'We need to do lightweight, but fine, what else?' says Logitech chief engineer, and after getting tons of hours in with the Superstrike I agree the new tech is worth a heavier gaming mouse
The Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike is the first gaming mouse to offer adjustable actuation and rapid trigger for super-quick click response. I'm already sold on it, having used it a ton over the last week in my Counter-Strike matches, and it looks like a bunch of other competitive gamers are sold on it, too. But it's not exactly the lightest mouse on the market right now.
It's not heavy, but at 61 g with its UPE-furnished puck fitted, it's a far cry from the 36 g of the Corsair Sabre V2 Pro or the 39–41 g of the Pulsar X2 CrazyLight Medium. The former has been my go-to for a while, as I think there's a genuine benefit to using a lightweight mouse for competitive shooters.
Naturally, then, I was a little worried that the 61 g Superstrike wouldn't quite cut it. I worried that it would maybe offer exciting new technology, but that this technology would only be truly competitive against other lightweight mice years down the line, when it could be put into a lighter package.
Thankfully, I've found that isn't the case. Initially, it felt a little heavy, which isn't helped by the UPE skates, as opposed to smoother PTFE ones. But it only took a couple of hours gaming with it for me to get used to it. I was surprised how quickly I forgot about its weight.
In fact, I'm finding that I'm sometimes landing shots now that I never did before. It's almost like I'm flicking my aim and my finger is clicking before I even realise what's happening. This isn't a consistent or wide enough change to have dramatically changed my overall in-game performance, but it is noticeable. It's made my gameplay feel cleaner and more responsive, far more than cutting down my mouse weight ever did.
Which all explains why Logitech says that for the pros who tested the prototype Superstrike, the new technology was more important than cutting down weight. When I visited Logitech HQ last week, engineer Frédéric de Goumoëns explained: "The feedback we have from this is that the improvement, the benefit from the hits technology, was really the thing they care about, that the weight was kind of secondary for them."
I also sat down with Regis Croissonnier, Logitech's chief engineer, and asked him specifically about this mouse compared to lightweight mice. He responded: "Lightweight? No doubt, we need to do lightweight, but fine, what else?"
"What's next?" he continued, "How can we even further improve the experience, the performance for gamers?... We don't want to keep fighting for numbers… one kilohertz, eight kilohertz… We're trying to optimise… to save 10 microsecond latencies, right?
"Good. But how might we do it differently? And I think Superstrike is a good example where we came up with a new technology, helping us to save 30 milliseconds. So it's much bigger than what we are trying to achieve by saving 10 microseconds here or here, you know."
And as I said, after using the G Pro X2 Superstrike extensively over the last week, I can't say I disagree. I do hope the technology will come to lighter and cheaper mice over the years, but for now I'm happy with 61 g, even though there are significantly lighter options on the market.