Written by: Mark Abell
Photo courtesy of Logitech
While the Logitech PROTEUS CORE G502 TUNEABLE Gaming Mouse was first available on Amazon on December 1st, 2013, it remains a gamer favorite to this day while slightly cheaper. The original debuted at $80 at launch, and now costs $56. The updated G502 PROTEUS CORE SPECTRUM which was announced January 15th and adds 16.8-million-color customizable RGB lighting sells for $80, in line with the original pricing.
The design of the mouse includes an implementation of thoughtful design including a longer thumb rest than the G9, which was released in 2007. There’s also soft touch material on its back where your pointer and middle finger sits as well as textured rubber on both sides-next to your thumb as well as your ring and pinky fingers. In the middle on the left side, there is a very prominent blue LED G logo which users can manipulate via the light=bulb icon in the settings (see below).
In addition, it’s buttons are laid out extremely intentionally such that users can reach all of the programmable buttons without switching their grip. These eleven buttons include from the left-side, DPI Shift, DPI Down, DPI Up, Left Click (Button 1), Right Click (Button 2), Scroll Right, Middle Click (Button 3), Scroll Left, Switch Profile, Forward, and Back. You can access these within the Logitech Gaming Software app under the mouse icon.
Of all of these, DPI sensitivity level-which is how responsive you want to make the mouse move across your monitor-has the greatest effect on your overall experience because it can make browsing or sniping enemies on your screen seamless or frustrating with the right or wrong settings respectively. If you set your DPI within the app, the DPI Down, DPI Up, and DPI Shift buttons become somewhat vestigial and irrelevant. The cross suspended on a platform icon is also somewhat irrelevant as most gamers will not need to change the mouse sensor to accommodate a cloth or hard surface gaming mouse pad and can rest content with the default settings. The optics are truly amazing on this mouse as its sensors run between 200-12,000dpi and increase in 50dpi increments which makes for truly acccurate tracking, even before tuning. I found that 6,000 dpi was the best setting for playing the ninja-shooter game WARFRAME in Steam.
Its onboard 32-bit ARM processor stores the user profiles you set up with your favorite settings, and you can toggle between these profiles with the button directly above the G-logo or you can access your profiles in the upper right hand corner of the app.
With regard to aesthetics, you can make the G-logo brighter or darker with the light-bulb icon within the app, and I discovered that you can illuminate the DPI lighting button above your thumb with the DPI Lighting “Always on” button.
Another underpublicized discovery is that with the G-suspended on heat-patterns icon, you can analyze the heat distribution from your hand onto the mouse. For some reason, prominent gaming reviewers such as Linus Tech Tips did not choose to discuss that feature which is why I am including it.
In addition, the cog-like settings icon allows you to choose whether to run the app when your computer boots or not which is convenient but also consumes RAM so the choice is up to you.
My favorite aspect of the mouse is its weighting. There’s actually 5x 3.6g arrow-like magnetic pieces that fit under a trapezoidal rubber cover on the bottom which can be inserted or removed to achieve a gamer’s desired weight. I prefer to keep all five in to achieve my maximum comfort. Consequently, designers individually tuned its buttons so the ones that are meant to be tapped feel light whereas the buttons that are to be pressed feel heavier.
This is definitely a worthy follow-up to the G9 as is the added customizable lighting on the PROTEUS CORE SPECTRUM. Highly recommended.
How to install and set-up the Logitech Gaming Software
- Go to http://support.logitech.com/
- Go to downloads
- Download LGS 8.78.129 64-bit which is the LGS_8.78.129 x64_Logitech.exe file
- Choose Run
- In User Account Control, it asks Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your PC? Select Yes
- Select installation language: English, click Next
- With License Agreement, click I accept
- Restart your computer
- Update firmware update (v88.2.17) to fix a tracking issue that could occasionally cause erratic cursor behavior
- Unplug and re-plug in mouse
- Click on button, save function.
