Customer Reviews

Logitech V400 Laser Cordless Mouse for Notebooks-Orange

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I purchased this mouse for use with my Dell Latitude D620 laptop. Right away I was impressed by its sharp looks and how it feels. Once the battery was placed in the mouse, its weight was just right. I was also happy about the design decision of using one AA battery in this mouse instead of 2 AAA or a cradle/rechargeable design. I see other people who have to place their wireless mouse on a cradle at least once a week... sometimes right in the middle of the work day. A single AA battery (Duracell) lasted 5 months in my mouse with slightly less than normal usage (Sometimes I use the mouse everyday of the week, other times it sits in my backpack for a week without being used). But one of the reasons why the battery lasts so long is the conservative energy usage of this mouse. This is how it works, from my observation: Every one second (plus or minus) the mouse polls for movement. Once it has detected movement, it kicks in and starts tracking until there has been 7 seconds of idle movement, after which it starts polling every 1 second for movement again. What this translates into is this: if you stop moving your mouse for 7 seconds, the mouse goes into "sleep mode" where it polls for further movement once every second. So if you move the mouse while it is in sleep mode, you can expect up to (but usually shorter than) a full second for the mouse to start tracking again. So, before purchasing this mouse, carefully consider if this kind of behavior is tolerable for you. If you use photoshop regularly on your laptop (as an earlier reviewer had mentioned), than you might want to invest in a mouse that isn't so geared for portability (a wired mouse or a less conservative wireless mouse might be for you.)

On another note, I have found its precision to be wonderful! I'm not big on video games, but I can say that the precision of this mouse when playing Quake 3 (a mouse intense video game) is much better than my desktop machine's Microsoft USB Optical IntelliMouse. And since a video game requires constant mouse usage, the mouse never goes into sleep-mode.

On two seperate occasions the mouse got confused. Both times this happened after I had moved the mouse and laptop to another work surface. When this happened, I simply hit the "Reset" button located on the bottom of the mouse, waited about 5 seconds for the mouse to reset, and it worked fine. In 5 months of usage, only having to hit the reset button twice shows, in my opinion, fantastic stability.

If I could make a recommendation to the manufacturer, it would be to place a switch on the bottom of the mouse that lets you set how long the mouse will stay idle before entering sleep-mode. This way users would be able to set it to "7 seconds" for longer lasting batteries, or to "13 seconds" (or whatever) for longer immediate response times.

All in all, for my pattern of mouse usage, I don't think I could find a better mouse to go with my laptop. It is everything I want it to be. And if you invest in a couple of Energizer 2500mAh AA Rechargeable batteries, you will never have to purchase another battery for this mouse (Highly recommended.) There is a small LED on the back (next to the dongle slot) that "glows" red (and catches your attention) when the battery needs to be changed, well in advance. BTW, for those who care, no special setup is needed to get this mouse to work in Linux. Just plug it in!

I waited for months to purchase this mouse (actually the gray version) and was heavily disappointed.

First, the postives:

1) Great look and feel.

2) Compact.

3) USB dongle hides inside mouse when not in use.

4) Only requires a single battery.

Now, the real negatives:

1) If you change surfaces on this thing, it FREAKS OUT. For instance, go from a dark surface to a light surface and it takes a good 10-15 seconds to start "working" again....as if it is sampling over time and has to figure out the brightness of it's tracking LED. This can be really annoying in a typical road-warrior use pattern where ya' gotta track on different surfaces to get comfortable.

2) The mouse has a tendency to SLEEP too aggressively. Sure, this may save the battery, but it leads to a feeling of sluggishniess and poor precision. If you stop in place for a second and want to nudge the mouse one more pixel over (e.g. Photoshop/Illustrator use) then forget it. This is NOT the mouse for you.

3) The precision in general is poor....it just seems to under-sample the surfce, or do all sort of battery saving techniques that cause it to behave "weird".

SUMMARY:

If all you use is PowerPoint or Word on a fairly monochrome surface, then this mouse will fit into your laptop bag just fine. But if you want to do any serious work (graphics, design), then consider another product.

This mouse is a great. I dont know why some of the other people say it is not precise etc. To bring it back from power save only takes a quick shake, which is not bothersome. It does the job for the price and has a nifty storage slot on the back for the wireless dongle.

Only thing remotely negative is that it uses one AA battery which gets drained fairly quick.

I read a lot of reviews before I buy anything online. But normally I don't write reviews - just a personal style I believe most of us have. However, this time I think it's time for me to tell people about my experience with this mouse since I see so many reviews about the "Sleep" problem here.

I bought my Logitech V400 about one month ago. The biggest problem I have is the mouse will go sleep after a non-move period for more than 10 seconds. When it sleeps, I need to move the mouse for at least two seconds before the cursor moves again on the screen. It is so annoying that I've nearly gone crazy! I was about to return it last weekend.

But eventually I went to the Logitech website and tried to download the latest driver. I ended up with installing the SetPoint software. You know what: the problem is gone. Now the mouse works like any other normal ones. I think those people posting the "Sleep" reivews haven't installed the software like I did before. Who installs the software when the mouse can "plug-and-play" anyway?

Pro:

Small size

Good external design on looking

Nice response on many surfaces

Can reach very fast pointer speed

Extra functions like navigate buttons

Con:

Battery life: the included battery done in less than two weeks

Jumping cursor: not so often as Microsoft's, but noticable

Hope this helps!

This mouse is great in looks and portability...

but,

- The sleep mode is terribly annoying, It goes idle very soon takes noticeable delay for waking up.

- The usb receiver could have been smaller.

The design is excellent; however, you need a lot of patience to use this mouse. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone as there are much better alternatives (even from Logitech). It is constantly "sleeping" and it takes a second to respond to movement.

This is the 3rd logitech cordless mouse I bought. the first one was too cool to bring the work. The second one I gave to my bro so he can use it at Law School. This third one was supposed to be for work. It also has a cool extra buttons on it so you can backspace really quickly when surfing on the web. It would have been my favorite if it didn't break down all the time. The first one amazon sent me didn't work when you plugged it into the computer. no lights, no motion, no thing. I thought it was strange. i looked at the battery connector and it looked corroded. Told amazon about it and they sent me another one right away. The second one had a weird problem too! It wouldn't move. the lights were one. it would work sometimes. usually after I hit it. i was thinking there's a loose connection somewhere in there. Now I'm on my third and less than a month after initially purchasing my mouse, the third one stops working! I don't know what the issue is. I'll probably test it out when I get home. but it's very awkward with a brand like logitech to have these problems

This is the first cordless mouse I have used and I love it! I bought a new laptop and hate the touchpad, so I looked for a reliable mouse to use with it. I have been totally happy with this one. It has even worked just fine with Vista!! No problems with installation or compatibility. I love the handy spot to store the USB connector.

Hi all,

I have both, the V400 and the Microsoft 6000, the V400 has many problems, seems like the laser engine has many betas still to go, the tracking is awfull, constantly stopping and restarting, the precision also is too bad, is very difficult to give in the target with this mouse, more if you try with CAD applications, any person, even the basic PC user will notice the bad quality of the laser mechanism.

Is true, is a nice looking mouse, i have many logitech products that are really good, from the presentation bluetooth mouse to the laser one, this V400 seems to break the line of quality logitech has always had.

Kinda disappointing,

I'm uploading pictures of my mouse, so if you want to have a mouse to look and show, the V400 could be a museum object, but if you want a extreme machine, the Microsoft 6000 is the one to go.

Greetings

Sergio Claver from Lima, PERU :)

Bought this product almost a year ago and it still runs awesome. Although now we have much smaller dongles as compared to this one.