The Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike is a game-changer. By ditching the microswitches that have been used in gaming mice for decades, Logitech’s new model delivers noticeably snappier left and right clicks and fascinating new tuning options. It won’t make you a pro player overnight, but it narrows the gap like never before – and it looks essential for actual esports players, whose intense interest in the X2 massively accelerated its development.
Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike – Design, HITS and Shape
The Pro X2 Superstrike gets its super powers from what Logitech calls HITS, or a ‘Haptic Inductive Trigger System’. It’s a fancy way of saying the X2 uses an analog sensor to detect how far each main mouse button has been pressed, while a haptic motor beneath rumbles to signify that a click has been recognised, aping the normal tactile feedback you’d expect with a surprising degree of fidelity. Mechanical gaming keyboards have used analogue sensors like this for nearly a decade, but they still relied on the physical movement of a switch to signify a key press – so Logitech’s solution feels like a mixture between this and the haptic feedback Apple has been building into its MacBook trackpads since 2015.
The benefits are easier than I expected to feel in person.
First, you can set the X2 to react to a button-press after just 0.1mm of travel, rather than the 0.6mm commonly seen in gaming mice using traditional optical or mechanical microswitches. That near-elimination of physical movement hugely reduces input latency – the ‘up to 30ms’ quoted in Logitech’s marketing materials is an order of magnitude more than the speed-up you see from polling rates jumping from 1000Hz (1ms) to 8000Hz (0.125ms), for example.
The benefit here is fairly obvious: if you come around a corner in Counter-Strike 2 and spot another player just as they spot you, your bullets will be recognised by the server a few ticks before they start firing back, all else being equal, which makes it a lot easier to kill rather than be killed.
Secondly, the X2 supports rapid trigger, another feature brought over from mechanical keyboards. This is a mode where, rather than button presses and releases being detected based on physically moving past a set threshold, they’re detected based on a change of direction. For example, if you wanted to right click as fast as possible to move your champion and dodge spells in League of Legends, you would ideally be somewhere in the middle of the mouse button’s travel distance, quickly moving up and down without waiting for the mouse to fully reset. On a traditional mouse, this would only work just around the 0.6mm actuation point, but on the X2, this works anywhere, making the technique much more consistent.
The move from a traditional microswitch below the left and right mouse buttons to the Haptic Inductive Trigger System has required some internal adjustments, with a thinner chassis and base plate, titanium screws and a ventilated PCB. These changes trimmed 7g from the initial 68g prototype, allowing the mouse to hit a final kerb weight of 61g – just a gram heavier than the Superlight 2.
Elsewhere, surprisingly little has changed from the Superlight 2 to the X2. Logitech’s new mouse possesses exactly the same shape as its forebear – it’s a medium-sized, gently-sloping symmetric potato, in contrast to the miniaturized Superlight 2c or ergonomic Superlight 2 Dex. It’s not surprising that Logitech is sticking with a proven ‘safe’ shape that works for the vast majority of hand sizes and grip styles to start off, and I’m sure we’ll see the same Superstrike tech in a compact or ergonomic design at some stage. The side buttons also remain of traditional stock, and feel a little odd next to the nearly silent main mouse buttons.
The X2 Superstrike also gets a bit of an external glow-up, with black left and right buttons and some extra wordmarks contrasting nicely with an otherwise white body. Of course, this is Logitech we’re talking about, so I expect to see a magenta version – or another tasteful alternative color scheme – before too long.
Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike – Gaming Performance and Battery Life
It’s rare that you can plonk down a new gaming peripheral and feel a difference before you’ve even hit the loading screen of a game, but that’s exactly what I got with the Superstrike. Just clicking on the play button in Steam feels more snappy and immediate; it’s the same tight and connected feeling you might experience when using a high refresh rate gaming monitor for the first time.
In-game, the difference is more profound. I wouldn’t say that it felt like cheating, exactly, but there’s a thrilling sense of ease when it comes to clicking heads in a Counter-Strike 2 or Battlefield 6 deathmatch. Single-hit kill weapons like the AWP or AK-47 in Counter-Strike feel deadlier than ever before, and spray-and-pray guns like SMGs still feel pretty hooked up. Of course, you’ll still live or die based on your map knowledge, muscle memory and general awareness – a healthy course of CS2 matches proves that there’s plenty more I need to practice to get good – but having a rapid left click feels like a valuable way to even the odds.
Notably, the Superstrike also doesn’t need de-tuning to feel totally natural in other games, either. After selecting the fastest actuation settings and enabling rapid trigger, I was expecting a rough time surfing the web or clicking on static targets in strategy game Battletech, but I didn’t experience accidental misclicks or other issues whatsoever. That was a pleasant surprise, and led to an extremely easy adaptation process.
While the Superstrike represents a night-and-day difference versus the Superlight 2 when it comes to gaming, its battery life figures are competitive with the older mouse. The G Hub software does warn you that increasing the amount of haptic feedback can reduce longevity, but I used the mouse at 1000Hz with haptics set to 3/5, and the mouse easily lasted through around 20 hours of testing while dropping from 75% to just under 50%. Logitech quotes 90 hours of constant motion for the X2, versus 95 hours for the Superlight 2, so if the predecessor was fine for you, this will be too.
Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike – Software and Connectivity
Like the Superlight 2, the Superstrike uses Logitech’s G Hub software for settings adjustments, with no web option available just yet. Here, you get all of the same options as before – sensitivity, key binds, polling rates, and so on – plus the new tunable left and right mouse buttons.
The new HITS settings include actuation distance (how far you have to press for a click to register), rapid trigger sensitivity, and haptic feedback strength. There’s not a huge amount to tweak, but you can independently set up HITS on each of your left and right mouse buttons and share your settings with a single code, in case you want to mimic the setup used by a pro (or your friend Ross). I also appreciated the inclusion of a live read-out of your button presses, so you can see exactly how far you’re pressing down and choose your settings accordingly.
The best thing you can do in the settings to understand the mouse is completely disable the haptic feedback. Instantly, the X2 feels like a dead fish, even though it still clicks exactly as well as before – underscoring the magic that Logitech’s engineers have achieved here with the artificial tactile response.
Connectivity is also the same as the Superlight 2, with wired USB and 2.4GHz Lightspeed wireless being the only options – Bluetooth has been excised in that nearly limitless push to cut weight and less useful features for the competitive gaming crowd.
Will is deputy tech editor for IGN, specialising in PC hardware, sim racing and display tech. He has been publishing about games and technology since 2001 (age 12). Will was formerly Deputy Editor at Digital Foundry. He is currently playing MechWarrior 5: Clans.
feedzy_import_tag
About the Author
