But I know this: if you want a mouse that feels really magical, Logitech has the gadget for you. When I want to charge my wireless mouse now, I do not need to connect a cable or mount it. In fact, I do not think about charging at all. It just … does. Because last Christmas, a very generous brother-in-law actually bought me a self-charging wireless mouse.
Logitech Powerplay, with G502 Lightspeed mouse. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge What you are looking at here is the Logitech Powerplay Wireless Charging System, essentially a mousepad with a wireless charger that emits magnetic electricity in a special box. Logitech has been selling it since 2017 – almost as long as Apple has put us upside down. To give you an idea, here is the full description of what I did as soon as I received this product:

Open the package I placed the charging plate on my desk A soft cloth placed on the mouse was placed on top I removed the Logitech G502 Lightspeed mouse wireless USB dongle from my computer Instead, connected to the Powerplay USB cable He broke the magnetic elf at the bottom of my mouse Turn off and on the mouse

And then, I never thought about charging my mouse again. Not until this very story. Seriously, three months have passed and I never had to lift my finger – because it charges on its own. Always. Automatically. Just by being on the mousepad. Magic. These are literally all the installation instructions. Image: Logitech I’ve never reviewed a perfect product before, and I’m not saying this is one – I would not want to laugh at myself. Especially when some customers claim that their mice eventually stopped charging or that the mouse was coming off and had to be taped or glued. Plus, it’s incredibly expensive at $ 120 for the mousepad alone, not including a mouse. And no, it does not work as a phone charger or use Qi: it only works with its own magnetic sponge, which only fits a few of the more expensive Logitech mice, including the G502 Lightspeed, G703, G903, G Pro Wireless and G Pro X Superlight . It also does not work in metal offices What I have noticed so far is that there is nothing to watch out for. It just works. No disconnections, no on-off switches, nothing to adjust. It is true that the charging coil does not cover the entire mousepad, but I never had to think about it, never go back to a dead mouse. It always comes to life every morning at work and every afternoon I play. Some users have built Powerplay into larger mousepads, but this is the only size that Logitech sells. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge I probably do not mind using it with the Logitech G502 Lightspeed, our choice for the best wireless gaming mouse, whose comfortable grip, many well-placed clicks of buttons, incredible performance and adjustable weight put it in their head and shoulders. the also excellent, also wireless Razer Mamba and Logitech G900 I had in the past. But this is a $ 140 mouse and there is no discount on a package with both. Even the least expensive compatible mouse, the G703 Lightspeed, will usually cost you $ 70 on sale – and the Powerplay charging pad is rarely available at all. But you could do what I did: get the mouse, use it until the battery bothers you, and then add Powerplay. (Find a generous brother-in-law while you’re at it.) That’s the idea, recalls Andrew Coonrad, who was marketing technical director at Powerplay (and wrote the review guide) in 2017. Designed to be the ultimate solution for demanding gamers who want to spend extra to solve a charge and good. all. At the time, there was still a stance against wireless toy mice and battery life was part of it – while the Razer Mamba and Logitech G900 convinced me that low-latency gaming was possible via wireless, neither could to hold a large charge after two years of use. With the G900, Coonrad says this is because while the PMW3366 sensor was capable, it used an order of magnitude more power than Logitech’s newer Hero sensors. The Logitech G900, with playback and charging cable. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge While developing Hero, Logitech also looked at wireless charging – but at first did not like what it saw. Qi wireless charging meant you were holding your mouse in place. Same with wireless charging cradles like this HyperX. Razer and Mad Catz eventually put instant charge superchargers on some unlucky mice, but that meant they stopped working if you removed them from their charging pads, and these pads and mice had to be sold as expensive sets. “We wanted to create a modular solution,” says Coonrad. So Logitech charged their Research and Development lab in Lausanne, Switzerland, with this idea, and they came up with a series of loop antennas that could charge the mouse slowly — think for days, not hours — even when moving it. “I named it dog when I first saw it,” says Coonrad, who made a trip to the R&D facility during development. “They said, ‘Yes, but it’s because of the way the concentric fields overlap that creates this hotspot in the middle.’ The entire patch can be covered because of these lobes. “ “It’s basically just a huge modular, mobile transformer,” he explains. “You have this smaller winding coil that is transferred to the coil with the highest winding and the field is wide enough that the energy load is always greater than the total energy of the mouse.” According to an FCC report, it operates at 6.78 MHz, the same as the old A4WP / Rezence model that fell by the wayside when Samsung and Apple gave the Qi a nod. Coonrad would not say how much credit his Logitech associates might deserve: for example, both the charging cradle and the transmitter board are labeled LG Innotek, although it is possible that he was merely a manufacturer. The other thing I find interesting about the Powerplay mousepad is that it’s not just a charger. It also works as a wireless receiver for the mouse, so you no longer need to leave the mouse dongle connected to your computer – I keep it inside the mouse for easy use. The FCC file shows that there is a full 32 MHz Arm Cortex-M3 computer and a Bluetooth antenna operating there – although Coonrad suspects that Bluetooth was never actually used. It says it is not a functional part of the final product and Logitech uses its own proprietary 2.4 GHz Lightspeed wireless stack to connect to the mouse. The arm chip inside the Logitech Powerplay receiver unit. Image via FCC But, for me, the most unusual thing about the Powerplay system is how long it has been stuck without fanfares – even its packaging has not changed since 2017. Does this product really sell? Coonrad says it does, that “people buy them like crazy” and helps make the compatible G502 Lightspeed, G Pro Wireless and G Pro Wireless Superlight the most popular mice of all time. But it can not share sales numbers. And he also admits that he does not use them himself, but rather the smaller G305 that does not have room for Powerplay Puck. Instead of a wireless charging mousepad, he holds a box of Energizers under his desk. “It irritates me once every six to eight months.” Overall, the battery life of the gaming mouse has improved significantly since 2017, with the recent G Pro X Superlight boasting 70 hours of charge, compared to 60 hours for the previous generation, which was twice that of the previous generation. Mice with fewer features – such as the Coonrad G305 and competing mice – can easily exceed the 200 hour limit now. Coonrad says: “If this is so awesome, why does Logitech not smell it anymore? “The war on wireless is won.” In 2022, you definitely do not need to spend hundreds of dollars just to get a wireless mouse that does not die every week. But it’s not as magical as you do not need to charge at all.