So, this whole G502 polling rate thing, right? I’ve had my Logitech G502 mouse for what feels like forever. Solid mouse, gotta say. But the other day, I was playing some shooter, felt like my aim was just all over the place. You know how it is, you start blaming everything – the lag, the game, the mouse, the chair, the weather, whatever.
I got to thinking, maybe it’s time to actually look into the settings again. It’s been ages. I fired up that Logitech G Hub software. Honestly, that software… it does the job, most of the time, but man, sometimes I feel like I need a map just to find a simple setting. Anyway, I dug into it.
My little experiment with the G502’s settings
So, I’m clicking around in the G Hub, looking at the G502 specific stuff. DPI is one thing, sure, I’ve messed with that plenty. But then I saw this setting called “Report Rate (Per Second)”. It was sitting there at 1000. I’m pretty sure that’s been the default since day one, or at least since I last did a clean install of everything.
I thought, “Okay, what happens if I change this?” I’d heard people talk about polling rates before. Higher is better, smoother, less delay, all that good stuff. Some also say it can eat up a tiny bit more CPU, but my rig’s decent, so I wasn’t too worried about that part.
Here’s what I did, step-by-step, just messing around:
First, I decided to go lower. I dropped it from 1000Hz down to 500Hz. Hopped back into my game. And… well, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t a night-and-day difference. Maybe, just maybe, it felt a tiny bit less connected? Could’ve been in my head, though. You know how sensitive you get when you’re looking for a change.
Then I went further. Dropped it to 250Hz. Okay, now I was starting to notice something. The cursor movement, it just didn’t feel as fluid. Like, when you sweep the mouse quickly, it wasn’t as smooth. A little bit jittery, maybe? Hard to describe, but it wasn’t great.
Just for the heck of it, I cranked it all the way down to 125Hz. Oh boy. Yeah, that was bad. It felt like I was dragging my cursor through thick mud. Super noticeable lag and stutter. Made aiming completely impossible. My character was looking around like he’d had one too many.
So, after that disaster, I obviously went back up. Switched it back to 1000Hz. And yep, back to normal. Smooth, responsive, felt right. It’s funny, you don’t always appreciate what you have until you try something worse.
I checked if there were even higher options, ’cause you hear about these crazy high polling rates on some new fancy mice. But for my good old G502, at least with the version of G Hub I’m running, 1000Hz was the top. And honestly, it feels perfectly fine.
So, what’s the takeaway from my little adventure? For my G502, 1000Hz is definitely the way to go. The default setting is there for a good reason, it seems. Going lower just made things progressively worse. Did messing with it fix my aim? Not magically, still gotta practice! But at least I know the mouse is doing its job as best as it can, polling rate wise.
It’s always good to tinker, though. You learn stuff. Sometimes you find a setting that makes a real difference, sometimes you just confirm the defaults are fine. This time, it was mostly confirming the default was best for me. But hey, now I know for sure!