Comparison Of Steelpad Steel4s And Steel5l & Review Of Logitech
G5 Laser Mouse
Author: Stuey
Article:
It was early March and I decided to upgrade my trusty Microsoft
Optical mouse that I had been using for 2 years and replace it
with something a little more up to date ....
I looked on the web and checked out reviews on mice and then
start reading about the combination of mice and mousepads
(albeit probably 3 years later than everyone else ......) and
how critical the combination could be.
Now that I'm a little older and the "buy cheap, buy twice"
policy makes so much sense, I came to the conclusion that I
wanted the best mouse and the best mouse mat.
This brought me to two items
1) Logitech G5 Laser Mouse 2) SteelSeries Mousepad 4S (Rigid
metal mouse pad with chemical etched matt black surface)
I nearly bit the hand off the delivery guy on the morning they
were delivered, frantically unwrapping them like it was my 10th
Birthday - looking good, opened the Steelpad 4S Steel first and
saw the matt black, almost stealth looking mousepad. Great. Then
opened the Logitech box and had a look at the G5 Laser mouse.
Very impressed.
I plugged the mouse in and loaded the software ......
First impressions of the G5
1) It looked good. Felt great. 2) I didn't like the wheel (it
provided a lot more resistance than the Microsoft Optical mouse
- it wasn't as free wheeling)
I messed around with the weights and decided that it wasn't for
me so I put the Logitech G5 Laser mouse back in its packaging
and contacted the supplier for a RMA number. Very disappointed
indeed!
NOTE: READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW AND SEE HOW MY MIND CHANGED
Next for the Steelpad 4S Steel
Now this looked good, felt good and best of all, it performed.
Using my Microsoft optical mouse on it worked great - however it
seemed to have quite a bit of noise and friction. I fitted some
pad surfers (a strip of self-adhesive low friction material that
is supplied with the steel pad) cut them to size and stuck them
to the feet of the mouse.
Much better.
A week passed and I'd not had a chance to send the G5 back - for
some reason I thought I'd give it another try. I don't know why
I did this, however I'd kept on reading great reviews and
thought I must be doing something wrong here.
I got it setup as before and initially it felt better on the 4S
Steel surface than the optical. After an hour of me saying that
the scroll wheel was too hard to move I started to get used to
it. I also changed the buttons so that the '+' button was
(Ctrl+Enter), as I use Opera browser - this is useful for wand
commands and the '-' button to switched between the current and
last page open in Opera (Ctrl+Tab). Which, if you're comparing
two web pages can be really useful.
I used the left and right on the scroll wheel to act as middle
button so that it would open up the selected link in the
background. Again a very useful tool.
It was starting to grow on me. The final straw was that I had an
identical MS Optical mouse on another pc in another room in the
house and once I used it - it felt so cheap and the scroll wheel
actually felt like it didn't have enough resistance!
A week or so passed and I started to get irritated with the
scraping noise of the G5 Laser Mouse on the Steelpad 4S Steel so
I ordered some, specially designed, G5 pad-surfers from
Steelpad. This seemed to do the trick and I carefully removed
the original ones from the G5. Much quieter - or at least it
seemed. A week later I was getting frustrated with the noise
again and the scraping feeling (cue the fingernails on
chalkboard noise) - I'd had enough.
As I really liked Steelpad's presentation and performance, but
not the noise - I went back and ordered the Steelseries 5L cloth
and plastic mouse mat. Wow, instant noise reduction, nice padded
feeling (not too soft - just right) and it was a little bigger.
I now have the best combination of all now. The best mouse and
it's tied in with the best mouse-pad (well, in my opinion
anyhow).
If you want a great combination don't bother with the 4S, get
the 5L and the Logitech G5 laser - there's no beating this
combination!
