It was only a short time ago that I was taking a look at Logitech’s new G700s wireless gaming mouse. Not too long after that Logitech actually announced another wireless gaming mouse that would be sold alongside of the G700s, this one is called the G602. Unlike the G700s, the G602 wasn’t an upgrade to a previous model. The G602 a considerably different in design compared to the G700s and it also does not use a rechargeable battery. Logitech did however introduce it with a big promise, they claim 250 hours of gametime in its performance mode, an impressive number for a gaming mouse. Let’s dig into the G602 and find out if their claims have merit and find out what it’s all about.

Product Name: Logitech G602 Wireless Gaming Mouse

Review Sample Provided by: Logitech

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

 

Specifications

Tracking

Resolution: 250 – 2,500 dpi

Max. acceleration: >20G*

Max. speed: up to  2 meters/second (80ips)

Responsiveness

USB data format: 16 bits/axis

USB report rate: Up to 500 reports/second

Glide

Dynamic coefficient of friction - Mu (k): .09

Static coefficient of friction - Mu (s): .14

Durability

Buttons (Left / Right): 20 million clicks

Feet: 250 kilometers

Battery Life and Wireless

Performance mode: up to 250 hours

Endurance mode: up to 1440 hours

Wireless range: 3 meters

Package contents

Mouse

Wireless receiver

Receiver extender cable

2 AA batteries, pre-installed

User documentation

Platform Compatibility

Windows® 8, Windows 7 or Windows Vista®
Mac OS® 10.6.8 or higher

System Requirements

Windows® 8, Windows 7 or Windows Vista®

Mac OS® X 10.6.8 or higher

Powered USB port

Internet connection and 100MB hard drive space (for optional software download)

Specifications

3-year Limited hardware warranty


Packaging

The packaging for the G602 follows the same theme that I have seen on the last few Logitech gaming devices. The cover has a photo of the G620 with half of it showing an X-rayed version of the mouse, showing a little of the behind the scenes. When you open the front door you can get your hands on the mouse itself before you buy it, giving you a chance to see how it fits your hand. This is something that I think is very important when you are shopping retail, most of the big gaming mouse manufactures now include this on all of their mice.

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Logitech even went as far as to include a full specification listing on the side of the packaging as well. Having access to all of the information is always good and in some cases it can help you pick between multiple mice. Around on the back they have another photo of the G602, but this time there are a couple key features that are highlighted. Specifically they highlight the “Delta Zero” sensor, the 11 programmable buttons, and the G602’s 250 hours of gaming battery life. I don’t know what the Delta Zero sensor is, but the other two highlights would catch my eye on a store shelf.

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Inside the box, along with the G602 itself you will get a tiny wireless dongle and for documentation a setup guide and safety and warranty information. To go with the dongle, they also included an extension cable for those who need to pull the dongle up to on top of their desk.

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Features/Pictures

I’m impressed that Logitech managed to come up with a completely different design than what they normally create while still having a look that is clearly Logitech. Let’s take a look around the G602 and see what makes it so unique.

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One of the G602’s key features is the bank of macro buttons along the side. There is a bit of a balance between Logitech’s MMO mouse the G600 with its 12 side buttons and most of their other mice that have 2-4 normally. The middle ground is 6 side buttons, two rows of three one above the other. They extend most of the way across the mouse and are each defined with a triangle like shape that makes it easy to press one key without your thumb pushing on any of the other keys at the same time. This is really important when you have so many keys next to each other like this. On the top side of each key they have labeled them as well. Because of the angle you can see the labels from both the top and side point of view. At the most forward point Logitech has also slipped in three LED lights that will show your DPI setting as you change it.

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From the front and back profiles we can see that the mouse itself sits at a slight angle, typically the top of a mouse is closer to level. Along with that you can see that on the side there is an indented area along with a large wing under it in the thumb area.

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From the top point of view we can see just how far that wing sticks out on the thumb side of the mouse. The reason for this is to prevent your thumb from dragging across your mouse pad, causing additional drag. Some people however do prefer for the side of their thumb to drag ever slightly as a tactile feedback to moving your mouse around, I am one of those people most of the time. I love the multiple materials Logitech used on the G602. From the top you can see the heavy texture on the back half and sides of the mouse, the triggers have a smooth plastic, and in the middle there is a grooved rubber finish for a good grip. To bring it all together with a little styling there are small strips of a glossy finish that go between each finish.

There are a couple buttons and a switch on the top of the G602 along with the two traditional triggers of course. The two buttons are the G10 and G11 buttons on the front left corner. I have been seeing buttons in this location a lot more recently. I haven’t had any luck training myself to use them, but I still think this is one of the best locations to slip a few more programmable buttons in, you could even create a rapid fire macro on one and us it in game like you would your normal trigger. Also on top, back behind the scroll bar is a small switch. This is related to the wireless aspect of the G602, this switch lets you go back and forth from game mode to energy saver mode. Game mode will light up an LED right in front of the switch in blue color and energy saver will have a green LED.

The last thing on the top area of the G602 that I wanted to cover was its scroll wheel. This was a major departure from what we have seen in the past from Logitech. For starters there isn’t any free spin mode button available. Additionally the wheel itself is rubber but doesn’t have any texture to it. I did find it to be very grippy still, but it’s unlike Logitech to go with a smooth finish here. The last and biggest change is the lack of side scrolling. In the past this has been a feature I have only seen Logitech go with and only recently we have seen Razer and some others include it as well. I was very sad to see it go, even though I don’t normally use it. It was always nice to have two more macro buttons available there if you needed them.

