The Basics
121-ish grams WITHOUT optional weights installed. 3366 sensor. 20M omrons. RGB lighting. Went to a Best Buy to pick up the G903. Tried G903, did not like shape. Tried G502, liked. Left store, meditated upon previous dislike for ugly G502 “spaceship design.” Meditated upon adopting a mouse that seems to weight twice as much as my truck. Bought G502 online next day. Proceeded to enjoy.
Why do a G502 review when the mouse has been around forever? Because it is still a relevant choice on the market, because I like going Nit-Noid on mice, because this mouse deserves the attention it gets, and because pleas need to be made to properly update a winning formula. Testing time prior to review was 19 days.
The Good
Very good for fingertip, that style feels good even with the heavy weight taken into consideration.
Good materials. Quality rubber flanks with some nice patterning action going on.
Excellent 3366 sensor, low LOD. Surface tuning option did seem to make a positive difference.
Good clicks everywhere. Primary clicks are medium stiffness and manage to have excellent feedback without being terribly loud.
Excellent thumb buttons, no travel or rattle issues. They are labeled, (nice little touch) and all have light actuation with good tactility. All buttons on the mouse are good, but I do think they would be better with a textured finish as found on the G203.
Logitech has excellent software. Reliable, intuitive, functional albeit limited in the total number of bells and whistles available compared to a growing portion of the competition.
The software enables use of the G-Shift option. Basically you can map your mouse to act as a “shift key” so that virtually all the other buttons on the mouse perform an additional function when pressed with the said shift key.
Good sniper/extra buttons, I think they are conveniently placed for medium hands and work well. I immediately missed the extra functions when I swapped away from this mouse.
Infinite scroll is a nice option. I didn’t know how much I would use it...until I ended up using it a lot. Another thing easily missed switching away from the mouse…
Apparently durable scroll design. I have no intention of opening this mouse up, part of the reason for that is because there are a number of good teardown videos out there. One thing I learned from a teardown vid is that the regular scroll mode gets its tactility from a plastic arm in contact with the inside of the scroll wheel. That arrangement seems like it would be more durable than what you typically see in most mice.
A tilt scroll option is not only present, it is easy to use with mercifully light actuation.
Between the infinite scroll, extra buttons and tilt function, I found the G502 superb for word processing. I had backspace set to one side of the tilt scroll, and the “end” key mapped to the other. The additional index finger keys were mapped to copy and paste, just for fun. Between the G-Shift and switching profiles on the fly, you can quickly run into more options than you can quickly memorize.
The Middling
Decent looks in my opinion, but it took a while to get there. If you don’t like the looks, all you need to do is think of its functionality, you can stab someone or club them with this mouse. Many uses, such versatile.
The Bad
Scroll wheel is metal and not rubberized – it feels cold, often a little slick. Rubber should have been an update on the Spectrum model.
The braided cord is what I would call moderate-stiff, definitely room for improvement.
Scroll tactility is quite good, but rather clunky. Also, there is enough mass to the scroll wheel that you can overscroll easily in some situations.
Scroll rattles, sometimes even in game. Not a huge distraction, minor gripe compared to the convenience of having infinite scroll available.
Heavy weight means a lot more inertia for fast-paced FPS. This is an area where this really good all-rounder isn’t so well rounded. The weight means that picking it up is not completely transparent to your mind in-game, even after a week of use. It did go away eventually for me. This mouse is probably unusable for FPS for players who operate below 1000 DPI, even then it is not ideal.
Okay for small palm and medium fingertip, but larger hands (18.5cm+) that try to palm will probably drag their pinky or feel annoyed trying to keep it off the mousepad.
There is space for a passable claw grip, but the 502’s weight means you have to squeeze that much more with limited thumb surface area. This seems a good recipe for hand fatigue/discomfort over time.
Scroll toggle button is useful, but would be better as the rearmost of the two buttons behind the scroll. Sure it makes a harder engineering problem, but that is why Logitech employs engineers.
Rather narrow grip width caused some ring finger fatigue. I always thought of the G502 as a larger mouse, it actually isn’t as big as it looks. Making the mouse slightly wider with slight modifications would make it much more comfy and easier to pick up at the same time since more of fingers 4 and 5 would end up in contact with the side of the mouse. The right-side grip surface should flare out slightly more to right with same basic curvature. It would also be good to raise the height of the right side grip section by 2mm to be just slightly more similar to the G403. Forward of the scroll wheel on the right side (where the ring finger goes), the lip section should be flattened slightly to give more options to ring fingers.
The primary click button was loose in the upward direction. On my copy, if the index finger is not perfectly dry, the mouse button adheres to it and gets pulled upward with the finger and results in a distracting rattle when the two go their separate ways. This was one of the most annoying issues with the mouse. Thankfully it was easily fixed. I put a piece of tape along the front seam of LMB, preventing it from traveling upward out of position.
Failure to update and missed opportunities. The Proteus core was released some 3 years ago. The Spectrum is still on store shelves some two years after Logitech updated their G logo. Kinda advertises that it is an “old” mouse. Logitech isn’t putting 50m omrons on the mouse. Redundantly...no rubber scroll and no attempt at weight reduction with the Spectrum release. Makes me sad. Worse, the G900 weights 15 grams less and it is wireless. For the Spectrum update, Logitech simply added RGB to the logo and deleted some teal from the thumb rest. If it had been my company doing such a minor change, I would have simply updated the mouse and let people notice the fact there was a nice little production update.
Conclusion
Despite the fact this is an older design, the Proteus Spectrum is still a good design that holds up well in many areas. One of the best compliments I can give the G502 is that I’m not terribly tempted to go back to my G403, probably my fave mouse of all time - and that is coming from someone who, until recently, was looking for a 70 gram gaming mouse. Is the 502 ideal for FPS? Nope. But, it is still probably the best all-round mouse I’ve used. This mouse’s “honeymoon phase” lasted almost two weeks, an eternity for me. That’s part of why I kept using this mouse as long as I did – I didn’t want to move on. It’s not perfect, and there are several legitimate gripes. This mouse’s shortcoming are all the more painful because without them this mouse could have been A+ material so easily. That said, I look forward to using it a lot more. I hope we see a “G503” come out in a wired and wireless version. The wired version should retain the basic shape with all the buttons and be no more than 100g with adjustable weights, 110g for starters with the wireless version. I can dream.
Bang for Buck Grade: A-
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