The Truth About Logitech MX Master 3 : Is it Worth it in 2022?

After getting my first real job when I was ready to upgrade my age old pc to a proper usable one (cough), one of my friends introduced me to MX Master 3. There was I, using any mouse I could get my hands on for over 14 years, hearing about a mouse that costs whooping 100 dollars. I was like, “Eh? That expensive? Is that Logitech MX Master 3 even worth it?”

First forward one and half years, now I can say that the mouse is absolutely worth every single penny. Did it make me a better photo editor? Not at all. Did it make me a much happier photo editor? Definitely. I can never go back to any other mouse I guess. It has made my workflow so much smoother and satisfying that greatly increases the productivity altogether.

I had used cheap Frontech and Rapoo mouse for over a decade already. Whenever I had to shop for a new mouse, I would always go to the shop and buy the most affordable one that was available at the shop at that moment. And that’s it. I would return home and be happy with my new mouse and dig right into photoshop or games whatever I would be doing by then. It never occurred to me that a decent mouse can change your life in so many ways. (As Logitech MX Master 3s is insanely similar to MX Master 3, most of these points are applicable to MX Master 3 as well. For the differences, read this article here.)

Comfortable Ergonomics

It’s ergonomics sets the mouse apart from its competitions on the very first look. Out of the box the mouse feels pretty odd for it’s non conventional design. When you hold it in your hand, now that’s a different story. The mouse is designed to make your hand pour into it. And the luxurious rubberized texture feels unlike any mouse you have ever used. There is a subtle scoop like shape where you put your thumb. Also with the addition of a thumb rest it puts your hand in ultimate rested position where it just feels natural and most comfortable and put least strain to your wrist. The side buttons and the horizontal wheel can be easily accessed via thumb. According to some users the only thing that could be made better is the hidden configurable button at the left side of the thumb. You have to bring your thumb little back to access the button. Many users wanted it to be put right beside the thumb but in my opinion that would make it harder to press as it is pretty stiff and that way the finger would require more strength and pressure to make it work. The problem is somewhat addressed in the new MX Master 3s but the position is still the same as they didn’t alter the design at all while upgrading the mouse from MX Master 3.

Then again, this mouse may not be best for those with smaller hands. All the ergonomics of this mouse is geared towards those with medium to large hands. Left handed users are also left with blank as this is clearly a right handed mouse with a design optimised for right hand. Those who are used to claw gripping their mouse might feel kinda awkward as this mouse is made for palm grips where you grip it with your entire hand rather than just using your fingertips for the purpose. I felt pretty odd at first myself. Withing a week I was inseparable from the mouse. After using claw grips for whole day at office, this mouse brings immense joy to just hold at home.

Superb Connectivity

The major difference between Logitech MX Master 3/3s and other wireless mouse is that it’s connectivity. Almost all the wireless mouse I have used over the years borrowing from others had some kind of connectivity issues in them. Some would have latency in them, some would keep connecting and disconnecting mouse from time to time. Others had a tendency to keep lagging in between jobs. That is the reason I have always been stuck to wired mouse as it would have made no sense to put more money for a mouse that wouldn’t work the same. So, the MX Master 3 was more like a leap of faith for me and I was also prepared to send it back right away if it displayed any of those issues. Till this date I have never faced any issues with this mouse. My brothers who is a Valorant player plays in my pc from time to time and he enjoys just fine. From that I hope you can guess how superb its connectivity is.

You can connect the mouse with 3 devices at once including pc, laptop, tab or mobile devices. You can set it up via Logi options+ software and can switch between devices by pressing the button at the bottom of the mouse. The button could be placed elsewhere but that might have caused accidental press. The windows version uses Logi Unifying Receiver (for MX Master 3), Logitech Bolt receiver (for MX Master 3s) or Bluetooth whereas the mac version uses only Bluetooth as claimed by the company. For details about how to use the mac version with windows pc, you can read this article here.

Well, when comes to competitive gaming, I would pick a wired mouse over this any day. If I am playing games at my home for my own entertainment then also I thing I would go for any gaming mouse over this if I am playing for more than an hour simply because of the weight. This mouse weighs whooping 141 grams which could cause pain in your wrist if you do fast paced gaming with this for longer hours. Other than that for all other purposes I would definitely go for MX Master 3/3s any day.

