Logitech G305 Review

The Logitech G305 stands out in a crowd of mostly wired gaming mice for its compact and tether-free design at a fairer price than its wireless brethren. With solid performance and balanced handling, there's a lot to like about the G305 unless the necessity for a AA battery and limited customization options put you off. Its medium-compact shape makes it especially promising as a value wireless option for users with small hands, but users with larger hands might find this mouse too compact and uncomfortable for prolonged use.

Performance

The performance metric gauges gaming mice for their handling, response, and accuracy. We dig deep into the mouse's sensor specs, weight claims, and switch characteristics, then take to the mousepad to see how it all comes together in feel and screen response. The Logitech G305 scores well in this metric, with balanced weight, a great sensor, and nice mechanical switches.

Like most modern sensors, Logitech's HERO Optical is excellent, and I enjoyed high accuracy and response from its inclusion on the G305. It's a highly tuneable sensor, as well. Sensitivity is adjustable in steps of 50 from 200 — 12000 DPI. The polling rate ranges from 125 Hz up to a stable 1000 Hz, and the tracking speed is 400 IPS. Users can configure and save up to five profiles from the G Hub software to the mouse's onboard memory.

The G305's mechanical switches feel crisp and reliable, although not as instantaneous as those on higher-end models with optical switches that boast a speed-of-light response from every actuation.

One major difference between the G305 and its contemporaries is its removable battery design, rated to run for up to an impressive 250 hrs on one AA. Depending on the user's preference, this design feature may be a pro or con. On the one hand, a user-replaceable battery is nice for device longevity, and you could even opt for a rechargeable AA. On the other hand, built-in rechargeable batteries have been the norm for a long time, and popping in a AA at any interval feels a like a step back in time. One interesting consideration with this battery design choice, though, is that due to its removable nature, a determined user could shave a few more grams off the G305s middling 95-gram weight by equipping it with an AAA adapter and AAA battery rather than the default AA.

Even at 95 grams, the Logitech G305 has light handling characteristics with a balanced glide that skews it further towards control than speed.

Customization

For this metric, we evaluate lights, buttons, scroll wheel, weight adjustments, and handedness. Unfortunately, the Logitech G305 doesn't particularly shine in our tests here. Although, this may not deter those seeking a simple and straightforward mouse design.

The Logitech G305 features no lighting adjustability, a non-adjustable scroll wheel, and it's for right hands only, with no weight tuning parameters (although a determined user might experiment with different battery sizes to affect weight, as touched on in the performance section of this review).

The only user customizations possible on the G305 are its buttons. It has six fully programable buttons with the option to set one of them as a modifier (G-Shift) that engages alternate functions when held down. This will allow you to expand to ten possible assignments with the six buttons, as G-Shift requires a dedicated button, and the primary click reserves another.

Ease of Use

The ease of use metric examines the user experience for the mouse's software, on-the-fly adjustability, and cable ergonomics.

The Logitech G305 is a wireless mouse, so we'll skip commentary on the cable ergonomics and praise it for its ultra-low latency 1ms report time to the included USB receiver. But there are a few downsides. This could be a problem because, as time marches on, the USB A standard gives more and more ground to USB C, especially on laptops. The second issue is a wireless mouse needs a battery on board, and this particular mouse doesn't have one built-in; it requires the user to supply a single AA. That may be a bridge too far for some, but at least they shouldn't have to replace the battery very often, as Logitech claims a runtime of up to 250 hours on the G305.

The rest is purely good news. Logitech's G Hub software is robust and user-friendly, allowing users to reassign keys, set DPI, configure onboard memory settings and profiles, and set up macros. Once it's all configured, a button on the top of the mouse can be pressed to toggle on-the-fly user-defined profiles with independent DPI sensitivities.

Scroll Wheel

The scroll wheel metric is all about the feel and sound of the mouse's scroll wheel and buttons. The Logitech G305 did alright in this metric, placing it in the middle of the pack.

I noted small comfort grooves guiding my fingers on the primary and secondary buttons and thin side buttons within easy reach. Since we're nit-picking, I thought the buttons were on the small side and angled oddly, but users with smaller hands might not level this complaint at all. The actual button action is very satisfying.

The scroll wheel is wider than those we've tested on other mice, with medium-smooth resistance for a gentle and tactile feel. It scrolls easily with small steps. I felt more resistance from most of the other Logitech mice than I did with this one.

Clicking down on the scroll wheel requires little force; easy to medium pressure returns a dull click sound. The scrolling was noticeably louder backward (down) than forward (up) but quieter overall than many other mice in this review.

Should You Buy the Logitech G305?

If you're in the market for a wireless gaming mouse at a very reasonable price and don't mind (or maybe you even value) a user-replaceable AA battery, then the Logitech G305 is a great option, well worth your consideration. It's equipped with a flawless sensor and performs extremely well, even if it's light on customizability and doesn't feature cutting-edge optical switches. Large hands might find the medium-compact body a little cramped, but it should feel comfortable and well-balanced for everyone else.

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