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Is it worth your time? The Logitech MX Master Review.

The Logitech MX Master

 

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Hmm, I wasn't exactly planning to write this now. I was out for most of the day and came home to try to get Android onto my WinBook tablet and I failed at doing so. Needing something else to do, here I am. The Logitech MX Master is what Logitech believes to be the ultimate mouse. It is the successor to the great Performance MX, but is it worthy? Multiple YouTubers who praised the Performance MX have made the switch and then proceeded to switch back, going back to their old mice. I guess then that this should set the tone for this review. As my other reviews have been, this one will be split up into multiple scoring sections with a final tally at the end. The MX Master will be rated on two categories, chosen specifically for what it is; Ergonomics/Design and Usability/Performance.

 

Usability/Performance

What is it like to use? Well, not bad. It functions as a mouse is expected to. It glides nice and smoothly on my mousepad and it never gets caught up, but that's to be expected. The mouse is pretty light since it's composed mostly of plastic. There are small metal accents on the scroll wheels, but the mouse itself is made out of a mix of soft and hard plastic. There are six buttons. Left click, right click, center click, forward, backward and the "gesture button", which is the thumbrest. The left click and right click are swappable (however it's a right-hand oriented mouse, so I see no reason to switch it if you're a lefty) and everything else aside from the vertical scroll wheel is programmable with the Logitech Options software utility to some preset functions. Most of the functions appear to be rather useful, though there is no option to make the horizontal scroll wheel function as your vertical wheel, so there's that. The gestures button also only operates as a gestures button, you cannot make it do anything else. Connection to the included Unifying Reciever or to Bluetooth is very quick, and switching modes is just as quick. The Darkfield sensor with it's 1600DPI maximum is enough for most content creators and normal people, but gamers may be left unsatisfied. For it's positive and negative points, it would have gotten an 8/10 here. However, A wireless mouse does not come without issues, nor does the most expensive offering in Logitech's product line. The mouse claims a 40-day battery life. I haven't had the time to test this, though the mouse came with around 60% battery life and was asking to be charged 5 days later.  For this or whatever other reason though, Logitech thought it would be okay to make the mouse wireless only. I am coming from the G700s, which is a very nice mouse in the first place, and while it's $40 cheaper it offers a wired mode. Normally though, this wouldn't be an issue, but the intermittent connection issues and interference are driving me absolutely crazy on the Unifying reciever and my Z97 Pro's Bluetooth chipset is utter garbage since it shares bandwidth with the WiFi card (it's a 2-in-1 setup), meaning my WiFi drops if I use my mouse in Bluetooth mode. Fucking hell Logitech, you're going to make a mouse to sell for $100, wank over all of the wooden carving design that has been done and yet make the dumbest decision possible for connectivity? It's stupid. I don't care if the thing will live forever on battery, wireless connectivity has had, has and will always have issues like this that will make wired the better bet. And who checks the Logitech Options software for bugs, a blind and senile old man with no understanding of technology? I had the Gesture button set to volume control (hold down the gesture key and move the mouse forward or backward) and when I used the function, my displays would flicker as if I'm installing a GPU driver or changing resolution. That's just plain crap. For the frustration that this mouse has caused me due to it's obvious and blatant flaws, it's going to be scored a 3/10.

 

Ergonomics/Design

How a mouse feels in the hand is very important to anyone who will use one. I will never buy any peripheral without trying it, as it would be a waste of money and time not to. The MX Master however was chosen by myself from an RMA with Logitech as my new mouse, so I never got to try it out since no stores by me carry it and have it out on the display. The mouse has a very sculpted and swooping design. It's as if the finessed the Performance MX even more than it already was. Contrary to the opinions of people like Linus, I think the forward/back buttons and the horizontal scroll wheel are in perfectly fine positions. The mouse is a little long, however it fits my hand well (and is the first mouse to do so.) The SmartShift scroll functionality (in which you can set a specific tolerance for when you're spinning the vertical mouse wheel for it to switch from ratcheting mode to freescrolling mode) works very nicely. Both freescroll and ratchet scroll feel as expected, the horizontal scroll wheel feels really firm and nice as well. The gesture button is hard to push on accident but easy to press. All in all, it's a nicely designed mouse, so in my book it gets a 9/10.

 

Usability/Performance - 3/10

Ergonomics/Design - 9/10

Total Score - 6/10

 

Would I recommend this to a friend? Unless my friend were a sado-masochist who got off from malfunctioning and overpriced peripherals, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

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Miscellaneous: Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro (i5-8500T/16GB/512GB), Lenovo ThinkCentre M715q Tiny (R5 2400GE/16GB/256GB), Dell Optiplex 7040 SFF (i5-6400/8GB/128GB)

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Was never a big fan of it either, just an over hyped mouse if you ask me.

