PC Gamer goes inside Logitech's mouse lab

**A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Logitech’s Innovative Mouse and Keyboard Testing**

In a recent visit to Logitech's headquarters in Switzerland, enthusiasts were treated to an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of their state-of-the-art facilities. The journey began with excitement as they unveiled a new addition to their collection—a Logitech G302 mouse, designed specifically for MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) gaming. This wasn't just any ordinary mouse; it was the same model currently in use at the office, showcasing Logitech's commitment to innovation and quality.

The discussion quickly shifted to the rigorous testing processes that go into creating these high-performance devices. The team at Logitech shared insights into their testing facilities, where they push products to极限 (limits) to ensure durability and functionality. One highlight was the G402 FPS mouse, which featured a unique sensor combination—pairing a high-precision sensor with an accelerometer and gyroscope to maintain accuracy even during rapid movements. To test this innovation, Logitech built a spring-loaded arm that could simulate extreme speed, reaching up to 500 inches per second—a speed unmatched by human capability.

However, not all testing was without challenges. The initial machine fell short of their standards, prompting them to develop an even more advanced device: a long-arm testing system spanning over 20 feet. This contraption swung the mouse in wide arcs, ensuring it could withstand the most intense gaming sessions. Such meticulous testing ensures that Logitech products are built to last and perform under pressure.

The conversation then turned to keyboards, specifically the new Logitech 910 Orion Spark. Unlike traditional mechanical keyboards using Cherry switches, this model featured Logitech's own switch design. The team emphasized their focus on low activation points, allowing for faster key presses—ideal for competitive gaming. While the feel was unconventional and initially met with skepticism, it showed promise for high-level players seeking speed and precision.

Testing these keyboards involved machines pressing keys at an astounding 13 times per second for up to two months, accumulating 70 million activations. Logitech's stringent testing ensured that each key maintained its quality within a 30% margin of error post-testing—a testament to their commitment to durability and performance.

The discussion also touched on the integration of technology with accessibility features. The keyboard's RGB lighting could be programmed for various functions, including assisting deaf users by signaling in-game actions through flashing lights. Logitech made this feature available via an SDK, encouraging customization and expanding its utility beyond gaming.

Throughout the visit, the enthusiasts were struck by the lengths Logitech went to ensure product excellence—from extreme testing methods to innovative design approaches. The experience concluded on a lighter note, reflecting on Switzerland's famous chocolates, purchased in bulk during their stay—a sweet reminder of the trip's success.

