I’d been in the market for a wireless mouse for a while, so when my brother got me a Best Buy giftcard for my birthday, I knew what I wanted to spend it on. So I headed down to my local Best Buy and started browsing their relatively vast collection of mice. I’m pretty picky about computer mice, so I was glad to see that they had several models on open display, where you could actually handle them and see how they felt.
Enter the Logitech M510 Wireless Mouse. At $39.99, it was a middle-grade mouse – not as expensive as other “high-end” gaming mice, but not as cheap as the mice on the low end. It was the first mouse that felt right in my hand – I have fairly large hands, so it’s hard to find a mouse that doesn’t feel too small. Unfortunately, most mice made for larger hands seem bulky and, well, too big. The Logitech M510 was just right.
As soon as I got home, I opened the package, expecting to have to fight with one of those obnoxious indestructable clam-shell cases that most electronics come in; Logitech took a better route with this product: the package has an easy-open design with a perforated back port.
The mouse comes with a tiny nano receiver, and as soon as I plugged it in and turned the mouse on, it started working instantly. Nothing to install, no drivers to download. The Logitech M510 uses an invisible laser instead of the red light found in some optical mice; in fact, the only indication that the mouse is turned on is a tiny battery indicator behind the scroll wheel.
I did need to drop the mouse speed a bit in my settings – the Logitech M510 was considerably more sensitive than the old Microsoft corded mouse I had been using.
The Logitech M510 includes a number of nice features, including a pair of buttons on the left side; by default, these buttons are used for navigating Forward and Back on your browser, but you can download a piece of software from Logitech that allows you to remap them to alternative functions. I set mine to Copy and Paste. Though the mouse has a fairly symmetrical design, left-handed users might find it a little unwieldy to use the extra buttons.
The scroll wheel can be tilted left and right to provide a horizontal scrolling ability, but the device still retains a solid rugged feel – nothing feels flimsy.
The mouse uses two AA batteries, and a pair come included with the mouse. I haven’t really owned the mouse long enough to test the battery life, but Logitech claims it can run for up to two years on a single pair of batteries, and several other reviews I’ve found online attest to that fact. There’s a small on-off switch on the underside of the mouse that can help preserve your battery life, and the mouse includes an automatic sleep mode. The battery compartment even includes a small storage port for the nano receiver.
If you own a Logitech wireless keyboard, you can actually use the same nano receiver by taking advantage of Logitech’s Unifying technology. I don’t own one of those keyboards, since I use a laptop, but I’d imagine it’d be pretty useful, especially since USB ports always seem to be in short supply.
