Logitech MX700 Review

By Ian Bell March 6, 2003

Logitech MX700

MSRP $4,987.00

Score Details

“Logitech's MX700 is by far the best cordless mouse on the market, bar none.”

Pros

Excellent for gaming
rechargeable battery

Cons

Poor mouseware software

Summary

Overall we are happy with the MX700. A product as well designed both aesthetically and mechanically as the MX700 makes you want to like the product despite its shortcomings. Cursor movement is smooth both in 3D gaming and 2D applications. The RF range is great and the inclusion of 8 programmable buttons is an added bonus. Once the software updates fix the skipping scroll wheel, the MX700 should be nearly perfect. Logitech’s MX700 is by far the best cordless mouse on the market, bar none. Introduction

Cordless mice have typically been used by a selective audience in the past. For those wanting a cordless solution helping to maintain a clutter free desk, a cordless mouse was the only solution. But for those who wanted to game with a cordless mouse, had to look elsewhere. With Logitech’s MX700, there is no reason to look any further.

Features

Logitech is hoping that with the introduction of their new MX700 cordless mouse, gamers may look at their product as a viable solution. The MX700 like most high-end mice is an optical mouse except that the sensor on the Mx700 is about 80% larger than what Logitech has used in past mice. The resolution of this sensor has also been doubled from 400dpi to 800dpi which is great for those with large screen monitors. On top of the larger optical sensor the Mx700 uses a 4.7 mega pixel per second processing rate. This is the number that gamers will want to look for because this equates to the number of images processed by the DSP (digital signal processor) each second thus giving a high frame rate. But what is a high frame rate if the RF radio link is slow? Not surprisingly the Mx700 radio link operates at 125 samples per second which is about the speed equivalence as standard 1.1 USB sampling rate which means that gaming performance is fast. The MX700 comes with a “limited” warranty which neither could be explained in the manual or on the Logitech website.

Setup and Installation

Setup is simple and fast. Plug the base station into either the USB port on your computer system or the PS2 port via an adapter. Two rechargeable AA 1700 mAh Ni-MH batteries are included with the Mx700. Just insert them into the mouse and set the mouse in the RF base for charging. According to Logitech, 15 minutes of charging should last for a days worth of normal use while a full charge lasts up to 10 days of normal use. We recommend charging the MX700 for a full 6 hours before using it to get a full and long lasting charge.

The software which came with our MX700 was version 9.7. After browsing through the Logitech website, we found version 9.73 of the setup software. We are unsure as to whether this is an updated version or not, considering the version names are too similar. We found Mouseware to be a good program for setting up the MX700 especially since this particular mouse has 8 buttons which can all be programmed. Gamers will want to skip the Mouseware installation for a couple of reasons we listed below.

Testing and Performance

The initial feeling of the MX700 is that this is a significantly heavier than the usual computer mouse; and it is. But despite its heavy weight and large size, coupled with a cloth mouse pad our MX700 glided smoothly and without interruption. The buttons are well laid out and intuitive. The two tiny button above and below the scroll key are nice additions, but not necessary for average use; they are designed for scrolling up and down long pages without the continued scrolling of the mouse wheel. The application toggle button located below the scroll wheel is also a nice addition replacing the Alt+Tab program toggle shortcut on your keyboard.

We had mixed results with our MX700 during game testing. While playing games the scroll wheel was not working at all while the scroll up and down buttons worked instead. This was only the case with Mousware installed. Most games worked great with the MX700 and we often forgot we were using a cordless mouse. Our recommendation for gamers would be to not install the Mouseware software since all features of the MX700 except the program toggle button work under Windows XP.

For applications outside of gaming, the MX700 worked great with Mouseware installed. The application toggle button is a great feature to have, especially when working on multiple projects. We did find that while testing most applications, the scroll wheel and scroll buttons would “skip” up and down a page versus a smooth “rolling” scroll. This was irritating to say the least. We tested the scroll wheel on Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 7.0, and Opera 6.5. All of our test applications showed skipping while using the scroll wheel. Overall, there was no visible difference between our MX700 cordless mouse and other corded mice we used in our tests. Reponses and reaction times where nearly identical if not better with the MX700 Proving that the MX700 is the perfect mouse replacement for any PC environment.

Conclusion

Overall we are happy with the MX700. A product as well designed both aesthetically and mechanically as the MX700 makes you want to like the product despite its shortcomings. Cursor movement is smooth both in 3D gaming and 2D applications. The RF range is great and the inclusion of 8 programmable buttons is an added bonus. Once the software updates fix the skipping scroll wheel, the MX700 should be nearly perfect. Logitech’s MX700 is by far the best cordless mouse on the market, bar none.

Summary

Editors' Recommendations