Flow

Logitech Flow is an unique technology brought to its MX mouse users by Logitech. With the help of flow you can control multiple devices with the same mouse. The feature can be enabled via the Logi Options+ software.

Flow has two major functions. One is to move you mouse and keyboard around different devises seamlessly. While using flow you can just bring the mouse to the edge of the screen and drag it from there. It instantly jumps into the next screen. It can be used cross platform also, namely between windows and mac devices. Those who use more than one computer at home can greatly benefit from this without needing to buy separate mouse and keyboard for each of the devices. One of my photographer friends has set up his desk in a ‘L’ shaped manner where he can just rotate his chair to face one monitor from the other. He uses MX Keys Mini and MX Master 3 to navigate between these on the go. Flow also removes the need to press the switch at the bottom of the mouse to switch devices. You just pull the cursor at the edge of thew screen and drag, you are onto the next device. The keyboard follows the mouse automatically. So, you don’t need to individually change the device for the keyboard.

The second function of this feature is to transferring data across multipole devices. When flow is enabled, you can copy any file, any text, any image or anything from one device and go paste it to other. The data will be transferred easily and effortlessly. This function boosts productivity manifold by reducing all the steps required to transfer data from one device to another either via cable, pen drive, external hard drives or uploading them into web from one and downloading it into the other. Even if you send them via Bluetooth, it can never be as effortless as dragging a file to the edge of the screen or pressing Ctrl/Command + C in one computer and Ctrl/command + V in the other. The data transferred through flow is always safe and secure with SSL and AES-256 bit encryption. The data is transferred locally via you connection network keeping all your data to yourself instead of transferring it via cloud servers or any other methods that needs to upload them to web servers and then download them to the second device. It keeps not only the data secure but also makes the way for faster transfer, which is very important to make the work effortless.

High Customization (Software)

One of the main benefits of the MX Master series mouse is that its ability of huge customization. The free Logitech Options+ software has come a long way since it was first released as Logi Options. As feature rich it already was, it is now capable to tweak the settings of the mouse to an optimum degree to make the mouse really you own. You can download it for free here from Logitech’s official website. Apart from the left and right mouse buttons, the mouse comes with 5 fully customizable buttons. There are two side buttons, one top button, one button with scroll wheel and one secret button for thumb all of which are fully customizable. The mouse also comes with an additional horizontal scroll wheel which is different from all of its competitors and can be fully customized as per your choice.

Firstly the software provides a plethora of settings to choose from for each of the buttons. There are mainly two types of actions, click and gesture. For normal click actions you can set a single action for a button. In gesture mode you can select from a list of gestures where by pressing and holding the key you can perform four different actions if you move the mouse left, right, up or down. If you set those actions into custom mode instead of the predefined gestures then you can use four individual actions per key. The possibility it really much more than you would ever need. If you take into action the custom settings for each of the software, you can truly make the mouse completely your own. I personally don’t need much of the customizations. I use the side buttons for back and forward in general mode whereas use them for undo and redo in Photoshop. The horizontal wheel is set to zoom in and out photoshop, horizontal scroll in excel, scrolling through the timeline in premiere pro and volume up and down in general settings. You can set two different DPI settings through the software and keep them active at the same time. By setting any button you can change from one dpi settings to other instantly. I generally keep in to 44% for the general usage whereas 34% for the detailed fine tuning part in Photoshop. Really the customization part deserves a detailed post of its own. You can read about in details in here.

Scroll Wheel

The Logitech MX Master 3 comes with Magspeed Electromagnetic Scrolling. It has revolutionized how mouse scroll wheels work. It posses hyper-fast scrolling that can scroll down 1000 lines in a mere second. The best part is, the wheel is almost silent. It comes with 2 modes. One is free spinning mode that makes the wheel free flowing and ultra smooth. In this mode you can easily scroll thousands of lines in a spin. The other is ratchet mode where the mouse travels one step at a time. This mode gives the feel of traditional scroll wheels, just in a much refined way. Then there comes the best of both worlds : Smartshift. This feature can be enabled through Logi Options+ software. When Smartshift is enabled, the mouse mainly stays in ratchet mode. It changes to free spinning mode whenever you apply a little bit higher pressure on the scroll wheel. This way you can use either of the modes without having to change into one or the other via pressing an assigned button or going into the software. Here it is explained in detail how Logitech Smrtshift can be enabled and its benefits.

