Digital Trends

Logitech MX700

March 6th, 2003 | by Ian Bell

 Introduction

Cordless mice have typically been used by a selective audience in the past. For those wanting a cordless solution helping to maintain a clutter free desk, a cordless mouse was the only solution. But for those who wanted to game with a cordless mouse, had to look elsewhere. With Logitech's MX700, there is no reason to look any further.

Features

Logitech is hoping that with the introduction of their new MX700 cordless mouse, gamers may look at their product as a viable solution. The MX700 like most high-end mice is an optical mouse except that the sensor on the Mx700 is about 80% larger than what Logitech has used in past mice. The resolution of this sensor has also been doubled from 400dpi to 800dpi which is great for those with large screen monitors. On top of the larger optical sensor the Mx700 uses a 4.7 mega pixel per second processing rate. This is the number that gamers will want to look for because this equates to the number of images processed by the DSP (digital signal processor) each second thus giving a high frame rate. But what is a high frame rate if the RF radio link is slow? Not surprisingly the Mx700 radio link operates at 125 samples per second which is about the speed equivalence as standard 1.1 USB sampling rate which means that gaming performance is fast. The MX700 comes with a “limited” warranty which neither could be explained in the manual or on the Logitech website.

Setup and Installation

Setup is simple and fast. Plug the base station into either the USB port on your computer system or the PS2 port via an adapter. Two rechargeable AA 1700 mAh Ni-MH batteries are included with the Mx700. Just insert them into the mouse and set the mouse in the RF base for charging. According to Logitech, 15 minutes of charging should last for a days worth of normal use while a full charge lasts up to 10 days of normal use. We recommend charging the MX700 for a full 6 hours before using it to get a full and long lasting charge.

The software which came with our MX700 was version 9.7. After browsing through the Logitech website, we found version 9.73 of the setup software. We are unsure as to whether this is an updated version or not, considering the version names are too similar. We found Mouseware to be a good program for setting up the MX700 especially since this particular mouse has 8 buttons which can all be programmed. Gamers will want to skip the Mouseware installation for a couple of reasons we listed below.