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This is a unique nine button mouse (three standard buttons, left and right tilt clicks for scrolling wheel and four additional buttons on the left side of the mouse) but only five are of them are usable. It is overpriced (compare with Logitech G600 MMO Gaming Mouse and Logitech Marathon Mouse M705). Logitech Marathon Mouse M705 is very similar can be bought twice cheaper. In some aspects is is better mouse and exceed in functionality this one. for example it does not have the problem of way too short battery life.
The key feature of this mouse is the unique thumb button at the bottom. This is an excellent, innovative idea that makes this mouse really special. It is also present in very few other Logitech models such as Logitech Marathon Mouse M705. I never saw such button in Microsoft mice. It is really convenient to use although Sidewinder X5 has two convenient vertical buttons too. That put this mouse in a pretty unique (and superior to alternatives) class of mice with two vertical buttons.
It is not easy to learn to use this "bottom" button as old habits die hard. You need to train yourself to use this new button productively. Unfortunately those skills do not come automatically. Moreover, if you do not pay attention to training, you will discover that soon you revert to your old habits and use this mouse as a regular 5-button mouse.
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Other then that this is an average, but overpriced mouse with mediocre, buggy software (in Windows 7 if you try to edit the last line on the screen you have difficulties and need to move the line up). Tracking is good, this is now a norm; you can get similar quality of tracking from $20 mouse. Middle button click is horrible -- this is a major defect of this model. Low profile receiver is very nice, and the fact that it can work also with Logitech keyboards is a nice engineering touch. But it is typical for all Logitech mice. Other manufactures now produce similar low profile receivers too.
Please note that the micro USB cable is only for charging. The mouse still requires the receiver to be plugged. Fully charges battery lasts about 7 days of moderate use. The Performance MX uses an cheap 1900 mAh AA NiMH rechargeable battery - which comes included in the packaging. This can be substantially improved using more expensive higher capacity battery. They do not recommend using a regular AA battery (probably becuase voltage is slightly higher). If battery is discharged and you have no replacement battery, you need two USB slots to use the mouse (one for receiver and one for a charging cable) which might be a problem for notebook users (but this is really desktop mouse, so this does not matter much). But to carry this mouse on a plane would be counter-intuitive since in mice size terms, this thing is a "rat" :-).
But it suffers from two major and one minor problems:
This downgrade suggests that as a software developer Logitech really sucks. I would expect a debugged software, if I pay $70 for the Premium mouse. It's like buying a Cadillac and discovering that you can't open windows with any of the buttons.
Please note that if you downgrade the driver from 6.51 to 4.80 you lose all your settings. Another example of Logitech incompetence as a software developer.
As for minor problem: there is no compartment to store Logitech Unifying receiver with the mouse body. Also instead of zoom button they should use a wheel like in MX Revolution. This is a foolish attempt to save money on the part of Logitech...
I would not recommend this mouse at this price range if you pay your own money. It should be discounted 50% to, say, $35 to became viable. If it OK, if your company pay for it.
The key problem with the mouse is stiff and unreliable click of middle button. You need to press scrolling wheel vertically down for it to register (despite the fact the surface is tilted) And even in this case sometimes it register the click and sometimes it does not. Sometime you feel the click, but it is not registered. In other words the middle button works randomly. I ended up working around the issue by remapping middle click to the bottom button to be the middle button. This is not a show stopper but for $80 mouse is pretty disappointing. A mouse at this price range should not have such an obvious design flaw. People who use middle button a lot (like CAD users) beware. This is not a good option. Here is a typical review
I used an MX Revolution today and the scroll wheel also has a "click." I found, however, that I needed to press a lot past the click and it was VERY inconsistent as to which angle you pressed down to activate the middle click. I tried pressing directly down, on the lower third of the wheel, etc...I use CAD software and middle click is very important for me. I have an old Microsoft optical mouse that has very light scroll wheel which makes for very easy middle clicks. I know with the Logitech's you can re-program buttons to act as the middle click but that's not comfortable for me
Left and right tilt on the scrolling wheel ((sideways scroll)) produce clicks but the no audible ot tackile feedback. This make them too sensitive and too random to be useful. It is better to disable them (or unify them with middle click, slightly improving performance of the latter) and get another mouse if you really need them.
Forward button is difficult to reach from the position optimal for using tilt wheel, and that makes is semi-useful too. Back buttons and zoom button are usable. BTW the zoom button which is found under those two buttons is not something that at least initially you'll find without looking.
Shape of the mouse is somewhat high. For people with small or medium hands it is not ergonomic and you feel strain using is for prolong periods. Buyer beware.