Horizontal Scroll

That’s most probably the most unique feature of the MX Master series of mouse, horizontal scroll. The mouse comes with a horizontal scroll wheel placed near the thumb that can be used for a lot of the settings across different software. I can go on and on about how life changing the horizontal scroll wheel has been for me and still not get tired of it. This is unlike any mouse I have ever seen. Just adding an extra scroll that too in such a convenient place along with huge customisation capabilities opens up a world of possibilities for any user. While using Photoshop I use it to zoom in and out the images which increases the speed and productivity greatly. In excel I set it for horizontal scrolling. When I am editing videos, I use this to navigate through the timeline. Along with the capability of the Magspeed wheel, navigating through large data sheets is truly effortless. In general mode I generally keep the horizontal scroll to volume control which makes it easier when I am listening to songs or watching movies in leisure. Just for this single feature I can see myself buying this mouse again and again.

Battery Life

The battery life of the mouse is another thing to boast about. As it is rechargeable, there is no need to hoard a number of batteries worrying about, “What if I run out of charge in the crucial moment?” Many people preferred the battery operated mouse instead of the rechargeable ones for one simple reason, if they keep enough batteries around, they won’t need to run out of juice at the crucial moment. There won’t also be the need to get the mouse charged every now and then. Logitech has solutions for each of these problems with this mouse. The company claims the mouse to last a whooping 70 days with full charge on moderate usage. I, myself get around 50-55 days out of the mouse before I need to charge it again. I don’t dry the mouse to zero percent though. Even if you hit the bottom while working, a quick charge of just 60 seconds gives it enough juice to run for another 3 hours. You can also charge it while you keep working with the USB cable provided in the box. So, not only you don’t need to charge the mouse every now and then, but also the chance of getting into problem due to charge running out is next to null.

Productivity

Productivity is the domain where MX Master 3 excels. There is a reason it is loved and preferred by so many people. Just using the mouse out of the box won’t give you any productivity boost though. Well, the awesome feel of the mouse might make you happier while you work and make it effortless. The mouse really shines once you start getting into its settings via the Logitech software.

The first step would be customizing the buttons to your preference. I have already discussed above in Customization part how you can set each of the five button for upto 4 actions each. If you make them software specific, they make them even more versatile. In this way while doing photo editing, graphic designing or even working at office you can assign a lot of shortcut keys to the mouse and thus saving a lot of time. The horizontal scroll wheel is another game changing one. From time to time I have really fallen in love with wheel again and again. I never knew zooming in and out in photoshop could be such a smooth experience. I didn’t even know you could horizontally scroll in an excel sheet in stead of clicking and dragging the scroll bar. This wheel alone has drastically improved my productivity and made works much more effortless. Then comes the main scroll wheel. Gone are the days of boring scrolling through long documents or holding the bar and dragging all the way down. The silence and smooth operation of both the wheels is a bliss on my fingers.

The mouse has a range of 200 to 4000 dpi (for MX Master 3s it’s 200-8000 dpi) to cater to all your different needs. No matter you prefer soft cloth mousepads or hard plastic mousepads, like to move around you hand a lot or prefer to reach to the edge of the screen with just twitching your wrist, this mouse covers all. You can also set two different sensitivity settings which can be changed in a click by assigning a custom button to them. I generally set mine to 44% for general uses and 34% when I am minutely doing something in Photoshop. While working I keep switching between them a lot. The Flow feature is another thing that makes works tremendously faster. If you have never used two or more computers at once, you wouldn’t know how amazing it is to have function where you can use one set of keyboard and mouse across all of them, at the same time. And you can switch between them just by dragging your hand a little bit. Doesn’t sound fantastic yet? You can also move you files from one device to other just by CTRL/Command + C to CTRL/Command + V. That’s it. No more steps or hassle.

All these customizations, shortcut key setups and the wheels might not seem a lot at first glance to some people or it might overwhelm some. But when you combine them all with your workflow and set them up for yourself, your productivity turns way better. Don’t take my word for it. You’ll realise it yourself as time goes by.

