Lenovo Legion M500 Gaming Mouse Review

Bring out the ergonomic gamer in you with the Lenovo Legion M500.

It’s difficult to pick a proper gaming mouse. Sometimes you’re fine with what you have, but the moment you try out something different, a lot of things change. Features, design, affordability. It’s hard to get all in the same package. In this regard, we’re going to take a look at the Lenovo Legion M500 Gaming Mouse to see how it stands. Let’s get it on.

Lenovo Legion M500 Gaming Mouse Technical Specifications:

Color: Iron grey top cover and black body

Connection Type: Wired via USB 2.0

Cable Length/Type: 1.8m (5.9ft); Braided with cable tie

Weight: 100G (excluding cable) + 10G optional weight

Special Design Features: Ergonomic right-handed design for palm and claw grip; Textured side-grips for better control; 3 zone 16.8 million colours RGB

Backlight: Yes

Mice Button: 7 programmable buttons, 1 profile button

Button Life: Left / right: 50 million clicks; Forward / Backward /DPI up / DPI down: 3 million clicks; Profile button: 10,000 clicks

DPI: Up to 16,000 DPI

Mouse Sensor: PMW 3389

Price: Php2,990

DESIGN & PERFORMANCE

The first thing you’ll probably notice on the Legion M500 is its shape. Its an ergonomic mouse, and we’ve pretty much gotten used to egg-shaped ones we’ve been used to. It feels foreign initially that it feels like it’s more suited for claw grip, since resting your palm on it puts your thumb on the recess and it somewhat interferes with the glide and lift offs.  You’ll get accustomed to it regardless, but it does take some time for it to kick in.

At the bottom, there are three skates and the access to the weight adjustment. Additional 10G doesn’t feel right? You can easily remove it by popping off the magnetic cover. There’s also RGB lighting at the bottom, we’ll get to that in a bit.

The M500 comes in at about 100G without the additional removable weight that adds 10G on top of it.

I’m not exactly particular about the weight and I’m not obsessing over cutting holes to make it lighter, and on its own, the M500 is pretty solid. I’m fine with the weight going over past the 100G mark.

You can also adjust the DPI on the fly through five programmable stages. These are controlled with the two DPI switches below the mouse wheel. Personally, I prefer this approach since you don’t have to cycle through each of them just to get your desired DPI.

As far as performance goes, it’s hard to quantify how a gaming mouse performs without proper equipment, and our best gauge for it is how comfortable we are at playing it. Personally, it’s all about getting used to it regardless of its specifications. But if you were to talk the numbers game, the M500 is equipped with an Optical PMW 3389 sensor, it can also go up to 16,000 DPI but why on earth would you want to? It’s there when you need it, though. So, fair game.

Also, do note that this is a wired mouse. The cable is braided and has ample length, but a bungee is recommended for a better approach since the cable tends to stick out and fold.

SOFTWARE

The Legion M500 makes use of Lenovo’s Legion Accessory Central Software. Very straightforward name, I know. But it pretty much does get the job done. From there, you can adjust the RGB modes from Off to Static. The bottom part isn’t customizable by zone, though. 

You can also change all the actions of all the buttons through this software. Record a macro for it, change which mouse button each one corresponds to, or use it as a media controller. Nifty.

Further down is the DPI setting that offers 5 levels of on the fly adjustment that you can set up as you see fit. Again, this can go up to 16,000 DPI. We’ve made our point regarding this. Polling Rate options are also available on 250Hz, 500Hz and 1000Hz. The software also offers surface tuning,  

CONCLUSION

We can talk numbers all we want, but at the end of the day, it’s all about where you’re comfortable with. The Lenovo Legion M500 is a gaming mouse that takes getting used to, and when you get to that point it’s really fun to use. The customizations in usage and aesthetics are there, and they’re quite nice to have from time to time. It currently costs Php2,995. If you’re hellbent on getting an ergonomic mouse that you can game on, this might be something to look at. Make this wireless, please?