We hardly review accessories like a mouse. That is because reviewing a mouse is not as easy as it seems. In plenty of occasions, the decision on buying a mouse always ends up in preference.
Mice also comes in all shapes and sizes. They are also made with specific functions in mind. You have gaming mice, productivity mice, portable wireless gaming mice, portable wireless productivity mice , quiet mice, and now there is even ergonomic mice.
Choosing the right mice for you is not as easy as it seems. It is not like you can build one from scratch as well, like you do with custom keyboards. Sure, there are ways to mod your mouse with custom switches and what not, but that is sort of it.
They have come up with this Signature M650. It is compact, so you can bring it anywhere you want. It is also a wireless mouse that can either be used with a dongle or Bluetooth. Better yet, that means you can use it with up to two devices at a click of a button. Because it is clever, it offers its own solutions and functions for different applications too. Best of all, it is quiet.
Is it worth its asking price though, at MYR 159? You can get a Logitech quiet mouse at about three times less than this one. For that kind of money, you can also get a gaming mouse that is a little bigger than this one. You can only use this wirelessly. At the same time, the battery is not even a built-in one, still a single AA solution at that. Is it any good? We find out.
Design
Logitech knows a thing or two about making a good mouse. They start with plastics, because plastic is rather light and easy to work with in a mould. They are cheaper to make and replace too, obviously. They later add other materials to their mouse to add some textures and practical features.
In this case, while most of the Signature M650 is made of plastic, there is a sort of rubberised coating or material that surrounds the sides of the mouse. The rubberised sides are also textured with little dimples to add a sort of tactile feel to your fingers when you hold the mouse. At the same time, the textured surface adds a sense of grip and comfort to the hands. The mouse feels at home in your palms the moment you hold the mouse. Your thumb and fingers immediately find grip on the mouse.
Unlike Logitech’s ergonomic offerings, the Signature M650 is designed with some ambidexterity in mind. You can use it with your left and right hands. The only issue is that the extra buttons on the side does not get translated on the other side, so if you are using the mouse with your left hand, accessing the side buttons might be an issue.
While it is small, it is not as small as the typical ultra-compact and flat mouse. Compared to those, the Signature M650 is considered quite chunky. But the extra size can be appreciated thanks to the more ergonomic design. The top cover easily forms into your palms. At least for me it does, I do not have big hands. For those with larger hands, there is an ‘L’ variant of the mouse, though only available in Graphite colour option.
We also like that the soft-touch texture design continues to the mouse wheel. The mouse wheel is covered with a sort of rubber or silicon material for that soft feel on your fingers too. Scrolling the mouse wheel feels like you are fiddling with those gummy candies than a mouse wheel. It is an odd, but quite comfortable feeling.
The under body is a single unit that forms from the side. The colours here are consistent with the sides as well. The only piece that is not part of the bottom of the mouse is the plastic cover that protects the AA battery and Logitech Bolt USB receiver. It also serves as continued flat plane of the bottom side of the mouse. The optical sensor is off-center, presumably to ensure that the AA battery can be fitted sideways to ensure that it is, in fact, compact.
Underneath the optical sensor is a power on/off toggle, which is pretty much expected from a wireless mouse. While Logitech says that the included battery can last up to 24-months, turning it off can extend its battery life. At the same time, you would not want any accidental inputs from your mouse when you are carrying it around.
There is also a button above the optical sensor. It is the Signature M650’s Bluetooth pairing and switch button. A long press will kick the Logitech 650 into Bluetooth pairing mode. A quick press toggles it back to the Bolt Receiver mode.
The one we have here is the Rose variant, the pink one. There is the regular Graphite and Off-White colour options. These are the colours that are quite regular in Logitech’s product line-up though, so there is not too much to say about them. The pink on the Rose variant is soft and sweet though, not too overbearing, and because the bottom side is a darker shade of pink as well, it does not look cheap. The only concern with this colour option is how the colour will age.
The entire construction, while mostly made of recycled plastic, feels rather premium. The soft and smooth finish on the matte finished top feels like a quality product. While the sides may not be real rubber, the added texture feels like they belong there and durable enough to last years of abuse, even after your first battery gives out. Even the ‘logi’ logo feels like it will not fade at least until a year or two of use in. Of course, that really depends on how you use your mouse.
Features
Although this is a compact mouse, there are a lot of things that makes the Logitech M650 looks like a full-sized mouse on paper. The features on the mouse are designed for productivity even when you are out of your workspace. Of course, when you just want to wind down, relax, and just scroll through the net, this is one comfortable mouse to use as well.
SmartWheel
Where the MX series has the MagSpeed, the Signature M650 gets something called a SmartWheel. It is rather clever for quickly browsing through the net and even pages of documents. The SmartWheel scrolls like any other mouse wheel you might have used before. But it feels softer and smoother than the usual wheel. There is still some tactility and resistance when you scroll the wheel.
The smooth and soft feel of the mouse wheel is rather nice to work with. When you are browsing the internet, different scroll gestures give you different scrolling speeds. To be fair, there is only sort of two scrolling speeds with the SmartWheel – fast and slow. When you need to quickly scroll down the page to get to the part you want, a flick of the wheel makes it a sort of a MagSpeed wheel. Once you need to slowly look through the page, you can scroll through click by click. It works with your Microsoft apps too.
