Logitech G502X Plus gaming mouse review

Logitech – which has been making mice as long as any hardware manufacturer – is fond of pointing out that its G502 is the “world’s most popular gaming mouse”. So, the G502X Plus has big shoes to fill. 

The company has reworked the G502, renaming it the G502X, and releasing it into the wild in three variants: wired, wireless and Plus. We felt it was appropriate to put the top-of-the-range G502X Plus through its paces in this review...

Logitech G502X Plus: Pricing & Availability

The Logitech G502X Plus wireless gaming mouse is available now, for $159.99/£149.99/€169/AUD$279.95. This means that by the general standards of gaming mice, it’s pretty pricey. However, it’s also the ultimate version of something of a gaming icon, which has been cleverly and usefully revamped, and has the top-end specification and sheer class that you would expect from a mouse with such a price-tag. 

Logitech G502X Plus review: Specification

Given that the original G502 is such a known quantity – and Logitech is keen to describe the G502X and its variants as “remastered” versions of their common predecessor – it makes sense to examine the G502X Plus’s new elements. 

Chief among those are what Logitech describes as hybrid opto-mechanical switches – branded as Lightforce switches – underpinning the G502X Plus’s myriad buttons. The idea behind them is that they operate with all the near-instantaneous response and durability of optical switches, but possess the feel of mechanical switches.

However tricksy the technology behind those switches, it works: they contribute massively to the general impression that the G502X Plus feels sumptuous in use, providing an analogue impression in tactile terms, yet achieving the instantaneous response that gamers need. 

Backing that up, the G502X Plus has an upgraded version of the previous generation’s Lightspeed wireless dongle, which Logitech claims has 68 per cent faster response times. Plus you can use that one dongle to connect two devices – so if USB ports on your gaming PC are at a premium, you can run a Logitech gaming keyboard and mouse off just the one Lightspeed dongle. That’s a slightly bittersweet feature – designed to encourage you to buy more Logitech peripherals – but can bring a pleasing neatness and simplicity to your gaming setup.

The most obvious item in the G502X Plus’s specification – effectively, what you’re paying for when you opt for the Plus rather than the base G502X – is a distinctive RGB lighting strip that branches across the rear of its body. Via the Lightsync section of Logitech’s accompanying G-Hub Software, you can set a bewildering variety of lighting colours and cycle effects.

Logitech G502X Plus review: Software

Logitech has always excelled as far as the software that provides control over its devices is concerned, and the latest iteration of G-Hub – its software designed for gaming devices – is exemplary, to the extent that plenty of other gaming accessory manufacturers could learn a lot from it. 

G-Hub is easy to find and download on Logitech’s website, and auto-senses any Logitech gaming devices when you boot it up. But more importantly, it offers a great deal of very useful fine control over the G502X Plus. Including setting a DPI shift – letting you assign a non-default DPI setting to the (reversible and removable) DPI shift key – although it also has two buttons on its far top left which by default are assigned to DPI up and DPI down (it’s easy to set the increment). You can assign specific actions or macros to any of the buttons or the wheel, and a second set of alternatives become available when you hold down the Profile Cycle button.

There are 13 assignable buttons in all, and you can save specific profiles for specific games, so there’s a vast amount of headroom even if you favour the most macro-heavy games. Perfect for the likes of hardcore League of Legends or MMO sessions.

Logitech G502X Plus review: Performance

It’s difficult to fault the G502X Plus when you start putting it through its paces. It’s slightly bigger than the average gaming mouse, but that doesn’t mean it favours those with bigger hands – it felt perfectly sculpted for my medium-sized hands. The thumb-rest is perfectly placed and not a micron bigger than it needs to be and, crucially, it’s a pretty light mouse, at 106g. There are lighter mice out there, but the G502X Plus is responsive and super-manoeuvrable, with PTFE sliders that made light of all the surfaces I used it on, including paper and glass.

Battery life is mighty – Logitech claims 130 hours if you turn the lighting off, although given that you’re paying extra for said lighting, that feels like a travesty. Even with the lighting on, we got over 100 hours’ battery life from the G502X Plus, which, depending on how much of your life you spend gaming, should equate to somewhere between a fortnight and a month of use per charge. Mind you, the G502X feels so good in the hand that you’ll probably be tempted to use it as your default mouse for work, as well as gaming, so that battery life will come in handy. It comes with a USB-C charging cable, and takes a couple of hours to charge fully.

The scroll wheel has two settings, selectable by clicking the tiny button beneath it: one with (quite noisy) click increments, which feels perfect if, say, you’re using it to move up and down a document, and the other which removes the clicking, when you want hyper-fast vertical scrolling. 

Logitech G502X Plus review: Verdict

The G502X Plus is without doubt a proper all-rounder, no matter what types of games you favour. We used it with Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Disco Elysium and Immortality, and it didn’t put a foot wrong. 

Flipping between different DPI sensitivities for different games was dead easy, and its sheer responsiveness was comfortably in excess of my hand-eye skills in the fast-twitch games. Quite simply, it has the attributes to satisfy pro gamers, whether they favour MOBAs, first-person shooters or anything else.

There is one question mark that hangs over it, however: whether it’s worth buying the Plus rather than the base version. You pay a premium for that RGB lighting system, and in these straitened times, every penny counts. But the Plus does at least telegraph to the world that you’re the owner of a mouse specifically designed for gaming.

Plus it’s far from cheap. However, quality never comes cheap. While spending that much on a gaming mouse may seem like an indulgence, it’s also worth noting that, despite its light weight, the G502X Plus is demonstrably robust – none of the considerable abuse we subjected it to resulted in so much as a scratch – and it has the features and quality required to be the only mouse you’ll need for a number of years. So you can think of it as an investment.