Introduction, Design Features
‘Tis a season! And by that, we meant a holiday gift-purchasing season.
What during one time started in Nov has altered behind customarily over a years. Now, it embraces a whole final 4 months of a year. Hardware manufacturers everywhere know this, and take advantage of it. But a some-more prolific ones that keep branch out products in comparatively slight fields face a problem: How do we tip this year what you’ve finished before? And how will we tip that next year?
That’s easy if a product margin is new and growing. But if it’s any subset of PC-gaming mice, a jam-packed marketplace and topped-out facilities make it unequivocally difficult. A rodent manufacturer ends adult competing not merely with others, yet also with a possess progressing efforts.
In a box of a new Logitech G403 Prodigy (which comes in both Wireless and Wired versions), it’s condemned by Logitech’s possess Specter of Selling Seasons Past: namely, a Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum
. How good a G403 Prodigy fares opposite this rather older, yet still excellent, rodent by a same builder is something we’ll reason on several times in this review.
Design
The Logitech-made foe aside, though, let’s start with a visible overview of a G403.
We had both connected and wireless versions of a G403 Prodigy on hand, yet we spent many of a time with a wireless one. That said, a wireless indication does have a wire; we customarily use it for recharging, and mousing while we recharge.
Here’s a top-down look, with a handle plugged in…
The lighting on this picture exaggerates a slight gush on a bottom left by a bit, yet it’s there. You can also make out customarily a spirit of a dual side buttons above it. No such buttons are on a right. The G403 is sculpted for righties, only.
The demeanour from a tip down is differently identical to a informed “wasp-waist” mouse, with a tip and bottom flaring out, and a core pulling in. Unlike some mice in that a dual front buttons are partial of a extended body—the Mionix Castor
comes to mind—those on a G403 are apart from a body. As are a rodent circle and, behind it, a DPI switch. It’s some-more a matter of cosmetic choices than anything else.
Logitech has contoured a rodent for a right palm as well, as we can see here…
Notice a approach it arches horizontally adult into a index finger’s knuckle closest to a palm. This is an ergonomic advantage we wouldn’t get if a G403 Prodigy were a ambidextrous-design rodent that it roughly appears to be.
It’s a sincerely attractive, understated mouse, too, during slightest once a LED lighting is incited off, and as such we could simply use it during work. While it’s on a vast size, 4.9 inches by 2.7 inches by 1.7 inches, it’s indeed flattering light: 3.8 ounces, though a additional weight that comes in a box.
Oh, a weight? Let’s flip a rodent over…
You see that large, spin front area, south of a visual sensor and on/off switch? Press down on a bottom part, and it pops out. (It’s reason on by a span of magnets.) The weight, made a bit like a illusory ancient silver with concave sides, simply fits into a opening. It adds about a third of an unit to a G403, bringing a weight adult to 4.1 ounces. It’s a good idea, yet a G502 Proteus Spectrum is improved still, with 5 insertable weights of roughly 0.13 unit any that we can supplement to a mouse’s underside to get a drag and change customarily right for we and your mousing surface.
Let’s peek during a front of a mouse, next…
On a wireless version, this is where we block in a thin, braided 71-inch cord that also goes into a USB pier on your computer. (Or we can customarily leave it in permanently, and use a G403 Prodigy Wireless as a connected mouse. Logitech also reserve a USB womanlike to micro-USB womanlike adapter.) This wire can be used for charging, and a volume of time a allot binds depends, as we competence guess, on how many appetite a rodent expends. We’ll get into that underneath Features.
The mouse’s right side is a vacant wall…
Not so a left, where we find a side buttons we mentioned earlier…
That span of buttons is contoured to follow a dull gush on a mouse’s reduce left. Here’s another picture that creates a contouring a bit some-more obvious…
The buttons are sincerely thick and well-defined, as side buttons go, with a extended hollow between them. This creates it all yet unfit to upset one with a other by feel. We wouldn’t have pronounced “no” to a ride rest, however. There is nothing on a G403, and as a buttons are set sincerely high adult on a side, a ride is left in a suspended, staid position that over time puts aria on tendons.
Setup Features
The customarily download we need with a G403 is a Logitech Gaming Software (LGS) pattern utility, that is accessible by a company’s support page. The supposed Setup Guide, that is also accessible there, customarily mirrors a one enclosed with a mouse. It’s no some-more than 4 tiny images illustrating such “complex” processes as how to work a on/off switch, and how to block a USB dongle into a USB port. (Tough stuff, we know.)
Most of a facilities that make a G403 appealing can be found (and tweaked) in a LGS. Here’s a initial shade you’ll see…
It serves customarily a singular function: vouchsafing we name between game-specific profiles, and one of 3 onboard profiles stored in a G403’s memory. Click one of those shiny-blue, pulsating areas, and we burst to a subsequent screen, Customizing Your Profile…
You’ll see a few areas of seductiveness here. First, if we right-click any rodent button, we can reassign it. The LGS has a decent operation of options, including simple Macro Recording, Keystroke (which includes pivotal combinations, such as Ctrl+Tab for the subsequent add-on in a browser, or Ctrl+Z for undo), and Mouse Functions (Switch Profile and several media keys). Not all we see is what we get, however. DPI Shift, that allows we to pierce both ways in DPI settings, is listed yet not unequivocally available, given a G403 doesn’t come with a hardware DPI toggle. It customarily offers a DPI-cycling button, that works in customarily one way: click to go adult a DPI ladder.
