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Logitech G305 Lightspeed Review: My Favorite Budget Wireless Mouse

Afraid of mice? Don’t be. This Logitech is a cheap, reliable way into giving up the track pad.

By Matt Jancer | Reviewed by Ysolt Usigan

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I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool believer that using an ergonomic mouse is the quickest way to alleviate the wrist pain caused by frequent, long stretches of computer use. I also was among the last holdouts who kept using a desktop computer even as everybody else in the whole wide world switched over to laptops, and USB-C ports were too precious and few to spend on plugging in my old wired ergonomic mouse.

The wireless Logitech G305 Lightspeed, though, was one of the very first mice I used that didn’t make me trade away speed when I cut the cable and ditched wireless mice. Its response time was about as fast as the wired ergonomic mice I’d been using, and it ran on a normal AA battery. Even years later at less than $50, it still does damn near everything wonderfully, and on the cheap.

TL;DR – My Quick Verdict

What’s not to like? The G305 Lightspeed is wickedly quick, as comfortable to grasp as a gentle little bunny, and even at full retail costs less than $50. Anyone looking for a quick way to reduce or rid themselves of carpal tunnel and ulnar nerve pain, whether they work on a laptop or game on a desktop, would do well to ditch the Magic Mouse and the track pad for the G305 Lightspeed. There are pricier alternatives for competitive gamers, but they’ll cost you much more, and all the buttons get in the way during normal work use and casual browsing.

G305 Lightspeed (opens in a new window)

Lots of browsing online, my friend. I’ve done it all with the G305 Lightspeed. I’ve edited photos, built websites, checked about 100,000 emails and ignored about 200,000 more, wasted late nights browsing cars I could never afford, and created dozens of articles online using the mouse.

I even spun up a few games of This War of Mine and Civilization VI. Fast-paced twitch games these are not. If I were to dive into a first-person shooter like Call of Duty or tackle a bout of competitive gaming, I’d pick another mouse, probably with more programmable buttons for gaming’s quick actions. But the G305 Lightspeed shone during these more relaxed-pace games, just as it did when tackling Microsoft Excel and Mozilla Firefox.

master jack of all trades

The Logitech G305 Lightspeed won me over almost immediately. It felt so comfortable during use, chunky enough to help eliminate the wrist pain that plagued me, but also not so big that I couldn’t tuck it into a pocket in my laptop backpack and take it with me to the café to use along with my MacBook.

It lacks the myriad of programmable buttons that a higher-end gaming mouse would incorporate, but it got the basics down: right- and left-click buttons, plus a scroll wheel that feels nicely weighted and precise when scrolling up and down website tabs and Word documents. It had none of the mushy, clumsy feel of some mice’s scroll wheels.

In addition to being able to customize what happens when you push the scroll wheel down, there are two programmable buttons on the left side of the mouse. Logitech calls them thumb buttons, because that’s the digit that can reach them… if you’re using the G305 Lightspeed as a right-handed person. I’m sorry, lefties. So much of the world isn’t built for your convenience, and computer mice are more often than not meant for the right hand only.

I’m a rightie, but I tried using the G305 Lightspeed left-handed for a bit. Although it’s shaped in a non-symmetrical way that favors right-hand use, it was almost as comfortable and easy to use in my left hand… except for those thumb buttons.

I programmed them to control the forward and back buttons on my internet browser, but you can change them to whatever you like. Logitech’s software is clear, clean, and easy to figure out without a computer science degree.

Logitech’s “Hero 12K” 12,000 dpi sensor may be showing its age since its (and the G305 Lightspeed’s) 2018 introduction (Logitech has moved on to 16,000 and 25,000 dpi sensors since), but it still performs very well. This mouse helped me overcome my slight distrust and annoyance over laser sensors back in the day. Older mice’s cursors would skip around all over the screen, annoying me as I worked and ruining games as I played, but the G305 Lightspeed’s sensor is surprisingly stable and resistant to those sorts of errors.

