Logitech G305 Review

👤by Weston Dakin Comments 📅14-09-18
Performance Testing

Setup & Observations

Getting going with the G305 is a very easy task, all you have to do is remove the back, insert the AA battery, plug in the wireless receiver and let Windows do its thing. We do advise though that you install either the Logitech G Hub software or Logitech’s Gaming Software to make the most of the mouses' features and of course to set up the mouse to your preference.

Using the G305 did take some time to get adjusted to. Coming from a wired mouse the extra freedom and flexibility did take some time to adapt to, this wasn’t a bad transition at all, but in fact, it was one that was quite liberating. It was nice just to be able to move the mouse and not feel any pull or resistance from a cable. It isn’t all great though as the G305 is not without its quirks, the first being the petite size. When put against my old daily driver it is a considerable amount smaller with a much lower slung profile; this would be ideal for those that have smaller hands, but if your hands are larger than average then the G305 will likely be too small. It is still manageable if you do have average sized hands, however you may need to adjust your grip style to fit the body of the mouse. Also on the smaller side are the side buttons. Their positioning is good, but the buttons are not the most generous in size, this is due to the low profile nature of the mouse, yet if the buttons were any larger then they would eat into the thumb grip space which is just about passable as is. Another omission worth noting is the lack of any rubberised side grips, there is a slight texture to the sides, but they don’t feel anywhere near as grippy as they could.


On a more positive note, the wireless connectivity is superb, even in a tech-filled room, there has been no drops, latency issues or interference of any kind. The connection has been rock solid and highly stable all throughout testing; this robustness is thanks to Logitech’s LIGHTSPEED wireless technology. This uses a traditional style receiver that pairs with an antenna in the mouse which is in turn connected to an RFIC (Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit), the MCU (Microcontroller) and the SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface). Logitech’s engineers took this and optimised every area until there was no weak link and it really does show; it’s almost like having a wire but without the actual wired connection.

Design and build are more key factors when looking at a mouse, and the G305 is good in one regard, but the other does show its price a bit. The design is well done as its unfussy, clean and works well. There are no obvious styling flairs and RGB doesn’t make an appearance - for that, you’ll want to look at their G703 which is a hefty premium over the G305. But as whole the design is nice and tastefully done, the build, however, does slightly show the lower end cost of the mouse. The body is plastic which is fine enough as it is well put together and feels decently solid, it just misses out on the soft touch coating and although not a deal breaker a soft touch coating does have its benefits. One big plus though is that you don’t have to keep cleaning the G305 as the plastic finish doesn’t pick up any palm grease. The left and right click feel good, but the side buttons are a touch softly sprung.

Performance

The G305 utilises Logitech’s HERO sensor, this has a DPI range starting from 200 and extends to a maximum of 12,000 and manages to do this with zero smoothing, filtering or acceleration. The result, it is impressive, even when pushed to the higher limits. For gaming in titles like Overwatch, Fortnite, PUBG, Rise of the Tomb Raider the sensor felt responsive, accurate, fluid and never once felt sluggish. There was no sign of jitter or stuttering, but we did note that when lifting the mouse and placing it back down that there was some deviation in cursor movement, this means that if you perform lift-offs, accuracy is somewhat impacted. The left and right clicks are good as they are fast and feel responsive, tactile feedback is somewhat subdued though. As mentioned above the side buttons are softly sprung which does reduce their performance as they feel slow to react, the scroll wheel click is a bit light and lacking a tactile response, but again it works decently enough.


Although the void between wired and wireless is narrower than ever, there is still a slight performance deviation between the two. When comparing the G305 against a similarly priced wired mouse, we did note that the left/right click didn’t feel as tactile or as responsive as the wired offering. In regards to the HERO sensor, the difference is not that much when compared with the Pixart 3360 on the wired mouse, but we will say that the 3360 just edges it ever so slightly. Both were accurate, quick, fluid and very responsive, it's just the Pixart just felt that touch more heightened in every regard. It felt a little faster and a bit more accurate. In reality, when directly swapping from one to another you’d be hard pushed to find a difference as it is that slight, it's only when tried side-by-side you can gauge the performance gap. Tracking was impressive on both fronts and both impressed equally. This is high praise indeed though, as the 3360 has often been regarded as one of the best sensors in class, so the HERO is in good company and it just goes to show how far wireless tech has come in the past few years. A few years ago, you’d be very hard pushed to find an affordable wireless mouse with a sensor that could go toe-to-toe with a good wired mouse and almost match its performance. The gap is closing all the time and its mice like the G305 that are making that gap smaller and smaller.

When thinking about the battery life of wireless gaming mice most people think that its - to be honest, not great, but the G305 has an expected life of up to 250 hours, that’s 10 full days of use with a little bit to spare. This can be made even longer using endurance mode, but that will impact performance. In real-world cases, this is even more impressive as we don’t usually use a PC for 24 hours straight. A typical use case is anywhere from a few hours to several and even using the mouse 7 days a week for around 7 hours would net you around 5 weeks of use before needing a new battery. Our testing so far has seen a 10% loss in the battery life over 9 days of use with around 5 to 6 hours use per day; it’s worth noting that this was achieved using the performance mode with a mixed-use case of writing, web browsing and gaming and would likely have been better if using the more economical setting. This is highly impressive as a normal wireless gaming mouse would have need charging at least twice in that same time frame. All this is thanks to Logitech’s implementation of their high-efficiency HERO sensor and LIGHTSPEED wireless tech, that when combined together create less power draw on the battery and thus improve the battery life.

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