Downsides

As great as this mouse can be, it still has some downsides which could be a dealbreaker for many. The very first downside it has in my opinion is the lack of a left handed option. In my opinion Logitech should have already made a left handed version so that they are not left out from experiencing this awesome product. Then comes the issue of size. Well, it’s really hard to make a mouse where it would have one size that fits all. The MX Master 3 is no exception. Those with smaller hands can have a great difficulty handling the mouse. Especially the weight makes it even harder. Logitech has recently released MX Anywhere 3 which can be a great fit for those with smaller hands. The Master 3 is also not much suitable for travel. Although it’s definitely better than carrying wired mouse with you in your backpack, but still the odd shape makes it harder to carry and takes more space. Some have pointed out that the USB receiver has to carried separately and the mouse should have had a compartment to attach it to. I don’t think it’s much of hassle to carry that small receiver in a separate pocket. You can also use Bluetooth. Integrating the tiny USB device into the mouse’s design might have hampered the ergonomics or taken away some of the feel from the mouse. Another issue was the left thumb gesture button which was pretty hard to press. They have addressed some of those burning issues in the MX Master 3s by making the button softer.

Is Logitech MX Master 3 worth the money?

At the time of writing this article the MX Master 3 comes for around 80$ a piece and MX Master 3s costs around 100$. It is pretty normal to be skeptical about whether or not this mouse is worth the huge price tag it comes with. More so when we are used to buying much cheaper mouse for years. Will it really dramatically improve your productivity? Not exactly if all you are going to is watch movies in your computer. Even if you are a writer that mostly does writing in his pc, this mouse makes no sense. You should invest that money in a good mechanical mouse. For a photographer or graphic designer that mostly uses graphic tablets for his or her works, that money should go towards that.

But if you heavily use data sheets for your everyday works, edit photos or make design using the mouse, are a video editor or write codes for a living, the mouse is worth every single penny. If you want to save some bucks, go for the Logitech MX Master 3 as it is available for a discount now following the release of MX Master 3s. But if you can afford it, go for the 3s version. You aren’t gonna regret it. Here is a summery of pros and cons that’s explained throughout the article.

Pros :

1. Ergonomic shape
2. Seamless connectivity
3. Versatile customisation
4. Great battery life
5. Quick charging
6. Magspeed electromagnetic scroll wheel
7. Horizontal scroll wheel
8. Logitech Flow
9. Comes in both Windows and Mac versions

Cons :

1. No Left handed option
2. Expensive
3. Not for gamers

FAQ

• What is the difference between Logitech MX Master 3 and MX Master 3 for Mac?

  • They are both technically the same mouse. The Mac version comes with only bluetooth and pc version comes with both bluetooth and USB receiver. But both of these can work with both the mediums and vice versa. They can also connect to any type of devices as found on my experiments which is contradictory to what company claims. Read this article for the details.

• Can MX Master 3 be used for gaming?

  • Yes it can be used for gaming. It has gotten enough dpi range(200-4000) for that. But being a wireless mouse it might seem little bit laggy in case of competitive gaming. It would do just fine if you are playing games at home for fun. But I wouldn’t recommend it for Competitive gaming.

• How to set up my MX Master 3?

  • Install Logi Options+ software. It comes for free at the maker’s website. It is very user friendly. Install it and then follow from there. You will get it yourself.

• Can MX Master 3 be used wired?

  • MX Master 3 can be used wired while charging but it would still need a wireless connection for it to work. The USB cable’s function is only to charge the mouse. So, it can not be used as a wired mouse. Here is a detailed article on that topic.

• What is Logitech Smartshift?

  • The settings in Logitech MX series of mouse that allows the scroll wheel to change from ratchet mode to free spinning mode just with a slightly stronger pull on the scroll when is called smartshift. It can be enabled via Logi Otions+. This article explains it vividly.

• How many devices can the MX Master 3 switch between?

  • The MX Master 3 mouse can be paired with and switch between 3 devices at any particular time.

• How much does the Logitech MX Master 3 weigh?

  • The Logitech MX Master 3 and MX Master 3s weighs the same which is 141 grams