In summary, this behind-the-scenes look into Logitech's facilities offers a glimpse into the meticulous processes and dedication that go into creating cutting-edge gaming peripherals. From advanced testing to innovative designs, Logitech continues to set new standards in the industry.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey Tom look what I got hey it's a new mouse o cool so you know I like mice I you do you've given me quite a few I have a lot of mice yeah this is a new one from Logitech that came out just a few weeks ago it's their g302 this is the one we had in the office earlier too as well right yeah we did we got it a few weeks ago it's their new MOBA Mouse right uh they designed to have like really fast click activation stuff like that uh but I actually got this when I went to their offices in Switzerland this week cool uh just got back a few days ago was a whirlwind trip flying from San Francisco to Switzerland but it was but it was cool cuz we got to see inside their Labs where they do basically all the testing stress testing on their mice you know putting them through millions and millions of clicks at a time right same thing for their keyboards and it's also where they design like the the mice sensors they actually do all the engineering work to to take this sensor work on the lens you know adjust everything from the DPI of the mouse to the tracking speed and all that stuff so it's basically logitech's Haven of science I guess and I got to I got to go inside so that was pretty cool what' you learn what' you find out that sounds awesome so probably my favorite part of it was the were the testing facilities right because they have all these machines they they built specifically to stress test their mice so this one uh they just put out but they put out another mouse earlier this year the g402 which is their FPS Mouse okay and for that one they did this interesting thing where they took a sensor that was really effective at low DPI movements and or at low movement speeds rather so the DPI goes up to like 6,000 or so but if you try to move the mouse really really fast it loses tracking accuracy but it was really good at low speeds right so they took that and they paired it with an accelerometer and a gyroscope so that once it passes that kind of speed threshold the accelerometer takes over and those are really accurate at high speeds right but they had to figure out how to test this right and make sure it was accurate so they built this spring-loaded arm and I shot some video of it but basically this arm when they unload the spring that moves the mouse really really really quickly and then they can test and see if the sensor remains accurate at that speed right so they don't just have a bunch of competitive csgo players shaking mice back and forth no so they designed this thing to be to be able to track faster than anyone can actually move it it can track up to like 500 Ines per second the the fastest you're going to be able to move the mouse by yourself even when you really put your elbow into it it's probably like 250 or so wow so they were trying to test it up to 500 or basically up to the point at which they can make it fail the first machine they built wasn't fast enough so they built another one which was even bigger this really really long arm and that one had I don't know probably a diameter of about 20 ft or so and it would swing the mouse in this really wide Arc right and so that's the lengths they go to to test test their mice which is pretty ridiculous they can't break the mice that they build that's how crazy they try pretty hard to my God uh and then they had another mouse in thing that was neat where it had a a wheel that kind of rolled underneath the mouse sensor and that they used to test kind of the how the mouse reacts to acceleration and moving at different angles and with the same Mouse the FPS Mouse they discovered it worked really really well at these horizontal motions that they had used the arm to test with but it didn't track as quickly if you moved it just like forward and backwards and so that was something that they could kind of test with that wheel is how it would respond to different angles and they were able to patch that with a firmware update so that was kind wow uh and keyboards with the other big thing that they they showed us the testing stuff of this is their new their newer keyboard the the 910 Orion spark okay and it's using uh new switches that they made it's not Cherry which is what every mechanical keyboard uses right and for good reason right people love Cherry switches I really really like the Cherry Brown switches for typing I like the Cherry Reds for gaming cuz they have that really fast kind of linear activation and these feel pretty weird they new switches I'm sure not still not sure how I feel about them yeah they're a little squishy almost they're a little squishy and that's partly because they have a super low activation point which is kind of good right cuz it means that it takes less time for you to activate the key when you press it down it definitely feels like pressing it it's shallower it's shallower exactly uh so that's you know it's kind of an unusual keyboard feel I'm still not sure if I like it as much as Cherry but potentially for people who you know play at a really high competitive level this guy is going to be it's going to be better right cuz you can press a key just fundamentally more quickly than you could press a key with a higher activation point it's like with a a game pad holding the trigger about like halfway right before that point uh and they designed these kind of this kind of curve around the edge of the key I notic that to hold your fingers in so it's an unusual keyboard design I'm not sure how crazy I am about it yet but seeing the testing for it was neat because they had this machine that would press 13 but buttons a second and they would test these keyboards 24 hours a day for about 2 months to get up to 70 million activations on the keys and their like threshold for performance was after 70 million key presses the keys still had to feel Within a margin of like 30% of their original kind of I guess quality or elasticity to the button right how long would it take