Logitech's G series has stood as the gamer's favourite mouse for a long time. There's a reason for this -- the schmick design, excellent accuracy, smooth gliding, adjustable speeds and the adjustable weight system has ensured its long stay at the top.

Design/Features
The G9 is a radical departure from the ergonomic designs we're familiar with, to a boxy shape reminiscent of Creative's awful Fatal1ty 1010 mouse. This alone made us wary.

The level of customisation has increased again, allowing two different shells to fit over the mouse -- a high grip one with greater recessed side buttons that will ensure your hand never slips due to sweat in high powered gaming sessions, and a silkier moulded rubber with a larger thumb-rest area.

The MicroGear has made a triumphant crossover from the VX to the G series, meaning that the scroll-wheel can either have detents (it clicks in definable segments when you spin it) or spin freely. Unlike the clunky middle button press that activated it in the Revolution, there is a button underneath the mouse that switches between the modes. Side scrolling is also available and finally it seems that this hasn't sacrificed the quality of the up and down motion of the scroll-wheel.

As with G5 you can still add weights to the mouse to find a feel you're comfortable with, although the weights themselves have been redesigned from circular to trapezoidal, which unfortunately adds a lot more fiddling in terms of adding and removing weights. The weight cartridge is also a step down from the G5, requiring you first to remove the outer shell to access it, then rather than a button release the cartridge is magnetically held, requiring you to push it in to eject it outwards. There are only four sockets that can be filled compared to the G5's eight, and eight weights are supplied -- four seven gram, and four lots of four gram.

Accuracy adjustments are available from one to five customisable DPI settings from 200 to 3200dpi, all through Logitech's greatly revised Setpoint 5.0 software. USB polling rate is customisable from 125 to 1000Hz, as is any button. Up to five profiles can also be saved to the mouse, meaning custom settings for different applications can be switched to easily by holding the profile button on the bottom of the mouse and clicking the + and - speed buttons, or alternatively it can autoswitch when a program is run. The LEDs on the mouse can be assigned different colours per profile, customisable once again through Setpoint.

Macros are also available to be bound to a button, and although it records keyboard strokes, mouse buttons and delay, it will not record mouse movements. Finally, firmware can now be updated from within Setpoint.

Performance
In practice we needn't have worried about the G9's unseemly form -- our hand fit snugly, and the mouse swept over the surface more freely than the G5 ever did, an impressive achievement. An intense session of Half Life 2 also proved that it maintained the G series' famous accuracy.

The scroll wheel responded extremely well, and when switched to free mode kept spinning for well over 10 seconds from our initial spin, meaning those in need of quick scrolling have found their match. In precision mode the wheel didn't slip once, each action on screen corresponding with each detent on the wheel.

Weirdly, when hooked up to an older HP machine installing the SetPoint software disabled the G5, G9 and rebranded Logitech HP mouse; no amount of restarts or unplugging and replugging the USB ports allowing them to move the cursor on-screen. External hard drives worked fine, as did our Microsoft Intellimouse. An odd bug that Logitech no doubt needs to look into.

The are only two real niggles we can find with the G9. Firstly the inferior weights system compared to the G5 -- although since you're likely to only set this once, we can't see it being too much of an issue. Secondly, and more importantly, is the exorbitant asking price of AU$169 -- no doubt this will come down in time, but it will be a stretch for all but the most ardent of gamers.

In the end Logitech has produced another brilliant mouse, although it's worth checking out both this and the G5 to see which fits your hand (and your budget!) better. Either way you're bound to be very, very happy with the results.