SetPoint software is pretty primitive (no real macro capabilities), but adequate because macro capabilities for mouse are less useful then for keyboard. Latest version 6.51 has application specific settings. If you really need macro functions the easiest workaround is to remap buttons you can do this in two steps. First map them to some obscure keyboard keys (for example, Calc, Pause, etc) and then assign macros to those keyboard keys.
Here is my Amazon review:Logitech Wireless Performance Mouse MX for PC and Mac (Personal Computers)
Several gotchas, short battery life, bad middle click,
December 26, 2012 It's not a bad mouse while it works. But it has a set of gotchas you better know about.
Mouse lasted for 6 months or so and then abruptly died (never recovered from low battery state). So please beware that this mouse should use only NiMH battery (alkaline that I have used were not recommended, but I did not know about that) and switch the mouse off before replacing the battery and then switch it on. Not following this procedure probably have led to demise of my mouse. Please read Logitech FAQ item "Changing the battery in my Performance Mouse MX".
While it was working it was not bad, but definitely overpriced. On PCB surfaces (cooking boards are a nice mouse pad replacement ;-) is moves very smoothly, but I suspect that it produces (at lease with the version of Setpoint 6.51 on Windows 7 that I used) strange effect: the screensaver does not activate and logging off a user sometimes takes forever. Sensor just does not switch off unless you move the mouse on "conventional" surface. But this is just my guess. I never verified it.
The bottom button is a brilliant invention and is very useful (I assigned Enter to it and used it quite a bit). Only few other mice (and only from Logitech) have such a button. It does not take a lot of time to get used to, but your skills are lost if you use one mouse at work, but the other different one at home.
There are a couple of other problems:1. Difficulties in clicking the wheel. You can adapt to push wheel straight down. But it does destroy the ability to use tilt. You need to de-assign those functions is you use middle click often as they will invoked randomly instead of middle click.
2. Positioning of back, forward and zoom buttons are suboptimal. Actually the idea of using back and forward buttons is questionable and IMHO the only mouse where they were usable was Microsoft X4 mouse (which used vertical positioning on those two buttons). In this mouse depending on your grip only one button is usable, the other is practically useless. In the past Logitech did have an innovative solution to this problem using the wheel on the thumb side in MX Revolution which is the best solution of all. The fact that this solution was dropped is a huge disappointment.
3. Battery life is too short with the supplied rechargeable battery (for me it was typically less then a week). That's why I changed to regular AA batteries which again are NOT recommended and might be a cause that my mouse went south.
3. Charging cord is badly thought out and does not allow to use mouse as corded mouse (you still need a receiver). It connects under an angle, the nuance which you need to get used to. But you can use any changer with compatible plug, for example for Blackberry or Android cellphones.
4. IMHO SetPoint software is not well debugged. Functionality is adequate and it allows "per application" button assignments. But reliability is suspect. I started using this mouse in Windows XP and the latest version simply periodically crashes and since that point you have no access to additional buttons. You need to use older version of SetPoint, such as 4.8 to avoid those systematic crashes with the message:
Logitech SetPoint Event Manager (UNICODE) has encountered a problem and needs to close
In Windows 7 I encountered a strange effect of erratic behavior at the bottom of FrontPage screen. Only the last line was affected.
As for minor problem: there is no compartment to store Logitech Unifying receiver within the mouse body.
And again, shame on Logitech: instead of zoom button they should use a wheel like in previous versions. I think that replacement of the wheel with the button is a badly thought out and badly executed attempt to save a couple of dollars. But sometimes excessive zeal backfires and I think Logitech might feel the pain in this case: Microsoft Wireless Rechargeable Laser Mouse 7000 costs around $25 and is competitive, if you do not value much the bottom button functionality too much (or if you can't adapt to using it, which also can be the case). Battery lasts several months.I would not recommend this mouse at this price range, if you pay your own money. It is overpriced, unreliable/capricious and IMHO should be discounted 50% to, say, $35 to became viable. But on company money this is a very nice mouse and it can speed up several common operations substantially, if you reassign bottom thumb button and zoom button to functions you need most often.
So my three stars is for home users. I would probably add a star for corporate users ;-)
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Super User
hat kind of mouse do you have? Some older mice incorrectly register movement on certain surfaces like wood or glass, automatically interrupting the screensaver. In addition, Vista and Windows 7 have a feature where Windows automatically increases the delay if the screensaver is interrupted shortly after activating. If the mouse has indeed been interrupting the screensaver for the whole night, the screensaver might not activate even if you wait for those 15 minutes.Try unplugging your mouse for one night and see whether the screensaver has activated in the morning.
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Battery Replacement Tips
- For best battery performance, always use quality NiMH batteries.
- Do not use alkaline batteries in this product.
