The Tech Throwdown

Rating:

Logitech MX5500 Wireless Bundle Review
By Jordan Davis

I recently acquired a Logitech MX5500 Bluetooth mouse and keyboard for work and it has been a pleasure to use. I have used many “gaming” keyboards and mice, from Microsoft to Razor, and this is by far the best one. Not to say the others are bad, but this complete package is worth the heavy price tag.

What I like about it:

I love the quiet and soft keys on the keyboard. It feels smooth like a laptop, yet enough pressure to know that you pressed the keys, which is an issue I have had with other keyboards of this type. The LCD screen built in is a nice touch, but I rarely find myself using it. However I do like that the calculator hot key goes to the LCD on the keyboard to do your calculations, so it doesn’t mess with anything on your screen.

The mouse is welcome addition to the bundle. The blue tooth signal is strong as long as it is within 10-20 feet of the receiver. The charge on the mouse last for about 3 days of heavy use, and weeks idle. I can’t say how long the keyboard lasts with the four AA batteries (included with the bundle), but I have had it for a month and haven’t had to replace them. Also I just realized that this keyboard and mouse is compatible with the PlayStation 3, an added bonus.

The scroll wheel one the mouse has a few different settings. It can be permanently set to either click to click or to free spin. Its default setting is that if you click the mouse wheel, it switches between click to click and free spin. It can also be set to change to free spin as you increase speed. Click to click is needed in gaming to allow weapon switching to be precise, where free spin serves a better purpose in web browsing and office like work, such as scrolling through spreadsheets.

What I dislike about it:

Drivers are a pain. Now on XP there shouldn’t be a problem, but on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit I had some issues. First of all, there is no 64-bit client of “set-point” the Logitech software. Now this shouldn’t be an issue, since many 32-bit programs run fine on 64-bit, however the initial install did have issues. I believe the windows drivers that installed on their own messed up the Logitech drivers causing the items to be unresponsive. I found just installing the windows drivers, rebooting, then installing the Logitech drivers would allow the install without disabling the devices.

The keyboard has a PC power button. I have always hated these, and they have caused more unexpected shutdowns for me than power outages. Luckily there is a way to turn this off in the Set-Point program. The mouse has a search button that take you to a search page of your choice, which is fine and dandy, except when you accidently click it during a game and it minimizes you, screwing up that awesome kill streak.

Overall it is a great combo, and worth the purchase, even with a hefty price of $144.00 on Amazon.com (http://amzn.to/a8VRpe).