The technology of enthusiastic gaming keyboards has made the leap to gaming mice – well, one gaming mouse for now. The $179.99 Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike is the first to feature analog sensors that use induction to register clicks faster than the microswitches used in many mice.
These sensors enable a number of great features beyond just lower latency. There is a quick trigger setting, popular with Hall-effect keyboards, which allows them to quickly reset after being pressed to accept the next input. The sensors in this mouse also allow you to customize how hard you have to press each of the main buttons to send input, which requires almost no pressure, a click that requires more effort (great if your trigger finger itches), or something in between.
One of the most interesting changes to the Superstrike is that it has haptics instead of switches under the buttons. They simulate the sound and feel of clicks with surprising accuracy, and unlike tapping on a MacBook’s stationary trackpad, the main mouse buttons move and bounce back up as you’d expect them to. If their default click feel doesn’t do it for you, you can turn it up a notch (at the expense of battery life) or remove it entirely for silent operation (at the expense of knowing when you’ve clicked in the first place).
Over the years, I’ve felt tired of the many features introduced into gaming mice that claim to be more beneficial in competitive gaming than they feel in real life (decreasing weight, 8000 Hz polling rate, optical sensors didn’t do anything for me personally). But the Superstrike feels like the beginning of a big change in gaming mice, and Logitech has got a lot going on here, even if its design isn’t radically different from previous models.
If you’re wondering if this mouse is for you, let me put it this way: The Superstrike, with its analog sensors and adjustable control distances, is much easier to recommend than a Hall-effect gaming keyboard that offers the same features. The difference lies in Logitech’s haptics; it feels like the real thing, but you can customize the feel if you want. Hall effect switches in keyboards, on the other hand, have a certain feel—quiet, almost no resistance—and you can’t change that.
I have been using Superstrike for several days for my work The Verge and play some games. Unsurprisingly, bending haptic and analog sensors in Google Chrome isn’t all that exciting. These were fun features to tweak Blockagehowever. With the many, many button presses required to defeat creeps and enemies – not to mention frequent clicking through menus to purchase upgrades – reducing both the haptics and the distance of the left mouse button was just right. With a fast trigger, I could lock on faster to fire more shots. The increase in responsiveness was more noticeable for characters that can quickly burst with automatic weapons (like Haze) than for those that shoot one round at a time (like the Gray Talon archer).
I don’t foresee many scenarios where I would want to increase the button control distance. Although it seems useful in extraction shooters where your success can come down to silence at the right time. I tend to misfire in games due to jitters while playing, so requiring more effort to click might help. Regardless, it’s nice to have that flexibility that analog sensors allow.
I’ve watched and read a lot of coverage of the Superstrike since its launch, and my favorite was Dave2D’s video where he concluded that its lower latency and faster sensors weaken its gaming capabilities, making it feel like it’s back in its prime. As we age, our response time generally deteriorates, which explains why there are many young people under the age of 20 who play games professionally, but few are older. Superstrike is, unsurprisingly, proving popular with younger professionals, such as esports player Yigox, who recently won the Guinness World Record for the most clicks per minute at 760 using the mouse.
Superstrike is not a magic youth serum for gamers. It doesn’t help you love or give you unfair shortcuts to success. But its features are not gimmicks. Assuming you’re training to get better at gaming, Logitech’s new mouse with faster and more customizable clicks can help you last a little longer with the competition.