Great mouse with 1 fatal flaw. Left mouse button breaks fast. It is a well known wide spread issue. At only 99 USD, this probably was the most recommended model of mouse under 100 USD. I saved money and paid Logitech that price. After little over a year, here we are. I have many good things to say, but I have to mention that for it to be stay usable, you will either have to do some soldering, or relearning how to hold and use a mouse.
Here are the pros and cons of this device, in no particular order, except the last con which is the most important as it is about the flawed left mouse button.
Pros
Good Connectivity: Bluetooth connection and device switching is seamless. I use Linux, and never had Bluetooth connection issues of any kind. Laptop and mouse connect before I can login, so I can even use it at the lock screen.
It has connection dropping problem if the scroll wheel is turning too fast, but I believe this is an issue with Bluetooth. This problem is present regardless of operating system. I don’t remember having this issue when I was using the 2.4 GHz Wireless dongle.
Long Battery Life: battery life is amazing. I probably charged it 5 to 8. It does report its battery life, and a notification warns me when the battery is low. But because it has an easily reachable USB-C charging port, I was always able to use my laptop charger. If I was digging for a problem here, it would be double listing of the battery level in system settings. That is it.
Comfortable to hold
Amazing Scroll Wheel: It is either in a very satisfying ratcheting mode, or in a very quiet and smooth free spin mode. Or it can be configured to switch between the 2 depending on how fast you turn it. Regardless, it is comfortable.
Cons
No USB dongle housing: You will need to either keep it in its large box, or keep a record of where it currently is, to avoid losing it.
Broken Left Mouse Button: Left click slowly became less and less usable. I thought I wasn’t holding the mouse right, or that my finger was lifting a little without me realizing. As time passed, the problem became much more common. Quick Googling, internet slang for searching posts on Reddit, revealed that this is a common issue. Someone went as far as to replace the problematic physical switch inside the plastic housing of the mouse with a high quality keyboard switch.
I neither have tools (soldering stuff) to do that, nor have money or time budget to invest into it at this moment. I also don’t want to take its socks off, because Logitech hid the screws under them. They never go back like they were brand new. In IT, we call this “an a**h*** thing to do”. So, I will look for a less involved solution.
Below content is the new draft. Old draft can be found here.
Solaar for the win
This mouse will live on. Thanks to Solaar, I was able to map forward and back buttons on the side to left and right mouse buttons respectively. I have no habit of using my thumb for left and right clicks, but I will learn.
What I am not sure of is whether this settings are stored by Solaar, and require it to be open at all times, or whether these settings are stored in the mouse and carry with it, independent from mouse. This is important since I would like to connect this mouse to TV to control Android on TV remotely, with ease.
Note: I just closed Solaar, and side buttons continue to work as left/right mouse buttons as I configured. That is a good sign.
Another thing Solaar exposes to me is the “Scroll Wheel Ratchet” slider. After some testing I figured that this allows use to set how fast we have to turn the slider for it to automatically switch between ratchet and free spin modes. I thought this was a new feature introduced with MX Master 4S line up, but it apparently was present in MX Master 3S too. I guess it was experimental feature, and Logitech is finally comfortable enough to make it widely available on their new models.
Conclusion
My previous draft of this article had a negative conclusion, you can read it below. But my current take is that Logitech made some good decisions that made this device recoverable, without too involved ways of fixing it. Don’t get me wrong, it is still broken and remain broken. This is not acceptable for a product that costs 140 CAD product. But rather than complain about it, I am glad that there is a “fix” of some sort available.
Old Content
It no longer is a computer mouse
Recently, this problem stopped being isolated to holding and dragging left mouse button, but mouse stopped recognizing many of my clicks. Left mouse button click success rate floats around 40% right now.
I am sorry if I sound harsh, but regardless of what features a mouse has, if it cannot do a left click, it is useless.
If I could map one of the side buttons to act as left mouse button, I would still be annoyed, but make this device less likely to go into wasteland this early in its life.
If it could remember its settings and I didn’t need to install Logitech’s Options+ application for Windows on everything, that would make this mouse usable. Because one of my use cases is controlling the TV with a mouse. But for obvious reasons Android for TV doesn’t support Windows applications. So, this mouse is my future dissection project. It is out of warranty, and I paid too much to let it go to wasteland.
Conclusion
After this experience, don’t think I would be buying another mouse from Logitech’s Master product line. MX Master 4S fixes already amazing to hold exterior of MX Master 3S, re-invents scroll wheel, and adds more options to Options+ app which ain’t even an option in my case.
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