Logitech G7 Gaming Mouse - Batteries included
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You get two rechargeable battery packs, and the idea is that if a battery runs out during game time, it takes just a matter of seconds to insert a fresh one and resume your game. It's a good system and works very well. A fully charged battery will give around seven hours of continuous use and can be recharged in either two or ten hours, depending on the recharging station setting.
The recharging station itself is small and stylish, and features the same slot and button system as the mouse for rapid battery changing. The wireless dongle connects to the charging station via a port located on the front, top of the station. I wondered at first why the receiver wasn't built into the station itself, but I'm guessing it's so you don't have to take the whole thing with you when you're on the move. Still, having the dongle poking out of the station at a roughly 45 degree angle to me is asking for it to be accidentally snapped off. This is possibly the one and only design flaw of the whole thing.
The USB connection is described by Logitech as "full-speed USB," a term that is apparently meant to denote an adherence to the now obsolete USB 1.1 standard. Logitech is careful not to use the official standard name anywhere in their documentation (including online) and while it may at first seem that the slowness of the USB connection is a major failing of the product, you have to ask yourself, how much data does a mouse actually transfer to the computer? It's not a camera or anything, so there aren't huge amounts of data that need to be moved quickly. What the documentation does say is that the mouse delivers 500 reports per second to the computer, which when compared to the standard of around 125 reports that normal USB mice are capable of, begins to sound a lot more impressive.
The wireless connection uses a 2.4 GHz frequency to broadcast information. This is the same as the frequency of the IEEE 802.11g standard commonly found in wireless routers. If that makes you worry about interference between your wireless products causing lag, you can rest assured; I have an 802.11g wireless router and have noticed no perceptible interference between my wireless devices. The mouse has 24 channels that it can use for transmission, so if it detects any interference on the channel in use, it simply switches to another, with no intervention on your part. As with the USB speed, Logitech doesn't name the IEEE standard at all on its documentation. Instead, it refers to "Logitech's 2.4 GHz cordless (not wireless) technology," which to me sounds like an in-house development (not that there's an issue with that; at the end of the day it performs).
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