Installing New BatteryInstall the battery for your mouse by making sure the battery faces the correct direction as shown in the image below.
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A. Weeks "Math & Science!" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)An autocad user review:,
I use it for cad work and love it actually. The fit is near perfect for my hand, buttons are well placed, and it has a good weight to it. Ive set all the extra buttons to the following for autocad; lower thumb:open, left scroll wheel:escape, right scroll: mute (just in case my boss has something to say), zoom:save, i set the thum up/down to move through the last commands (handy for when you want to go back 2 or three commands real quick), and right click: repeat last command (i prefer it to the spacebar for repeat). This setup keeps my left hand pretty free. I am not experiencing the battery issues other users are. I use it all day for 8-9hrs and have to plug it in once a week at most.December 5, 2011 What is also nice is the setpoint software that lets you set different button configurations for different applications. I can go from autocad to Battlefield 3 and it changes the button config automatically.
What I don't like about this mouse is the left and right scroll have no click to them and require very little push to activate. Because of the slight angle the wheel sits (it leans slightly to the left) it's easy to inadvertently hit left scroll when you center click. Which may be a problem depending on what you set it to in autocad if you use the middle button to pan around. This positioning also makes it a little awkward to hit the right scroll. These issues take of the one star.
That being my only gripe, I like this mouse so much that I almost bought one for home use... until i saw the $80-$100 price tag (and still almost got it). Instead I settled on the M705. This mouse is smaller than the Performance MX but the contours are very close with the body being shorter. The thumb area isn't quite as large as the Performance MX but still offers good support. Now, if you have larger hands you will find the mouse wheel and thumb up/down buttons too close. If you have smaller hands, it's fine. The M705 is short one button (the thumb zoom) but besides that it is a good substitute. The big plus the M705 has it the scroll wheel has the physical left and right scroll click and isn't as sensitive so you wont accidentally hit it while middle clicking. It's not rechargeable but the batteries are supposed to last for ~3yrs. Plus at half the cost (50 in store, 40 on amazon) I'm happy with it.
Andy G (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
Almost awesome, but an awful middle mouse button,September 5, 2011 mattbeck - See all my reviewsOverall this is a comfortable, functional, and well thought-out mouse.
However, the middle mouse button is really not right. Unless you click it at just the right angle the click won't register. Worse for my usage needs (gaming and graphic design programs), when clicking the middle button it's very easy to accidentally trigger the mouse wheel. That can be awfully when you're gaming or working in Adobe Creative Suite.
It's slick that the wheel comes with two levels of resistance, one for fast smooth scrolling, and another for the more traditional graduated scrolling with resistive clicks. However, even in the traditional mode the wheel doesn't offer enough resistance, so it was far too easy for me to trigger scrolling.
It sounds like some people have no problem with the middle wheel/button. I assume it's a different in hand size, shape, or mouse grip. However, others have reported the same problem as mine. For $100 it's unacceptable.
If the middle button & wheel weren't so important for my uses I'd be very happy. As it is, though, I'm returning it.
Get an MX Revolution instead,M. Johnson "emjay" (in yo face, USA) - See all my reviewsAugust 16, 2010 I have had a Logitech MX Revolution for a number of years and was feeling like getting a new mouse and purchased this one on a whim...
This mouse is awful actually. Anyone who gives it a good rating is completely ignorant of the MX Revolution, or just completely ignorant in general (sorry but I am being HONEST). I am shocked that there are 112 people who gave this a 5 star rating. I wish that I could send all 112 of those people a MX Revolution and watch as ALL their reviews all go from 5 -> between 1 and 3.
Major Issue #1:
The "hyper-fast" scrolling that was introduced with the MX Revolution is awesome! Basically the wheel goes from "Click-click-click" mode (like traditional mouse wheels) to a free-spinning mode that lets you fly through documents and webpages. On my MX revolution you can trigger this free-spinning mode a number of ways. You can either have a button that switches, or you can actually configure a threshold where, if you spin the wheel hard enough, the mouse will actually switch all on it's own. Then, once you stop, it will go back to "click-click" mode. I use this because it really feels much nicer than having to hit the button all the time. It is easily the best feature I have had in a mouse since the advent of the scroll wheel itself.I figured the "hyper-fast" scrolling on this mouse would be the same. Boy, was I sorely mistaken. It can only be toggled between click-click mode and free mode using the button just below the scroll wheel. After just a couple times of doing this, my wrist starts hurting. The button is also far enough away that you can flick the wheel and hit the button in one motion. So you have to resort to predicting that you are going to want the free-spin mode, hit the button, flick the wheel, then hit the button again to go back to click-click. This sucks with a super tight seal. I am shocked that Logitech has taken such a giant leap backwards (probably to save a couple bucks on production).