do you think to get 70 million key presses just not with a machine a long time I I have no idea probably longer than the lifespan of any keyboard you would use right unless you bought one of those old like IBM mechanical keyboards in the 70s and have been using it since then maybe you would have hit 70 million collect by now right but that's the that's this guy and what is this thing I noticed it's like got a pull out yeah so it has this little blue tray I don't know if you've used any of logitech's older gaming keyboards they used to have this little LCD that went right basically right here MH it was kind of dumb kind of dinky right it's a neat idea in principle you have the second screen you get to see like I don't know your health bar or your guns or something right they had some software they would tie in with some games and you had this little l CD screen but their Mantra with this new keyboard and their kind of talking point they go back to over and over again is you have a better LCD screen in your pocket with an iPhone or an Android phone than they can put on their keyboard and they would have to charge you 200 bucks for it right right not worth the money when you have your own so they built some software that you can just download as like an iPhone app and you can put your iPhone here or your iPad Mini they like to demo it with a big iPad Mini there and then you can see like your system specs you can see your like you know your CPU clock and temperature and that kind of stuff and they're working on some game tie-in stuff with it so that maybe when you're playing wow or DOTA you might be able to get some data on there about you know your kill death rating or have like some of your button Maps written there whatever they're not talking about who their actual partners are you know game wise and it may amount to nothing I don't know and so it might be just kind of basic information but it's potentially a cool feature and it's definitely cooler than them putting an LCD that you might not use on the screen or on the keyboard raising the price it keeps the price reasonable for mechanical keyboard and it's you know it's a a feature that may pay off in the end I don't know they also talked about some accessibility features where like this is an RGB keyboard and it'll they can program the way the lights work the same way they can program the display so for someone who is deaf you might be able to have like lights Flash from one side of the screen or or one side of the keyboard or the other to show you like where you're getting hit in an FPS or something like that so it's cool that they're making they're making this like available as an SDK that anybody can download and mess around with users can put their own profiles up and stuff so that was neat uh but mostly I just liked seeing the the stress testing and seeing the buttons jamming down on Keys over and over and over again uh so they had a lot of cool stuff there and that was Switzerland that sounds pretty awesome but the real question is how was the chocolate good oh did you bring some and also good very cheap which is uh the only thing in Switzerland that was cheap was the chocolate so I bought about 20 lb well I'm going to ask for about 10 of that I think you can have that one oh that's the besthey Tom look what I got hey it's a new mouse o cool so you know I like mice I you do you've given me quite a few I have a lot of mice yeah this is a new one from Logitech that came out just a few weeks ago it's their g302 this is the one we had in the office earlier too as well right yeah we did we got it a few weeks ago it's their new MOBA Mouse right uh they designed to have like really fast click activation stuff like that uh but I actually got this when I went to their offices in Switzerland this week cool uh just got back a few days ago was a whirlwind trip flying from San Francisco to Switzerland but it was but it was cool cuz we got to see inside their Labs where they do basically all the testing stress testing on their mice you know putting them through millions and millions of clicks at a time right same thing for their keyboards and it's also where they design like the the mice sensors they actually do all the engineering work to to take this sensor work on the lens you know adjust everything from the DPI of the mouse to the tracking speed and all that stuff so it's basically logitech's Haven of science I guess and I got to I got to go inside so that was pretty cool what' you learn what' you find out that sounds awesome so probably my favorite part of it was the were the testing facilities right because they have all these machines they they built specifically to stress test their mice so this one uh they just put out but they put out another mouse earlier this year the g402 which is their FPS Mouse okay and for that one they did this interesting thing where they took a sensor that was really effective at low DPI movements and or at low movement speeds rather so the DPI goes up to like 6,000 or so but if you try to move the mouse really really fast it loses tracking accuracy but it was really good at low speeds right so they took that and they paired it with an accelerometer and a gyroscope so that once it passes that kind of speed threshold the accelerometer takes over and those are really accurate at high speeds right but they had to figure out how to test this right and make sure it was accurate so they built this spring-loaded arm and I shot some video of it but basically this arm when they unload the spring that moves the mouse really really really quickly and then they can test and see if the sensor remains accurate at that speed right so they don't just have a bunch of competitive csgo players shaking mice back and forth no so they designed this thing to be to be able to track faster than anyone can actually move it it can track up to like 500 Ines per second the the fastest you're going to be able to move the mouse by yourself even when you really put your elbow into it it's probably like 250 or so wow so they were trying to test it up to 500 or basically up to the point at which they can make it fail the first machine they built wasn't fast enough so they built another one which was even bigger this