscure. It is to be used in case the connect button on the mouse did not work, it seems.The installation procedure is very straight-forward. Connect wall-wart power adaptor to the USB plug (nifty solution that helps with cable clutter on the desk), stick USB plug into computer or any USB hub, though the connection cable is rather thick and heavy, so it best be a sturdy hub in that case, like one built into a monitor or something. Also, hubs cause a minor bit of lag as well. Finally, insert batteries, then stick wall-wart into wall socket and mouse into base station. Charge for...well, a while. 4 or so hours, I guess, I've actually not timed the mouse, as it's been charging while I've been asleep.
NiMH batteries don't have any discernible memory effect, so topping up the charge is not supposed to be a problem, though I guess it's best to drain them completely and then charge to full, at least in the beginning, since it takes a couple charges for the batteries to reach maximum capacity. They're rated at 1800mAh, which is pretty high. I did not expect that of Logitech, I assumed they'd send along cheaper 1300-1500mAh batteries instead, but since the bluetooth connection seems to draw more power than the RF link used in the MX-700, maybe that made them more generous, what do I know? I have no idea what batteries the MX-700 comes with...
Battery life is pretty good from what I can tell. First charge was only about 2 hours (with some residual energy left in them, might be added) because I wanted to start using the mouse, and on that it ran for a full day, transmitting nearly 5MB of data to the host system. Second charge, the mouse ran for two days and transmitted almost 14MB of data. I'm now into second day of third charge, over 10.5MB transmitted and the battery light has yet to start blinking. I think it is safe to say, battery life is not going to be much of an issue. One can always put the mouse back in the base station when leaving the pooter, and it will top up the batteries only if needed.
Other aspects of the hardware is that it seems to be of good quality, it's certainly well-designed - very stylish color scheme and excellent build precision, with a bit of a question mark about the scroller wheel, which was always sort of a weak spot with my old MX500 mouse (may it rest in peace). Logitech tends to make sort of flimsy scroller wheels, but the mouse has 5 years warranty after all, so it should be sufficiently well-built I think.
All buttons can be reconfigured through the rather ugly Logitech-provided driver software. It also monitors battery status, and will show a warning icon in the systray when about a third of capacity remains, if it is set to show up in the systray. Unfortunately the battery icon will not replace the standard icon, so you'll have two mouse-related icons cluttering up the tray. Bit of an oversight there I have to say. None of the extra buttons can be used in games, unless the buttons are set in the driver software to perform a keypress, and then configure the game to use that keypress for that function. Bummer! To be fair, this is true to the extra buttons on all mice, to my knowledge anyway. One issue here is I can't get the middle mouse button to work in any games either, but that is undoubtedly a minor bug.
The mouse will in fact work even without installing the driver software at all. Or at least it did on my WinXP Home system, where I had had a Bluetake bluetooth dongle installed previously using the exact same bluetooth stack as Logitech does in their driver - though I did uninstall that one first. Dunno if that made a difference. Anyway, the mouse was detected and worked from the get-go despite it is wireless. Don't ask me how it was possible, I have no answer to that!
Only AFTER installing the software did it STOP working, and then only until I rebooted the system, then it was finally there for good.It does NOT work in BIOS emulation mode though.
This means no mouse in a DOS environment or in the windows install program or such, unless there is a corded mouse connected to the system (usually needs to be attached to the first USB root hub).Logitech has always made lots of hoo-haah about their "MX optical engine", which samples at 8kHz, and supposedly captures twice the amount of pixels compared to other optical mice (at the time of the MX series' release anyway, dunno now). Don't really understand why, because the hype seems a bit over-exaggerated to me. A bit of my own optical mouse history will now follow:
I first owned the original Microsoft Explorer optical mouse which sampled at 1.5kHz. It got confused at very fast turns in FPS games, where it either stuttered more or less in place, or zoomed off in one direction leaving me standing with my gun pointing up in the air, spinning around like a madman. Keeping mouse movements to a reasonable speed by bumping the acceleration/sensitivity settings a bit made it quite useable as a gaming mouse though, and I killed many a scumbag with it too with no problems whatsoever.
The standard Dell mouse pad confused it a bit though with its series of tiny beveled edges in the surface, especially around the edges of the airbrush-like printed button motif at the middle of the pad. On the edges, the mouse would mistrack or again make me spin round and round. Next upgrade was to an Explorer 3.0 optical mouse sampling at 3kHz. It tracked flawlessly on that pad, never even once did I get any stuttering or jumping about, no matter how quickly I moved the mouse.
