Another day, another good gaming mouse. That’s the lingering consensus I got with the G303 Daedalus Apex Mouse, a budget-focused choice from the Logitech G subbrand. Unusual but eagerly punching above its weight with an emphasis on functionality without the overindulgent form. For the intermediate player looking for performance on the cheap there’s a lot to like here, but just not entirely love.
Once again, I should reiterate that the G303 is planted between blurred lines. The looks in particular hardly portray the notion of being gamer-friendly but has an immediate opposite effect on its own to counter. Its dimensions are long, lean, and fairly narrow in relation to what you’d normally get; dare I say that it actually looks diminutive sitting next to beefier gaming mice. Even the styling appears symmetrically restrained as aggressive swollen angles are excised for a more conventional shape – sure it has six programmable buttons (left, right, scroll wheel, tracker sensitivity on top, and two extra ones on the lower left), braided USB cable, and a pulsing LED lighting scheme, but that’s about it. The rest is minimalist incorporating various hard and glossy plastic materials for cost-effectiveness and left-handed usability.
Regardless of what I or anyone else interprets visually as a proper gaming mouse, the G303 has some standout features that help it along. Logitech has packed in an obscene amount of sensitivity adjustment with a wide DPI scale ranging anywhere from 200 to 12,000, which is probably more than most will ever need for responsiveness. The default polling rate, in which the number of times a mouse pings a computer per second is also robust at a 1,000Hz maximum, again, a bit of overkill that few people will make use of on their rigs but a nice bragging point nonetheless.
With enhancements there are two ways they’re handled for gaming mice: with physical adjustments or peripheral software. Logitech being no stranger to including drivers and proprietary suites chose the latter approach with the straightforwardly named G303 Gaming Software, which can be downloaded on their website and grants you the ability to easily tinker with the internals. You’ll be treated with the usual color selection for the LEDs, macro customization, and surface tuning for the optical sensor. Some options are a bit more arbitrary such as the smartphone pairing which lets you use the software without a PC, and a obsessive-compulsive heat map that records how often any of the G303 buttons have been pressed during a game.
But none of this stuff is useful without a good foundation to work with, and for the Logitech G303 the performance is mostly worth the sum of its parts. Thanks largely in part to a PMW3366 sensor engineered with motion accuracy variance Delta Zero™ Technology the tracking is wonderful – so much in fact that the response is uncharacteristically precise and helped alleviate quick aiming irregularities in first-person shooters like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
The feel is also great if your palms aren’t too big or just prefer something more compact, and the aforementioned plastic body is a little cheap but certainly lightweight enough to seemingly glide for energetic gamers. Combine this with your own DPI settings and the G303 becomes a jack-of-all-trades for Grand Theft Auto V or Dota 2. However, you probably won’t see much of difference for Diablo III or other slower-paced games that don’t take real advantage of the optics, in fact, it’s a bit of a waste considering the specs at your fingertips.
Versatility and a case of priority clash is what you get with the Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex Mouse
