Logitech’s G502 Lightspeed Adds Wireless to Beloved Gaming Mouse

If you talk to a serious gamer, there’s a good chance they’re using a Logitech G502 Hero mouse. This wired mouse has been a mainstay of the PC gaming community for years, and now it’s going wireless. The G502 Lightspeed keeps most of what made the G502 so widely beloved, but it adds all of Logitech’s latest wireless technology.

At first glance, you might not notice anything different about the G502 Lightspeed compared to the wired version (aside from the lack of a USB cable). Logitech apparently wanted to keep the new mouse as close as possible to the G502 Hero. People are fanatical about that mouse — everything from the button placement to weight distribution was important. It has 11 customizable buttons and DPI that scaled between 100 and 16,000 DPI.

Logitech had to redesign the internals of the G502 to fit its custom wireless technologies inside. That naturally threw off the weight, making the G502 Lightspeed lighter than the wired version. To counter that, Logitech includes 16 grams of additional weight in the form of two 4-gram and two 2-gram disks. These slot into the bottom of the mouse to give you just the right mass.

As the name implies, the G502 Lightspeed features Logitech’s proprietary Lightspeed wireless interface. Wireless mice have a reputation for being slower than wired, but Logitech says Lightspeed is the other way around. It offers sub-1ms latency via the included USB dongle. If it’s anything like Logitech’s other Lightspeed mice, the G502 should perform just as well as a wired mouse without the cord dragging you down.

The second wireless technology in the G502 Lightspeed will require an additional investment. It works with PowerPlay, the wireless charging system that debuted in 2017. It comes with a receiver that fits into the bottom of the mouse so you’ll never need to plug the mouse in again. The PowerPlay mouse pad charges the mouse as you use it, keeping the batter between 80 and 90 percent charged at all times. If you’re ever away from your PowerPlay mat, the mouse has a standard microUSB port where the cable connects to the wired G502.

The G502 Lightspeed costs $150, the same as Logitech’s other high-end wireless mice. That’s a significant premium over the reliable wired G502. If you want to take advantage of the PowerPlay wireless charging, you’ll need to pick up that kit for another $100. You can pre-order the mouse now, and it’ll ship in the coming weeks.

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