The wheel is not just to scroll up and down though. You can use it to scroll left to right too. You press and hold one of the side buttons and use the heel with it to scroll from side to side.
Multi Device
You can use it with up to two devices wirelessly. One of them needs a USB type-A port to work with. That would be your laptop or PC to plug in your Logitech Bolt receiver.
The other device would need Bluetooth to use the Logitech Signature M650. As we mentioned earlier, it is just a matter of pressing a single button at the bottom of the mouse. Once it gets into pairing mode, Windows Quick Connect detects the mouse and allows you to get your mouse connected in just one or two clicks.
The Logitech M650 relies on a Bolt receiver, not the same unifying receiver that older or cheaper Logitech mice comes with. That also means that the Logitech M650 is supposed to be working with a lower latency time than older mice. You also cannot use Logitech’s older Logi Option software with it.
Silent Operator
The Logitech Signature M650 is silent, but not as silent as we hoped. The main two buttons and scrolling wheel or middle button are all working silently. The side buttons, compared to the main two buttons are rather ‘clicky’. While it does not annoy us in the slightest, some of you might not like that very much.
Still, the main buttons are silenced without much sacrifice to tactility. There is a little bit of mushiness in every click of the three main buttons and even the scroll. But the tactility of a mouse click is still very defined. Every click feels sure and registered but a lot more muted in noise. Then again, Logitech has been making quiet mice for a long time, they know what they are doing.
Logi Options+
If you are using the Logitech Signature M650 on your Windows or Mac, you can download something called Logi Options+. Why did they have to develop a new software? We do not know, but here it is. When you plug the Bolt receiver into your PC or Mac, a prompt will ask you if you want to install the app on your device.
The software sort of acts like a manual for you to refer to. It tells you what each button does for each application that it supports. The application also allows you to change what the secondary buttons and middle button does for each application if you want to. For example, you can change the side buttons to ‘select’ and ‘cut’ in Adobe’s Premiere Pro while the middle button can be a play/pause button.
You can toggle on something called ‘smooth scrolling’ with the mouse too. That way, scrolling your webpages or documents looks nice and smooth instead of the usual staggered feel. It is ‘off’ by default, so we turned it on because we liked it.
You can also control how fast your mouse goes on Logi Options without getting through Windows default settings page. You can go as slow as 400 dpi or as fast as to 4,000 dpi to avoid huge mouse actions.
Performance – Smooth Operator
Once you know what each buttons do and get familiarised with all the applications you work with, the Logitech M650 becomes rather intuitive. It is still a compact mouse, which also means that you might still want to work with a bigger full-sized mouse when you can, I know I want to use a bigger mouse at home at least.
Still, when portability is concerned, a compact mouse is always appreciated. The Logitech Signature M650 is that compact mouse that does not compromise too much. The M650 retains a lot of functions that you can only find on bigger mice today. At the same time, it is ergonomic despite its proportions.
Having the option to use Bluetooth with a mouse like this is always appreciated especially when modern light-and-compact laptops usually come with no USB Type-A port or just that one port. Having the option to leave your only free USB Type-A slot is always best, and that is why Bluetooth is an important feature. This also gives you the option of leaving your bolt receiver plugged into your PC at home.
While we would prefer to have a flush body with an internal non-removable battery, we understand that the trade-off must be made in favour of battery life. A single AA battery can keep the Logitech Signature M650 running for up to two years. We are not sure if a built-in battery can give the Logitech mouse that kind of battery life from a single charge.
The mouse is highly comfortable to use in any conditions. It lacks the heft of bigger mice, but it is still ergonomic enough that using it is rather comfortable even at extended periods. It feels almost natural to use.
We did not use the Logitech Signature M650 for gaming much, nothing intense anyway. The games we chose to play with the Logitech mouse are more titles like Cities: Skylines and Two Point Hospital. The two side buttons have no preset functions in this case, so there is not much in terms of extra features or functions within the game.
The Logitech Signature M650 – More Sensible, Still Clever
We are not looking at a gaming mouse here. It is not meant to be one, nor made to be one. It is a general-purpose mouse that is meant to be used in a work environment, remote workstations, and even at home. It is a sort of all-in-one mouse that you can put to good use with your work PC and get it to work with your home PC as well, no need to bring your work PC home.
In that sense, while it might seem a little pricey, the Logitech Signature M650 is an excellent mouse. It feels durable and comfortable, more so than those mice you can find for MYR 39. Sure, for MYR 159 we think Logitech can do better in terms of packaging, but to be fair, the packaging will end up in the trashcan anyway. There is not much in terms of documentation either.
MYR 159 for this mouse does not just buy you a compact mouse. It does not just buy you a silent mouse either. It buys you some premium feel and functions that is comparable to something like a Logitech MX Anywhere, probably even better than it.
The Logitech Signature M650 is a good buy. Not because it is cheaper than Logitech’s MX Anywhere 3. It is a good buy because you are getting a great mouse for its asking price. If you are looking for a cheap, low-budget mouse, you are looking at the wrong place. If you are looking for something that you can use to streamline or enhance your workflow in and out of your office, something comfortable to use, and even something durable and reliable, the MYR 159 asking price looks like a bargain.