LAS VEGAS – The Logitech G502 Proteus Core is not only one of our favorite gaming mice; it's one our very favorite products, ever. There's very little about the Proteus Core that needed changing, which is why its successor, the Proteus Spectrum, adjusted only one thing. The mouse now has full RGB illumination at its disposal.
I met with Logitech at CES 2016 to go hands-on with the Proteus Spectrum, which costs $79 and will start shipping within a few weeks. If you've ever used a Proteus Core before, the learning curve is almost nil. The mouse feels exactly the same as the Proteus Core, right down to the adjustable weights, and runs on the same Logitech Gaming Software. The only difference is that now you can assign colors to the mouse's illumination via said software. Before, everything was blue.
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Programming colors is quite simple. You can select from a preexisting pool, or program your own from a potential selection of millions. The color can be static, or breathing, and you can adjust the illumination of both the Logitech logo and the dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivity bar. Unfortunately, you can't assign different colors to the two backlit areas. You can, however, link each color to a different game profile, which should be quite helpful in distinguishing them.
In terms of performance, the mouse is identical to the Proteus Core, and that's a good thing. I played through a few Counter-Strike matches, and found the design extremely comfortable, and the sensor (which goes up to 12,000 DPI) quite responsive. I especially liked the two buttons next to the index finger, which I set up to adjust DPI. Depending on which weapon I was using, changing DPI at the flick of a finger was often a lifesaver.
Tom's Guide will give the Proteus Spectrum a full review soon, but in the meantime, it appears to be a smart upgrade for an already-excellent piece of hardware. Especially if you have a PC gaming setup, which tends to favor a lot of black-on-black designs, you could stand to add a little color to your life.
