Why am I reviewing the Logitech G502 X Lightspeed, a mouse from 2022, in the 2025? A few reasons. First, we want to make IGN’s gaming mice coverage as comprehensive as possible. That means revisiting some of the best available mice regardless of their age to see how they hold up, weighing up their strengths and weaknesses against the current competition.
Second, we reviewed the near-identical G502 X Plus at the time and loved it, but the G502 X Lightspeed is the one we’d pick from the lineup. It’s the same mouse as the G502 X Plus with four small but meaningful differences: it doesn’t have RGB lighting; it’s lighter by about 4g; its battery lasts slightly longer; and it’s cheaper.
And third, the Lightspeed version is almost exactly three years old. I’d never used it before and I was curious – with all that time passed, and with all the excellent wireless mouse that have sprouted since, does it still feel as special? The answer is: mostly, but it’s complicated.
Logitech G502 X Lightspeed – Design and Features
Although it has shortcomings you should account for, the Logitech G502 X Lightspeed is a comfortable mouse with plenty of extra buttons.The ergonomic shape is identical to the other G502 X mice with its trademark curves and bumps that filled my palm. I used it for hours at a time with no aches or pains. I don’t like rubber on mice and so I was worried the ridged thumb rest would feel sticky or chafing, but it didn’t – although it did collect lots of stubborn dust in its grooves.
You’ll typically hear that the G502 X range is made for bigger hands, but the large on-paper dimensions are slightly deceiving, distorted by the wide thumb rest and a pointy end to the right mouse button. The body is actually relatively slim and isn’t much bulkier than the standard gaming mouse – but if you specifically need a smaller mouse, this might not be the best option. It’s quite heavy at 102g, but lighter than the G502 X Plus, and it still glides reassuringly across my mouse pad on its PTFE feet.
Between those smooth mouse feet is the snappy Hero 25K sensor and a storage compartment for the small USB dongle. Once you slide in the dongle at the right angle (which can be a bit fiddly), it won't rattle around when you transport it, and the whole thing closes with a satisfying magnetic snap. Not every wireless mouse does this, and it makes the Lightspeed model a good portable option.
Visually, it’s divisive. The swooping thumb rest is elegant enough, but the buttons look cramped. It’s all sharp angles and uneven dead spaces, and it doesn’t quite amount to a coherent aesthetic – but that's just my view.
Having plenty of extra buttons is one of the main selling points; it's got more than most other high-end wireless mice that aren’t made for MMOs like the Corsair Scimitar. You get three side buttons for your thumb and two extra buttons on the top, next to the left click (they control your DPI setting by default but you can change that). More buttons is simply better because it gives you more control, and can genuinely make you perform better in games if you're somebody who, like me, struggles when your keyboard hand is overworked.
The third thumb button is a “DPI shift” by default, and holding it temporarily lowers your sensitivity. Historically, these were “sniper” buttons for precision when aiming down a weapon’s sights, but in most shooters you can change that sensitivity separately, so I preferred it as a standalone button.
You can pop that entire button off the mouse and rotate it 180 degrees to see if it fits you better that way, or you can ditch it and plug the hole with a provided cap. It’s a cool party trick (I found the default most comfortable).
Every button on the mouse was reliable, and every click registered instantly. The main left and right mouse buttons use a hybrid mechanical-optical switch, which should stop the double-clicking problem that plagued the older 502 series. They require a slightly heavier press than some mice I’ve tested, but they were still easy to click rapidly.
Unfortunately they sound quite cheap, springy and echoey, with a particularly high-pitched ping on the end. While I’m nit-picking: all of the buttons wiggle under force. For example, the main mouse buttons sway side to side with very little effort, and they also move upwards if you press them gently. It all feels a little loose for a high-end mouse. But, crucially, I haven’t seen Lightspeed users with long-term button problems, so it shouldn’t cause problems.