While we’re during it, this is an suitable place to warp for a impulse and share a word about symbol reassignments. As a ubiquitous order of thumb, when a association touts a series of buttons one of a mice offers, consider [x-4], where x is a series of accessible buttons. There are customarily during slightest 4 we won’t wish to reassign: a top-side left- and right-click buttons, a mouse-wheel down-click, and a DPI symbol or toggle (if one is offered; customarily one is, on a gaming mouse). So a six-button rodent like a G403 unequivocally provides customarily dual buttons you’ll practically wish to reconfigure, that we feel is rather wanting for a gaming mouse.
We’re not suggesting here that we deposit in a Roccat Nyth
and a tractable 12-button side quarrel if we customarily wish to play Renowned Explorers or Stardew Valley. But a reasonable series of configurable side buttons—say, 4 or five—seems suitable for real-time games in that you’ll wish some buttons for macros, and during slightest one for a sniper mode. (With a last, we burst to a user-specified DPI environment though clicking regularly on a DPI button. Let a symbol up, and we burst behind to your prior setting. The G403 doesn’t offer this.) By approach of comparison, a G502 Proteus Spectrum offers 11 buttons in total: 6 if we omit a tip buttons, a rodent wheel, and a dual DPI switches for relocating adult and down your user-configured DPI levels.
Speaking of DPI levels, those are also set on this screen, right underneath a quarrel where we can name one of 3 onboard profiles to configure. (The shade for game-specific profiles is organised customarily a bit differently.) For some reason, new Logitech mice have been expelled with customarily 4 DPI levels enabled, yet we can change that series underneath DPI Sensitivity Levels to five. The tracking fortitude on a G403 ranges from 200dpi to 12,000dpi, encompassing a wider operation than many folks would ever need. The polling rate is set during a 1ms response time, and we won’t wish to change that unless you’re using a unequivocally aged, bequest computer.
Clicking a third symbol on a bottom quarrel takes us to Lighting Settings, that governs a LED-lit trademark in a palm-rest apportionment of a rodent and a light ribbon in a rodent wheel…
You can allot any one of a now-standard 16.8 million RGB colors to cycle or breathe, and change a spin of tone liughtness and a outcome speed. You also get a choice to spin off a lighting completely. RGB lighting is, in any case, flattering many a squandered bid on a mouse, given no one sees a colors on a heel while a rodent is in use; your palm covers it completely.
Next adult is a Power Consumption screen…
The blueprint on a left is rather misleading, given it presents a suit of remaining appetite as a bound value, rather than a relations one: “12% of your battery life remains.” That contradicts both a facts, and a information presented on a right. We altered a rodent from color-cycling a lighting to a lights being off, and we watched a limit allot of a battery burst from 22 hours to 33 hours on a right. (Lighting is one of a dual factors that give we some control over appetite drain, a other being polling rate.) But a “percent full” blueprint didn’t change, nonetheless logically branch off some of that appetite empty would means a battery to final longer. So bear in mind that this spin is not adaptive to a settings.
As a battery drains, popups tell we how many appetite remains. Eventually, a light underneath a rodent circle turns red and starts flashing. Once we start charging it behind up, a light flashes immature for a minute, and afterwards earnings to whatever LED-bling environment we routinely use. We found that recharging takes place during a rate of about 10 percent per 15 minutes—slow, yet a battery does reason that allot for a prolonged time. Unfortunately, a G403 offers no Sleep mode. You can’t tell it to spin off a lighting and delayed a polling after a user-configured volume of time when a rodent hasn’t moved.
On to Surface Tuning. This offers a integrate of preset, selectable settings for mouse-pad surfaces, and it also facilities a lift-distance sorceress to emanate new ones…
Unlike with primer lift-distance sliders, there’s no need to regularly examination until we succeed. The tuner does a pursuit automatically and quickly, examining a communication of your rodent with a given surface. This is one of a best facilities in a LGS utility.
We’ll again skip brazen over a Input Analysis screen. It analyzes your use of buttons (or keys, on a keyboard), display we a colorized map depicting how mostly any has been used—something we substantially already know. That brings us to a catch-all screen, simply called Settings. It’s a bit of all that should have been enclosed in several other screens, yet was substantially combined after in development. It includes formulating a hotkey to cycle by profiles, a checkbox for permitting games to control illumination, and another to capacitate angle-snapping (which we cite as a linear slider, such as a SteelSeries Rival 700’s software provides).
One other underline deserves to be mentioned: a G403’s use of a Pixart PMW3366 visual sensor. It’s one of a improved ones out there in a experience, tracking uniformly and accurately during all times though any unintended acceleration. That isn’t to contend that we would have disposed if a LGS let us name to supplement degrees of acceleration and deceleration around sliders, that a SteelSeries Rival 700 again supplied.