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On the underside of the G602 you have four Teflon gliders, one on each corner. Each glider is fairly large meaning they should hold up well compared to mice with small gliders. In the middle of everything we can see the sensor and just above it the on and off switch. With this being a non-rechargeable wireless mouse it is important to be able to turn it on and off to save battery life.

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I mentioned the switch behind the scroll wheel before; here you can see where it lights up when the mouse is on. When you are in standard mode the light is green and game mode is blue.

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Just in front of the side G buttons are the LED indicators for the DPI speed settings.

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When you put the G602 up next to the G700s you can really see the difference in design. The overall shape is similar, but when you get into the details the G602 feels more like the direction that Logitech is going where the G700s is more like where Logitech has been in the past. I wouldn’t be to shocked to see next year’s Logitech mice share a lot more with the G602. Of course I hope to see some of the features that the G700s has in those future models, like the rechargeable battery, side scrolling, and the “infinite” scroll.

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Performance

There are three parts to the performance testing of the G602 that I want to be sure to cover. First we need to talk about the comfort, and overall performance of the mouse. Then we can look at the wireless performance and then lastly the software. You see like other important components, a mouse isn’t just about one or two key features or flaws; it’s the sum of the whole.

So to start things off, the biggest difference between the G602 and the G700s you can’t even see. The G602 saves money by using an optical sensor where the G700s uses a laser sensor. In reality this isn’t a big loss, in fact there are a lot of mouse enthusiasts that will argue until they are blue in the face that an optical sensor is actually better than a laser sensor. They wouldn’t be wrong though, the only “flawless” sensors (aka sensors without quirks) on the market are a select few optical sensors. From what I can tell, the G602 has the Avago ADNS-3090, one of the “flawless” sensors. Frankly, only the most sensitive people will really ever notice a difference really and this has caused more than one argument. The downside with going with optical would be the lower DPI, but as you can tell that “lower” DPI is actually more than most people will ever need anyhow. Having covered that, I can say that in my time with the G602 I never ran into any issues with the tracking performance of the mouse. This includes hours and hours of detailed Photoshop work, various games, and also regular use.

Sadly I can’t say that the overall shape of the mouse was flawless for me though. Even now well over a month later, I still find my hand cramping up after long hours at the PC. There are times where I make a point to hold the thumb side of the mouse all the way out on the edge of the wing. I think the cramps are caused by the mouse being a little smaller than what is best for my large hand size. I don’t prefer a large mouse, but the width of the Sensei and/or some of Logitech’s previous mice has worked better for me. Other than that issue I did really like the placement of the 6 side buttons near the thumb. The way they are defined made it very easy to press the exact button I needed without bumping any of the others. I didn’t find myself using the two buttons near the trigger for anything other than DPI adjustments though. Having previously used the Naga 2014 and the G700s recently as well, I did catch myself trying to use the left and right tilt scroll wheel only to remember that the G602 doesn’t have it. Hopefully Logitech considers bringing that back in a future model.

I’m sure that the wireless skeptics have already left the room or have scrolled all the way through my review to this point to scoff at any good comments I might make about the wireless. I can’t of course test for wireless lag, but I can say without a doubt that I didn’t notice any in all of my testing. This is more than I could say about the G700s that did run into a few weird issues here and there with all of the wireless interference in my office. Once I was comfortable with the wireless (and thank goodness I was, because there wasn’t a wired connection to fall back on), I moved my focus onto the battery life. This was a concern of mine from the start because typically I have needed to recharge my wireless mice often due to the amount of time I spend at my PC.

My original plan was to run the G602 until I killed the battery, sadly after well over a month with it I still haven’t done that. I found that the 220 hours I had used the mouse had the economy mode on and even after switching to the gaming mode for a while I am still showing 3 bars of battery life as you can see in my software photos later. Considering I don’t turn it off and I use the mouse every day from morning to night for both work and gaming, this is extremely impressive. It would be nice if the G602 was rechargeable with similar battery life, but if I only have to worry about swapping out batteries once every few months (in gaming mode) or much longer (in economy mode) I don’t think it will break the bank at all.

The G602 comes with Logitech’s Gaming Software, like their other devices. As someone with multiple Logitech devices plugged in at once it is awesome that I only need the one program to control everything. All you have to do is flip through your devices down at the bottom where they have put pictures of each hooked up device. The software really isn’t any different than what you would see with the G700 or any other Logitech gaming mouse other than the photo and the power mode icon in the top left corner.

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You can still click and set any of the G602’s buttons to be a macro, single key, or windows function. This means you can set all of your in game macros up and if you have room you can use one for play pause for example, or setup a binding for your voice chat. You can select if you would like to save your changes just to the software or onto the onboard memory of the mouse itself. This is great if you sometimes switch PC’s and you can’t download the software onto a tournament or friends computer. That will save time getting your DPI and key bindings perfect.

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Overall and Final Verdict

Now that I have had time to live with the G602, is it the ideal mouse to get if you are looking for a wireless gaming mouse? I think that will depend on if you love the tilt scroll that other Logitech mice, or if you need the option to go wired at times, or if you have large hands. If you answered yes to any of those options you may have to reconsider. It’s not that it isn’t an amazing mouse, frankly I don’t think there is anything that comes close to its battery life in the gaming market for example. But for me the discomfort that I get during extended use is enough to have me looking back at the G700s. That is especially disappointing because the optical sensor in the G602 is great and I love the placement and quantity of side buttons. What I would recommend is if you get a chance; get your hands on the G602 in a store to see how it fits your hand. If it’s comfortable, you won’t find another wireless gaming mouse that will compete for its price and feature set.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33309 15 Nov 2013 19:11
Before the weekend I take a look at Logitechs latest wireless mouse. It wasn't perfect, but I have yet to come close to killing the battery as well!

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