My bigger issue is that when I use a palm grip – where your whole hand shifts forward so your palm touches the base of the mouse – two buttons are entirely out of reach. In that grip, one of the thumb buttons is right at the base of my thumb, too far back to press, while one of the top buttons requires an awkward finger bend. People with slightly smaller hands and shorter fingers should be fine, but mine are barely larger than average for men. If you’re the same, and you know you always use the palm grip, beware. A fingertip grip felt good, as did a claw. And despite the problems, the palm grip was comfiest, so I picked it whenever I didn’t need the thumb buttons.
The scroll wheel is the final element that lets this mouse down. A dedicated button to switch between a free spinning wheel and an incremental one is rare and welcome, but the wheel feels horrible in its regular, ratcheted mode: too loud and too stiff. It doesn’t ruin the Lightspeed, but when you add it to the other quibbles above, the build quality feels disappointing, even if this is still fundamentally a comfortable mouse to use.
Logitech G502 X Lightspeed – Battery Life and Software
You won’t find many better batteries than this. Logitech says it’ll do up to 140 hours at its standard 1000Hz polling rate, which is 10 hours more than the X Plus. That matches with my testing: it was on track for about 140-150 hours on a single charge. That’s as good as you’ll find on a high-end wireless gaming mouse. Even if you’re using it daily for both work and play, you’ll go multiple weeks between charges. It’s brilliant that wireless mice, including Logitech’s, have got to this point.
Sadly its software, the Logitech G Hub, is plain bad. For switching sensitivity, it’s absolutely fine: you can easily tweak dots per inch (DPI) levels and then cycle them with the DPI up/down buttons on the mouse, and you can set different DPI settings for each of your games, which is intuitive. But outside of this, it’s frustrating. Countless Reddit threads bemoan the problems, but to add mine to the pile: you can set keybinds for games in their G Hub profiles. It was working fine in Fortnite until I reassigned one of the side buttons, and then everything went haywire. One of those buttons suddenly made me walk right, the other opened my inventory. I ended up just resetting to default and reassigning the buttons in-game instead.
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Logitech G502 X Lightspeed – Performance and Gaming
The fundamentals of a good wireless gaming mouse should be comfort (check), battery life (check), and responsiveness when you’re playing. That, thankfully, is a third tick. I tested the mouse in various games, from the flickshots of Fortnite to the slow click-and-drags of tactics game Doorkickers 2.
Logitech’s wireless technology and its sensors have consistently been some of the best, and even though the 25K Hero has been superseded, the Lightspeed always responded instantly to my clicks and tracked my hand movements exactly the way I wanted. I had no spikes in latency, no noticeable jittering, and no phantom movements.
I use mouse controls as much as possible so I can focus my left hand on WASD movement and other basic commands, and the Lightspeed is perfect for that. In Fortnite, for example, I assigned the three side buttons and one of the top buttons to four inventory slots, meaning I could switch weapons faster. In Counter-Strike 2, I assigned them to my grenades, and in Rematch, I used the side buttons for all three types of lob pass. I felt it improved my game in each.
Its 1000Hz polling rate is starting to fall behind competitors: many wireless gaming mice offer 2000, 4000, or even 8000Hz, including the Razer Deathadder V4 Pro that I reviewed in July. But polling rates above 1000Hz barely make a difference for many people. Often, the limiting factor in performance is either your screen’s refresh rate or your frames per second, and higher polling rates can tax your CPU and reduce fps in some games. If you have a higher-end rig (a refresh rate of 144Hz minimum, but ideally 240Hz, and a strong CPU), you might find that 4000Hz is a smidge snappier than 1000Hz. It's small margins, and unless you’re a pro, 1000Hz is more than enough.
But there's no denying that at its MSRP, it is looking like a worse deal than when it released because it's now competing against mice with better specs: the Asus ROG Keris II Ace, for example, has 4000Hz wireless polling rate for roughly the same price, albeit with fewer mouse buttons, and the brilliant Deathadder V4 Pro is a similar price too, at least in the US.