The Logitech takes one AA battery, which means you have to feed it a steady diet of batteries, but Logitech says to expect about 250 hours out of a single battery before the G305 Lightspeed sucks it dry like an electrical vampire. That more or less matches the usage I’ve gotten out of the mouse. It simply lasts forever. That’s 250 hours of usage, not 250 hours including time spent sitting idle on your desk.

Relying on replaceable batteries also means I never got caught in a situation where it died and I had to wait for an internal rechargeable battery to charge. You can use a rechargeable Panasonic Eneloop AAs if you don’t like the idea of tossing one-time use alkaline AAs in the garage and risking the wrath of Captain Planet.

the g305 lightspeed at a glance

The G305 Lightspeed does everything well. Newer mice have eclipsed its hardware, but the plucky Logitech just keeps chugging along because, really, it’s all most people need. And it’s cheap. If you’re not up for spending $100 on a fancy mouse with so many buttons and RGB lights plastered on it that it looks like it needs to see a doctor, then you’ll be well served by the G305 Lightspeed.

Lefties, you can use the G305 Lightspeed since its overall shape is left-hand friendly if you have to. But it’s still built for right-handed use, and you won’t get to use the two programmable thumb buttons on the left side of the mouse, so go buy something that’s truly ambidextrous (rarer than you’d think), like the Corsair M55.

Thanks to Logitech’s position as a behemoth among computer peripheral companies, you can buy it almost anywhere, including Best Buy and B&H Photo Video, but I tend to find the best deals on it at Walmart and Amazon, which often has its algorithm price match other major retailers automatically.

will this get rid of your wrist pain?

I’m not a doctor. I just dress up like one every day, in full scrubs and with fake blood splattered all over me and a rubber Noah Wyle mask, as I sit and type out my articles for you fine readers; or as I call you, my patients. So I wouldn’t go so far as to declare that using an ergonomically friendly mouse such as the Logitech G305 Lightspeed will alleviate you of anything. VICE’s lawyers would probably knee cap me if I tried.

What I will say is that the use of an ergonomic mouse has been shown time and again to correct your wrist’s positions into one that doesn’t put as much pressure on the nerves that lead to cumulative, searingly painful conditions. I’ve lived the experience of using a succession of ergonomic mice in elmininating the carpal tunnel and ulnar nerve pain that plagued me, and the G305 Lightspeed was one of the mice that helped do it for me. There are other tweaks to your posture and typing position that you ought to try out after you buy a better mouse (or before buying one, honestly), but those are free. The hard part comes in making them routine.

are wireless mice slower than wired ones?

Years ago, absolutely. But not anymore. Ten years ago I’d have said that you used wireless for convenience and wired for speed. Then Logitech invented the Lightspeed wireless connection, and wireless mice’s response times dropped from 8-16 ms to 1 ms. When Logitech talks about the G305 Lightspeed having a 1 ms response time, they’re talking about the lag between inputs on the mouse, such as moving it or clicking a button, and the time it takes for the computer to register it. That’s one millisecond, or one thousandth of a second. They don’t call it the Lightspeed for nothin’.

Newer mice have come along with more exacting, sensitive sensors, but for most purposes that’s like having a swimming pool in your backyard that’s 40 feet deep instead of 20. The difference is more theoretical than something you’d notice in practice when swinging the cursor around a browser screen. Likewise, there are gaming mice festooned with more buttons than a fancy, 19th-century military general.

But for the ordinary demands of day-to-day computer usage? The G305 Lightspeed is more than up to the task. Upgrading to a mouse and ditching, even if only some of the time, the laptop’s track pad or the desktop’s free, included mouse is already a huge step toward comfort and potential pain alleviation. And for less than $50? It may be a slight oldie, but it’s most definitely still a goodie.

G305 Lightspeed (opens in a new window)

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