Play Dangerously

I gripped the G502 Hero tightly, as if my actions would suddenly make it heavier, and this was the moment that a rainbow began to form above CodeBro Café and the comfort of how perfectly the mouse fit within my palm urged me to keep looking inside the package. I took out a heavy little case, popped it open and saw 5x 3.6g Weights neatly and eagerly awaiting to meet my gaze. If you had been present in the Café at this point, you would have been able to hear my shout of positive disbelief, even if you were sitting outside near the fireplace. “No! No way! What?”, I shouted as the penny dropped and I realized that by adding those weights to the mouse, it might, “just might”, meet my weight requirements and set me on a different path of discovery.

You might be saying, “Jean, that is some extra #NextLevel dramatics right there”, to which I can agree with you, but aside from how a mouse fits in my hand, the weight really is a deal breaker for me. Luckily, after discovering the counter weights, I had a completely different approach toward wanting to test out the capabilities of the Logitech G G502 Hero. Ideally when utilizing the weights in the G502 Hero any other Gamer would configure the balance in a variety ways by placing a weight into or leaving the Front, Rear, left, Right and Center Weight Slots empty to experiment with their Alignment to find their sweet spot for their specific game(s) of choice. Not me though, I placed all 5 weights into all their slots and instantly knew I had found a potential replacement for my old G602.

Seeing that the G502 Hero stated that it was their “Fastest Gaming Mouse with the Fastest Frame Rate Processing Yet”, by boasting a capability of 400+ IPS (Tracking Speed) across the 100 – 16,000 DPI Range with Zero Smoothing, Filtering or Acceleration, I plugged the G502 Hero into my system and launched Logitech G Hub without hesitation. Once I had tweaked the DPI Settings to my desired rates, I opened up Adobe Illustrator and started Drawing and Tracing complex shapes and cycled through my DPI settings with a single click, while watching the DPI Indicator on the side of the mouse to easily identify where I was in my spectrum of custom Sensitivities. Grinning and with a racing heart, I was thrilled to say that the G502 Hero had passed three of my required prerequisites, Fit, Weight and Sensitivity. Now, I needed to test the Functionality.

Play To Win

The G502 Hero has 11 Programmable Buttons, which allowed me to save specific Macros that I often use in Adobe Premiere Pro directly to two of the buttons through the use of Logitech G Hub. This is however my personal application of Macro Bindings, but yet again, most Gamers would assign certain Spell Rotations, Ability Perks or Timed Actions to a Macro, which you can obviously also still do in Logitech G Hub.

Needless to say, with the press of a single button, an Action was triggered within my Video Editing Software that applied all my preset Filters, Animations and Positioning of Elements without me wasting any time manually dragging and dropping each Scene in Sequence. To my delight, I saw that I could also save profiles directly to the G502 Mouse’ Internal Memory and take my settings along with me anywhere, which is ideal for multi-location or team based editing that I could have used a lot sooner at Comic Con Africa this year. However, I could now happily mark off Functionality on my list. Last, but by no means least I had to test out the Gaming side of the G502 Hero.

With a few First Person Shooters loaded to my system, I launched into Overwatch first, and selected Widowmaker to try out the fancy DPI Shift Button, which whilst being held down, switches your DPI from a high to a low sensitivity instantly, essentially allowing you to quickly Transition to Sniper-Precision targeting in-game without needing to cycle down two or more DPI ranges. I even found that the DPI Shift Button gave me an extra edge while using McCree, who is by no means a Sniper DPS Character. This DPI Shift button could also apply to my Design requirements, which solidified my verdict even more.

Lastly I launched into Destiny 2, and assigned my Grenade, Melee, Reload, Class Ability and my Super each to an easy to reach and convenient Mouse Button and hopped into a Strike Matchmaking Session. While taking on the Vex, my most hated enemy faction, I felt overpowered, and not because my Loadout had changed, but purely because I was not fiddling around on the Keyboard anymore trying to find the right button because I had moved my left hand placement during a Jumping-Combat Puzzle.

That was it for me. I was satisfied. The Logitech G G502 Hero, had quite literally become my Hero. It saved me. It rescued me from feeling like I would never find another perfect all round Peripheral Partner. I could peacefully lay my old G602 to rest without any regrets.

Conclusion

The Logitech G G502 Hero High Performance Gaming Mouse has a Polling Rate of 1000 Hz or a Polling Interval of 1 ms (millisecond) which is the “Lag Time” or “Response Rate” of the device, which positions this mouse in the big leagues as a competition mouse. The final feature worth mentioning is that the G502 is LightSync Technology Compatible, synchronize your RGB Lighting Animations and Effects through Logitech G Hub with your other Logitech G devices, like the previously reviewed Logitech G G513 Carbon Keyboard, however the mouse only has 1 RGB Zone available.

Finishing off with the Design and Ergonomics of the G502 Hero, the Primary Buttons (Left and Right Click) are Mechanical Switches rated to last for 50 Million Clicks, and comes with a Braided Cable and Rubberized Side Grips, making it both Aesthetically Sleek and Rigid, and can travel (on a mousepad) a cumulative distance of roughly 250km. The dimensions of the G502 measures at 132mm in Height, 75mm in Width and is 40mm Deep, also Weighing in at 121g without the Optional Weights, which together add an additional 18g (5 x 3.6g) to the mouse if all fitted at once. Items contained in the box are the G502 Hero High Performance Gaming Mouse, Optional 5x 3.6g Weights and Case, User Documentation and a 2-Year Limited Hardware Warranty.

At the time of this review, you can order yourself a G502 Hero High Performance Gaming Mouse from Evetech at R1,269.00 or from Takealot at R1,299.00. My experience with this mouse literally caught me by surprise and blew me away by not only meeting my expectations, but outperforming them. I can confidently recommend it as an affordable solution for multiple applications, whether it be for Designing, Gaming or Both. The G502 Hero is compatible with both Microsoft Windows PC and Mac OS.