Every aspiring old-west gunfighter dreams of the day when he receives his Colt pistol. Every paladin wishes for his holy avenger. Arthur sought out Excalibur. Just like these heroic figures, every PvP gamer worth his salt seeks out a great gaming mouse.
One mouse that should be considered is Logitech’s new G600. It would be easy to dismiss this mouse as a brazen clone of the Razer Naga, but doing so would be a mistake. There is a new feature that substantially sets the G600 apart from the excellent Naga. More on that later, for now let us look at the G600 for what it is.
Logitech is known for making very well-built, quality products. The G600 does not disappoint. The buttons are very solid, there is a good weight to the mouse, and the mouse has a heft that people with larger hands will appreciate. The mouse glides very smoothly on my Steelseries mousepad. The sidebuttons are angled in such a way that I can tell exactly what button my thumb is on, just by touch.
Just like the Naga, the G600 has 12 sidebuttons accessed by the thumb. Just like the Naga, there are two buttons below the scroll wheel. Unlike the Naga, the G600 has a tilting mouse wheel for mouse buttons 4and 5. Altogether, the G600 has 20 keys, compared to the Naga’s 17.The real game-changer, however, is the G-Shift button.
The G-Shift button is a new button added to the mouse under the ring finger. Basically, put your hand on your current mouse and stick your ring finger out. This is where the G-Shift button is on the G600. This button serves to modify the functions of the other buttons on the mouse. By default, when held down the G-Shift modifies the buttons on the side of the mouse to Ctrl+ the button. So, with the standard MMO setup, you can have the entire number bar (keys 1 through =) at your thumb, then Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+= when those same keys are modified with the G-Shift. This gives you a lot of options available to your thumb at an instant. With the Logitech Gaming Software downloaded off the Logitech website, every key on the mouse can be customized. So you can have the G-Shift button modify every key on the mouse, even the right and left click.
Something else that Logitech brings to the table is a profile selector. The G600 can hold three different profiles, accessible by the G7 button below the scroll wheel. Profile 1 is the standard MMO setup that I mentioned earlier. Profile 2 is the standard MMO setup with NUM keys instead of the number bar. However, profile 3 is very interesting. It is an FPS setup. The side buttons G9-G14 are bound to 1-6 for your weapon selections. Then G15 and G18 are to adjust your DPI settings, for precision sniping or spraying a crowd. G16 brings your DPI back to the default setting. G19 is set to E, which is usually the command to use things. Instead of being used for G-Shift, the third mouse button is instead used to temporarily shift your DPI to the lowest setting, which is 400 by default. This is especially handy for guns that are not necessarily sniping weapons, that have iron sights. So the second mouse button brings up the iron sight, then the third lowers the DPI. This makes a really handy ghetto-sniper setup with any weapon, and feels really natural in the process. Again, with the Logitech Gaming Software, these profiles can be changed in just about any way you want. From keybinds, to DPI settings, to even the LED settings for the side buttons.
Since the keybinds on the mouse are fully customizable, you can pretty much make this mouse do what you need it to. For the Guild Wars 2 beta, I found this mouse to be a godsend. I kept G9-G18 set as the traditional number bar. G19 was autorun, G20 was weapon swap. G-shifted keys were G9-G12 as F1-F4 for the miscellaneous mechanics of each profession. G13 was target nearest enemy, and G14 was set as Ctrl+T to mark that target for focus-firing. The rest of the keys were set as different keybinds for TeamSpeak, and in-game commands for convenience. This setup gave me a lot of flexibility, and access to all of my keys in a fraction of a second. This aspect of the mouse served me well in PvP, where fractions of a second can be the difference between killing or being killed. This truly is like being the fastest gun in the West.
In my humble opinion, the G600 is a great mouse. However, it is not all rainbows and baby laughs. There are some potential issues that anyone interested in this mouse needs to be aware of. For one, this is a large mouse. It is roughly equivalent to the Microsoft Sidewinder in size. The G-Shift button adds some heft to the mouse that people with smaller hands might find difficult to adjust to. Also, the placement of the G-Shift button under the ring finger means that you will likely be accidentally clicking the G-Shift until you get used to having a button there. It took me roughly two weeks of constant playing to get used to this facet. Finally, there is a known polling error with the mouse. In tense situations, where you are clicking several times a second, occasionally the mouse will move the cursor a little ways in a random direction on its own. Logitech knows about this issue, and it will likely be fixed in a future firmware update. As of press time, the issue is still unfixed.
So what we have here is a well-built mouse that can add a lot of options for any serious PvPer. So that brings me to the question “If I am happy with the Naga, should I buy this?” In my opinion, not really. If you are already happy with the Naga, that is a great mouse too. But if you have issues with the Naga, if it is too small for your hands, or if you just want access to more keys or a high degree of customization, then the G600 is definitely worth looking at. In my honest opinion, Logitech really hit the ball out of the park with this one.
LET'S GET SOCIAL