Issue #2:
The middle button doesn't really work to well, which has actually been a problem with a number of Logitech mice that I have used (and there have been many). You end up triggering the mouse wheel to easily, or it goes *click* and nothing happens. BOOOOIssue #3:
The left-right scrolling gives almost no tactile feedback, so you can't always tell if you are doing it or not.There are a couple things that ARE nice about this mouse (but they don't make up for the issues above):
The darkfield sensor does seem to be pretty awesome. I didn't try it on glass or anything, but i felt like the mouse performed better than my MX Revolution.
The stealth button is pretty cool. Good placement, because your thumb is always right there.
The shape is okay. I like the MX revolution better, but I think it is because I am used to it. I think that if I could stand to spend more time with this mouse I might end up liking the shape more.
Overall, just go but the older MX revolution, you will be MUCH happier.
Middle Click Ruins Product,Mr Timothy Sullivan (East Melbourne, VIC Australia) - See all my reviewsNovember 20, 2010 I have owned many mice in my life. Some $5, some $60, and the Logitech Performance MX is easily the most I have ever spent on an input device.
With that price comes certain expectations, perhaps things like aesthetics and usability features. The basic ability for a critical button to even function correctly is not a factor that should come into play at this level..., but it does. In this case, the middle click works about 60% of the time. I repeat, 60% OF THE TIME, due to the poorly designed wheel. That would be completely unacceptable for a $5 mouse, and is beyond abhorrent for the asking price of this "premium" mouse. This is the basic functionality any entry-level mouse can achieve without even trying. Good work Logitech.
If you need that button to function at all reliably, DO NOT BUY THIS MOUSE. Most Amazon reviewers do not care about this functionality, but do a few other searches around the web. You will quickly see that this a ridiculously widespread problem.
I hate how it's such a beautiful, smoothly operating mouse, with a critical design flaw a 5-year old tester should have identified before it was produced and presented to the public.
Avoid like the plague.
middle mouse button useless for CAD,J. L. Coleman (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviewsMay 17, 2012 This mouse has some major design problems.
As an architect, i use the middle button more than 50% of the day to navigate around my CAD models.
After complaining to logitech they sent me another one, which was great, but same exact problems. I'm now sending them back for a refund. considering i got the first one at 50% off, and they sent me two that makes them $20 each... and to me, they still aren't worth it.
- Firstly the middle button doesn't 'click', there seems to be an issue within the housing of the scroll wheel and the push sensor. You push and sometimes it registers sometimes not, but there is no tangible 'click' (this isn't a mechanical flaw as i pulled it apart, it's designed that way!). This is an infuriating problem when you need to click(hold) and drag, which i have to do alot. The 'click' stutters, so you think you are holding down the middle button, , and you're pressing real hard, because you know this is an issue, but as you start to rotate your model, its releases just for a millisecond, enough to send your model somewhere out of view.
- Secondly the scroll wheel is too low; so if you wish to tilt the wheel to the right, i.e. to pan to the right, you have only a few mm to do... it's so close to the left button (you can even see this in the logitech picture) that you have to hold the mouse with your other hand, lift your right finger off and carefully push hoping your finger can get a hold...and even then you usually end up inadvertently clicking the left or middle button as well. The issue here is the face top of the mouse is curved downwards to the right so that your hand sits comfortably (it is comfortable). Unfortunately, because the surface is tilted, the scroll wheel needs to be too, but it's not... it's vertical. This means the left side of the scroll wheel is barely above the surface, whilst the right side is about the right height.
- Thirdly, the "dark Field" laser is baloney, i have had to use a mouse pad again! first time since the 90's. It won't pick up the surface of my plain white, wood textured desktop! None of my other three mice have any problem with it (two are logitechs).
- Lastly, the opening for the laser picks up an amazing amount of grit, which is difficult to clear. The mouse would annoyingly and gradually lose accuracy until it was unresponsive. i'd have to blow it clear a few times a day.
Middle button poorly designed,March 12, 2012 When I first got this mouse I loved it. It felt great and is extremely precise. However I bought it for my job, where I use mainly 3D software all day. When navigating in 3D, you need the middle mouse button a lot. This middle mouse button is a huge flaw. The scrolling is nice, but when you press down on the scroll wheel, it does not click unless you are coming from a very specific angle that is not natural for how the mouse is angled. I found myself trying to press the scroll wheel and accidentally pressing the left button in addition or instead of middle button because of the extremely awkward angle. I could of course remap one of the other 4 buttons to be a middle click, but it still is very disappointing that such an expensive top of the line mouse would have such a major design flaw.
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