Logitech MX Master 3: An Imperfect Mouse with a Great Feature Set

It has been a long time since I have been excited about a mouse, and a longer time since that excitement has been for a non-Apple mouse. Enter the Logitech MX Master 3. Color me excited.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple’s Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. I have been a desktop trackpad user for some time. The large number of gesture-based functions make it an excellent productivity tool. The Magic Trackpad is a well-made, premium device that has functionality not present in the offerings from other companies.

That said, trackpads have limitations due to their nature. No one wants to game on a trackpad. A finely tuned mouse is a more efficient way of getting around a computer. Pointing, clicking, and dragging is faster and more accurate. Try playing Candy Crush with a trackpad vs. a mouse. You will quickly see what I mean.

Apple’s Magic Mouse is also very good. I have a few of them. Apple has combined the best of touch with the mouse form factor. That said, the lack of discrete buttons can make something as basic as a context click quite the adventure.

PC peripheral makers don’t have this problem because they do not have the same allergy to buttons as Apple. They also don’t care much about style and elegance. Their budget is not overloaded with concerns about design and quality. They are straight-ahead thinkers. If you want a function, you need a button. If you want another function, you need another button.

Logitech is no different. The MX Master 3 uses a brute force approach to competing with the Magic Mouse. The Magic Mouse has one button that is not visible because the whole surface is a button. The Master 3 is festooned with discrete buttons. Every surface is covered with buttons. One reason the Master 3 can accommodate all those buttons is that it physically dwarfs the Apple mouse.

Design

The most obvious design difference between the two mice is size. The Master 3 is like two of Apple’s offerings stacked atop each other. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Logitech’s mouse also feels more ergonomically correct based on the shape of the right hand.

There lies another major difference: Logitech designed a mouse specifically for right-hand use. It cannot be used in the left hand. South paws should look elsewhere. On the other hand, Apple’s mouse can be used with either hand. The symmetry is not just a matter of style, but a matter of accessibility.

That said, Logitech made a more comfortable mouse for the people who can use it at all. I would describe it as hand-shaped. There is even an extra protrusion for the thumb. The tip of your pinky is the only part of your hand touching the surface of the desk.

The buttons are sized and placed sensibly. The only button requiring you to shift your hand is the one just below the main scroll wheel. That wheel is also a button that is a little awkward to press as it is a little stiff. With this mouse, you thumb will be your hand’s hardest worker. It controls a horizontal wheel, two buttons underneath that, and a hidden button resting underneath the thumb rest. While your thumb has a lot to do, it is definitely up to the task. Using those buttons feels perfectly natural and not at all overwhelming.

I do have a couple of design complaints. It is unapologetically plastic, and not in the good polycarbonate Apple way. It feels like every cheap PC component you have ever used. The scroll wheels are metal and the hand rest is rubberized. The rest of it just feels cheap. The buttons feel cheap. The click feels and sounds cheap. Also, it is a little lightweight. I would have liked it to feel a bit more substantial. Apple’s tracking solutions feel like premium products in and under the hand. Logitech doesn’t even bother. I would have paid more for the same product with a premium look and feel.

Function

Function is a matter of two things: what it does and how it works. What the Master 3 does is nothing short of amazing. A feature called Flow is one of the best tech demos you might actually use. It allows you to use the mouse on two computers at the same time as if the second computer were meerly a second monitor. You have to have the software installed on both systems.

Let’s say you are doing some writing on your main computer and have your mail open waiting for an important message on your laptop. When new mail comes in, you can just move the mouse pointer to the edge of your screen and all the way into the screen of the laptop. You can copy and paste from one system to the other. If you don’t have a second screen or iPad laying about, this offers a nice alternative. It might be more tech demo than useful. But it is a demo you will want to find excuses to use.

This functionality is made possible by the fact you can pair the mouse with three devices at the same time and easily switch between them. I have mine paired with a Mac mini, a MacBook Pro, and an iPad Pro. On the bottom of the mouse is a button. Pressing it cycles between devices 1, 2, and 3. The indicator numbers are lit so that you can easily see which device you are connected to. The connection is near instant when you change devices.

Another function can be equal blessing and curse. All 9 buttons and wheels are fully customizable. There are certain things they do by default. But you are not locked to the default. You can make them do just about anything. One of the choices available to all of the buttons is keystroke assignment. That means that if what you want a button to do isn’t mentioned in the drop-down feature list, you can force that function just by knowing the keyboard shortcut for it.

It get’s better: you can assign different functions for each key based on the app you are in. While in Safari, the horizontal wheel can be used to cycle between tabs. Everywhere else, it can control system volume. A smart thing to do would be to leave one or two buttons unassigned for general use and have them do special things per app. You can easily get too cute with this feature by fully customizing every app with different mouse functions. You will never remember how to use the mouse with so many variables.

Functionality is definitely the strong suit of the Master 3. It can replicate all the functionality of the Magic Trackpad, albeit, in a radically different form. Where it excels is customizability. That is not surprising as that is generally a feature of the PC ecosystem. Apple goes for a more curated approach presenting a smaller set of carefully considered features that work extremely well and seamlessly. The Master 3 experience is far from that. Using the Magic Trackpad is like using an iPhone. Using the Master 3 is more like using Android. And that’s a problem for the Master 3.

The downside

For the moment, I am using a mouse again. I don’t know how long that moment will last. There are many things about the Master 3 that give me pause. One of the worst things about it is the software used to control it. It is ugly, inelegant, confusing, and not always reliable. In other words, it is the typical piece of PC software made worse by being a bad Mac port. For Apple’s peripherals, no extra software is required. It is a completely integrated experience.

Speaking of integration, you really feel its absence when you restart your computer. Apple pointing devices load up right away because they are a part of the system. Besides moving the pointer around the screen and clicking on things, none of the special features of the Master 3 work right away. You have to wait till all the software is loaded in the background. You can’t even scroll until that happens. Forget about all those other buttons. It takes a painfully long time for your mouse to become fully functional after restart. Rather than being an integrated experience, it feels more like a piece of add-on software. This is a very negative experience and might be worth docking the product 2 full points.

There is also the PC-like scrolling experience. While you have two options for how the scrolling feels, you are working with a PC-style scrolling aesthetic. When using Apple’s pointing devices, scrolling is completely smooth. On the PC, scrolling is a line by line affair. So even their version of smooth scrolling is just moving through individual lines quickly. It makes for a jerky experience. As a Mac and iOS user, I find it rather off-putting. I suspect this will be true for most Mac and iOS users. Logitech makes a lot of money selling Mac and iOS peripherals. But they are PC people at heart. And it shows in every aspect of their products.

Conclusion: a cautious recommendation with caveats

If you are constitutionally incapable of using a trackpad or require a mouse for ergonomic reasons, your hand will appreciate the Master 3. If you are a frequent PC or Android user and don’t feel like those experiences are clunky or inelegant, you might be a candidate for the Master 3. If you want to customize your mousing experience to the nth degree. The Master 3 might be for you.

But if you want well-made, elegant, fully integrated tracking experiences with plenty of well-curated options that will not be an unnecessary cognitive load, stick with the Magic Trackpad. There is no better alternative. However, if you are the type of person who uses both a mouse and keyboard, and would like to use that mouse on more than one device, the Master 3 is an excellent add-on to a system that has something else as a more integrated solution.

David Johnson