Tom's Guide Verdict
Those who want an inexpensive, high-quality, no-frills wireless gaming mouse will find a lot to like in the Logitech G305.
Pros
- +
Comfortable, sleek design
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Great wireless features
- +
Inexpensive
- +
Easy to use
Cons
- -
No Bluetooth connectivity
- -
Requires AA batteries
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Logitech has already produced a variety of wireless mice, ranging from the pretty good to the truly exceptional. The Logitech G305 ($60) is right in the middle of the pack. It's not quite ambitious enough to cover uncharted ground, but more than a match for the everyday trials and tribulations of PC gaming and productivity. This small, sleek, intuitive gaming mouse works wonderfully and couldn't be easier to use. Those who want a no-frills wireless gaming mouse from a major manufacturer without digging too deeply in their wallets will find a lot to like here.
Design
The G305 looks nearly identical to the Logitech G Pro gaming mouse, right down to the ridged scroll wheel and slim thumb buttons. While the G305 doesn't feature the G Pro's thin illumination strip, it otherwise looks exactly like someone took a cleaver to the G Pro's wire.
That's not a bad thing, however, as the G Pro is a sleek, comfortable mouse with absolutely no wasted space. The peripheral measures about 4.5 x 2.5 inches and stands only 1.5 inches tall. The mouse works for both palm- and claw-grip players, and at only 3.4 ounces, it's one of the lighter full-size wireless mice out there.
You get six buttons: a left button, a right button, a clickable scroll wheel, a dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivity adjuster and two thumb buttons.
One downside of the G305's design is that it doesn't include any kind of lighting, which has become standard on even less expensive Logitech mice. Still, that feature probably would have driven the price up by at least $10, and it's a purely aesthetic touch, so I can't find it in my heart to feel very bothered about it.
For lefties, there's another small drawback. While the mouse's design is almost completely ambidextrous, there are no thumb buttons on the right side. Logitech doesn't make many lefty-friendly mice, and a symmetrical mouse like the G305 would have been a perfect opportunity to help those of the sinistral persuasion get into the game.
Features
Thanks to a dongle that you can store unobtrusively inside the mouse itself, the G305 works wirelessly with any computer right out of the box. You just plug in the dongle, and you're ready to go, with four DPI sensitivities built right into the mouse. With the Logitech Gaming Software, you can also customize DPI settings and what the buttons do — nothing too surprising there, but everything works as it's supposed to.
The wireless connectivity, as far as I was able to test, works flawlessly and from well over 10 feet away, in case you wanted to use the G305 in a living room setup.
MORE: Our Favorite Gaming Mice for Every Genre
Unlike some of Logitech's more expensive mice, the G305 is not rechargeable, running instead on a single AA battery (included). The company estimates that the mouse will run for 250 hours on a single charge, translating to just a bit more than a month, if you use it for 8 hours every day. (This, of course, assumes you are using the mouse for productivity as well as gaming.) One battery each month is admittedly not a bad investment, and the lack of a built-in, rechargeable battery keeps the cost and the weight down. But you may want to invest in some rechargeable AAs.
The wireless connectivity works flawlessly and from well over 10 feet away, in case you wanted to use the G305 in a living room setup.
The bigger problem is that the G305 seems perfectly content to offer wireless only through a USB dongle. Some of the mouse's competitors, such as the Razer Atheris, offer both Bluetooth and USB wireless, as do Logitech's own productivity mice. The USB dongle works extremely well on a computer but makes the mouse impossible to use with a smartphone, tablet or game console. Clearly, the G305 doesn't need Bluetooth, but including it would have made the mouse feel a little more robust.
Performance
I ran the G305 through a variety of games to evaluate how well it performed, including Overwatch, StarCraft: Remastered, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and World of Warcraft. If you've ever used a Logitech mouse, you won't be surprised to learn that the G305 handled everything I threw at it with aplomb.
The mouse didn't handle any particular genre better than others; it worked equally well for floating around a battlefield, dispensing healing powers as Mercy or commanding my crew of adventurers to sail around the Deadfire Archipelago. Because you can set up as many different game-specific profiles as you like, and switch among up to five different DPI settings on the fly, it's hard to imagine a game in which the G305 would not perform well.
Bottom Line
The Logitech G305 is a simple, elegant mouse. It's small and uncluttered, and its wireless features are as intuitive as they come. If you have a ton of money to throw around, and require customizable buttons and lots of pretty colors, the $150 G900 is probably still the way to go. Otherwise, the G305 will serve just as well, for a fraction of the cost. When you pick it up, though, maybe grab a pack of batteries for the road as well.
Credit: Logitech