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Was never a big fan of it either, just an over hyped mouse if you ask me.

Overhyped definitely, but it's shockingly bad for what it is. The Performance MX was actually an amazing product, but they jumped the gun and used the MX namesake to push something worse.

Main Rig: CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X | RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) KLEVV CRAS XR RGB DDR4-3600 | Motherboard: Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX | Storage: 512GB SKHynix PC401, 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 2x Micron 1100 256GB SATA SSDs | GPU: EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra 10GB | Cooling: ThermalTake Floe 280mm w/ be quiet! Pure Wings 3 | Case: Sliger SM580 (Black) | PSU: Lian Li SP 850W

 

Server: CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 | RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Crucial DDR4 Pro | Motherboard: ASUS PRIME B550-PLUS AC-HES | Storage: 128GB Samsung PM961, 4TB Seagate IronWolf | GPU: AMD FirePro WX 3100 | Cooling: EK-AIO Elite 360 D-RGB | Case: Corsair 5000D Airflow (White) | PSU: Seasonic Focus GM-850

 

Miscellaneous: Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro (i5-8500T/16GB/512GB), Lenovo ThinkCentre M715q Tiny (R5 2400GE/16GB/256GB), Dell Optiplex 7040 SFF (i5-6400/8GB/128GB)

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Overhyped definitely, but it's shockingly bad for what it is. The Performance MX was actually an amazing product, but they jumped the gun and used the MX namesake to push something worse.

I had the Performance Mouse MX, and while I liked it while I was using it (when the batteries were working -- the thing had like a 5 day battery life), after I switched to the G502 I found the MX to be incredibly uncomfortable due to it's high stature. I also found that the plastic chrome accents on my MX wore terribly, which is unfortunate -- alas, by MX now sits in a box in my closet unlikely to ever see the light of day again. 

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Battery lasted a few weeks on mine

It has a sleep mode where it turns off after a while of not being in use to conserve power

when coming out of sleep mode it takes half a second for it to wake up

 

I really like mine, it works really well, although not all programs support side scrolling

Yes it has an issue with wifi interference, I noticed the mouse was stuttering unusable on a macbook pro

turning the wifi off fixes it, OR using the included tiny USB receiver

with my PC I only have the option of the USB receiver as there is no bluetooth, so 0 issues for me

 

most of the time I have it plugged in too so it doesnt use battery life

the software works perfectly for me

 

overall as a productivity mouse for use at home it is excellent

for taking on the go maybe not so much

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Al lot of your Elephants sound like issues on your end. 

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You should of dropped the usability score instead of deducting from elephants because there didn't seem to be a way to get elephant points. So if you dont have a wifi card is it worth it then?

Logitech normally has decent software too.

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You should of dropped the usability score instead of deducting from elephants because there didn't seem to be a way to get elephant points. So if you dont have a wifi card is it worth it then?

Logitech normally has decent software too.

The software functions properly for the most part but the gestures make my screen flicker. I'll redo the point system, it didn't really make any sense in the first place.

 

Al lot of your Elephants sound like issues on your end. 

That may be so, I'll have to test it more. It would seem after some looking around that I'm not the only one with lag issues though.

Main Rig: CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X | RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) KLEVV CRAS XR RGB DDR4-3600 | Motherboard: Gigabyte B550I AORUS PRO AX | Storage: 512GB SKHynix PC401, 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 2x Micron 1100 256GB SATA SSDs | GPU: EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra 10GB | Cooling: ThermalTake Floe 280mm w/ be quiet! Pure Wings 3 | Case: Sliger SM580 (Black) | PSU: Lian Li SP 850W

 

Server: CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 | RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Crucial DDR4 Pro | Motherboard: ASUS PRIME B550-PLUS AC-HES | Storage: 128GB Samsung PM961, 4TB Seagate IronWolf | GPU: AMD FirePro WX 3100 | Cooling: EK-AIO Elite 360 D-RGB | Case: Corsair 5000D Airflow (White) | PSU: Seasonic Focus GM-850

 

Miscellaneous: Dell Optiplex 7060 Micro (i5-8500T/16GB/512GB), Lenovo ThinkCentre M715q Tiny (R5 2400GE/16GB/256GB), Dell Optiplex 7040 SFF (i5-6400/8GB/128GB)

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