Digital Trends

Logitech MX700

March 6th, 2003 | by Ian Bell

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.