really really long arm and that one had I don't know probably a diameter of about 20 ft or so and it would swing the mouse in this really wide Arc right and so that's the lengths they go to to test test their mice which is pretty ridiculous they can't break the mice that they build that's how crazy they try pretty hard to my God uh and then they had another mouse in thing that was neat where it had a a wheel that kind of rolled underneath the mouse sensor and that they used to test kind of the how the mouse reacts to acceleration and moving at different angles and with the same Mouse the FPS Mouse they discovered it worked really really well at these horizontal motions that they had used the arm to test with but it didn't track as quickly if you moved it just like forward and backwards and so that was something that they could kind of test with that wheel is how it would respond to different angles and they were able to patch that with a firmware update so that was kind wow uh and keyboards with the other big thing that they they showed us the testing stuff of this is their new their newer keyboard the the 910 Orion spark okay and it's using uh new switches that they made it's not Cherry which is what every mechanical keyboard uses right and for good reason right people love Cherry switches I really really like the Cherry Brown switches for typing I like the Cherry Reds for gaming cuz they have that really fast kind of linear activation and these feel pretty weird they new switches I'm sure not still not sure how I feel about them yeah they're a little squishy almost they're a little squishy and that's partly because they have a super low activation point which is kind of good right cuz it means that it takes less time for you to activate the key when you press it down it definitely feels like pressing it it's shallower it's shallower exactly uh so that's you know it's kind of an unusual keyboard feel I'm still not sure if I like it as much as Cherry but potentially for people who you know play at a really high competitive level this guy is going to be it's going to be better right cuz you can press a key just fundamentally more quickly than you could press a key with a higher activation point it's like with a a game pad holding the trigger about like halfway right before that point uh and they designed these kind of this kind of curve around the edge of the key I notic that to hold your fingers in so it's an unusual keyboard design I'm not sure how crazy I am about it yet but seeing the testing for it was neat because they had this machine that would press 13 but buttons a second and they would test these keyboards 24 hours a day for about 2 months to get up to 70 million activations on the keys and their like threshold for performance was after 70 million key presses the keys still had to feel Within a margin of like 30% of their original kind of I guess quality or elasticity to the button right how long would it take do you think to get 70 million key presses just not with a machine a long time I I have no idea probably longer than the lifespan of any keyboard you would use right unless you bought one of those old like IBM mechanical keyboards in the 70s and have been using it since then maybe you would have hit 70 million collect by now right but that's the that's this guy and what is this thing I noticed it's like got a pull out yeah so it has this little blue tray I don't know if you've used any of logitech's older gaming keyboards they used to have this little LCD that went right basically right here MH it was kind of dumb kind of dinky right it's a neat idea in principle you have the second screen you get to see like I don't know your health bar or your guns or something right they had some software they would tie in with some games and you had this little l CD screen but their Mantra with this new keyboard and their kind of talking point they go back to over and over again is you have a better LCD screen in your pocket with an iPhone or an Android phone than they can put on their keyboard and they would have to charge you 200 bucks for it right right not worth the money when you have your own so they built some software that you can just download as like an iPhone app and you can put your iPhone here or your iPad Mini they like to demo it with a big iPad Mini there and then you can see like your system specs you can see your like you know your CPU clock and temperature and that kind of stuff and they're working on some game tie-in stuff with it so that maybe when you're playing wow or DOTA you might be able to get some data on there about you know your kill death rating or have like some of your button Maps written there whatever they're not talking about who their actual partners are you know game wise and it may amount to nothing I don't know and so it might be just kind of basic information but it's potentially a cool feature and it's definitely cooler than them putting an LCD that you might not use on the screen or on the keyboard raising the price it keeps the price reasonable for mechanical keyboard and it's you know it's a a feature that may pay off in the end I don't know they also talked about some accessibility features where like this is an RGB keyboard and it'll they can program the way the lights work the same way they can program the display so for someone who is deaf you might be able to have like lights Flash from one side of the screen or or one side of the keyboard or the other to show you like where you're getting hit in an FPS or something like that so it's cool that they're making they're making this like available as an SDK that anybody can download and mess around with users can put their own profiles up and stuff so that was neat uh but mostly I just liked seeing the the stress testing and seeing the buttons jamming down on Keys over and over and over again uh so they had a lot of cool stuff there and that was Switzerland that sounds pretty awesome but the real question is how was the chocolate good oh did you bring some and also good very cheap which is uh the only thing in Switzerland that was cheap was the chocolate so I bought about 20 lb well I'm going to ask for about 10 of that I think you can have that one oh that's the best\n"