Then the MX series appeared, and I bought the MX-500 since I did not like the RF technology used in the MX-700, it was also cheaper than its cordless brother. Despite all the hype of extra resolution and 8kHz sample rate, it had terrible tracking performance! On the same standard Dell mouse pad the Explorer 3.0 handled without a hitch, the pointer stuttered about very erratically, often going in a different direction or even backwards than the one I wanted, so I had to replace the mouse pad with a different one.
The MX-900 is much better in that regard, though not perfect. It still mistracks on the upper right corner of the pad, though it only seems to be at a very small spot, so by sticking to the center of the pad, it works just fine. I haven't had any mistracks when gaming, so it's not any kind of real problem. Still, that it exists at all is a bit of a puzzle and a slight disappointment. To be fair, the Dell mouse pad seems to be very evil to optical mice, and using the MX-900 on one I used the MX-500 with was of course no problem at all.
So can cordless mice be gamed with? Even cordless BLUETOOTH mice?
Short answer: YES.
Longer answer: hardcore gamers want to stay away. Why? Well... The mouse is HEAVY, which means more inertia, and it does tire your wrist more than a standard mouse. I've had a bit of ache in my hand after a long gaming session, something that's never happened before. I suppose it's a getting used-to issue, and lighter batteries can probably fix the weight issue to some extent, but it will never be as light and quick-footed as a corded mouse. Also, the mouse power-saves quite heavily, which means if you leave it still for a short while it will start blinking the LED, and probably shut off its bluetooth transmitter too and such, because there is a slight delay of maybe half a second when the mouse doesn't move when it is nudged. It's very short, but it's definitely there. Also, there's a very VERY minor lag in mouse pointer movements. I am very picky and I can just barely make it out, it's on the order of 1/10th of a second AT MOST, very very tiny really, but again, it IS there. A power gamer will likely get used to it like I did, but might just as well get upset with it or annoyed by it. Finally, pointer update rate is not an even 125Hz, like it is with corded USB mice, it's slower and not as regular. Now, it's still pretty quick, quicker than the standard 40Hz rate of PS/2 mice, but once more, it is not AS quick as a corded mouse. I turned on mouse smoothing in the games I play, and that fixed that issue. Casual players probably won't notice any of this, serious gamers should still be able to enjoy the mouse even with FPS games, hardcorers should have a try-and-see approach.
Cordless mice means more freedom, but why cordless BLUETOOTH mouse? MX-700 RF connection is supposed to be fast and lag-free!
Well... Because bluetooth stuff is cool.
I'm a nerd, okay? Means I like gadgets, and there are lots of gadget uses for bluetooth. So why not kill two birds with one stone I thought, I needed a new mouse anyway as the MX-500 was worn out. I have a Sony-Ericsson T610 cellular phone with built-in camera in it. Now, the camera is pretty rotten, but it still has its uses, and with bluetooth I can easily fetch the images stored in its tiny 2MB flashrom memory to prevent it from filling up without even having to get the cellphone out of my jacket pocket.Also, I own a Sony-Ericsson HBH-35 bluetooth headset which I use with the phone sometimes, and now also the PC. Pairing the headset with the PC is easy, and then it is just a matter of selecting bluetooth audio as the input/playback device and press the connect button on the headset to activate the audio link when for example voice communicating over the internet. It's not recommended to use it for general sound playback, it's mono for starters and the sample rate and frequency range is atrocious. It's about the quality of a GSM phone call, which means 'pretty darn bad, really'. Listening to music through this thing is almost painful actually.
Anyway, the option is there if one wants to try it. It works, one doesn't have to fiddle with cables behind the computer etc (since most lack front-mounted headphone/mic jacks). It's actually easy to use too, I had no problems detecting the headset or getting it to play sound, which means the software should handle most bluetooth devices without too much trouble I hope. The bluetooth software has lots of support built into it right from the start, not just the audio device bit, but also printing, networking, modem emulation etc.
So, in conclusion...
Positive:
Good quality
Flashy, smart design
Many reconfigurable buttons
No need to change batteries - recharger in base station
Won't overcharge batteries - smart charger
Bluetooth hub works with devices OTHER than the mouse
Painless software and hardware installation
Long warranty - 5 years
Neat overall
Negative:
Heavy
Slight lag in mouse movements at times
May mistrack on difficult surfaces
Expensive!
