Logitech G303 Shroud Edition Wireless Gaming Mouse Review

My go-to recommendation for premium gaming mouse shoppers for the last year or so has been the Roccat Kone Pro Air. It’s got optical switches, a cool aluminum scroll wheel, a good balance of light weight and solid build, a nice sensor, and three different types of connectivity. It’s my gold standard for what a mouse should be, and second to that is Logitech’s venerable G Pro lineup with their HERO sensor.

Late last year, Logitech launched the G303 Shroud Edition, a collaboration with the famous gamer himself and a return of one of their older iconic shapes. It quickly became the “flavor of the week,” with tons of hardcore mouse users rushing at the chance to buy it and fawn over it. I ignored it, thinking that the shape wasn’t really my thing and that I wouldn’t want to step back from some of the cutting edge technologies in other mice.

I shouldn’t have ignored it. The Roccat Kone Pro Air is still my pick for the best gaming mouse for most people…but the G303 Shroud Edition is my personal favorite. It hasn’t left my desk since I bought it about a month ago, and it’s only going somewhere else if I replace it with a different G303. It totally broke my insane habit of buying and reviewing gaming mice on the internet, and it’s the perfect example of a “love it or hate it” product that I fell in love with.

Right from the start, the G303 made me giggle. It comes in a box that just says “SHROUD” on it and features the official SHROUD logo. There’s a picture of the mouse on the back and some giant text showing some of its features…but the actual name of the mouse doesn’t appear on the package at all. That’s delightful and hilarious.

Photo taken by the author.

Inside the SHROUD box you get the mouse itself, a USB-C charging cable, and a small extension dock that the dongle can plug in to. The mouse goes for $129.99 (official site here) which actually makes it one of the better deals in high-end gaming mice, right alongside my beloved Kone Pro Air. Many flagship mice of this performance caliber sit closer to $150.

I instantly took to the weird shape of the G303—but you might hate it. It’s a somewhat large, ambidextrous, angular thing, with prominent sharp angles on the sides that your hands can grip on to. It fits perfectly in my personal hand, and the amount of grip I have is extraordinary. Most other mice feel like they’re going to slip out of my hand in comparison. If you’ve used Logitech’s classic G305 but you wanted the shape to be more of that, then you’ll probably love this too.

The sensor is the same great HERO model inside most of Logitech’s premium mice. The only flaw with the HERO sensor is that you can’t manually adjust the lift-off distance. It automatically stops tracking at the lowest possible height regardless of your chosen surface. If you like to tweak the lift-off setting, you’ll need to get a PixArt sensor mouse. Otherwise, you’ll be rewarded here with amazing, flawless tracking performance, and 150ish hours of battery life regardless of usage intensity.

Button-wise, although this is using older tech mechanical switches instead of fancy fast optical models—these are my favorite-feeling buttons on a gaming mouse. They’re incredibly tight, precise, and wonderful. They don’t have any of the nasty side-to-side play that destroyed the Razer Viper V2 Pro for me, and they provide a perfect crisp click each and every time. They feel just as good now as they did when I unboxed the mouse several weeks ago.

The same can be said for the scroll wheel—which I can see dividing users as much as the shape. The wheel has a metallic, intense click to its scroll that is loud. It’s thunderous, even. The whole unit feels like it’s sitting inside the strongest scrolling encoder ever put into a mouse, and you can sometimes feel a ping from the center of the mouse body when picking it up and putting it down, either from the button springs or the encoder itself.

This is the most tank-like scroll wheel I’ve seen on a mainstream gaming unit, and it’s so not for everyone. Most Logitech mice are known for their smooth-yet-responsive scroll wheels, and this one is like CLANG CLANG CLANG. It’s great for fans of feedback, but it might be really off-putting if you like, well, pretty much any other mouse on the market. Once I adjusted to it, it’s a bit hard to go back to the almost puny-feeling scrolls on other mice.

The side buttons are tiny and high up on the mouse’s left side, meaning that it’s impossible to accidentally click them. In fact, you’ll probably have to intentionally reach for them depending on your default mouse thumb posture, which again might be distressing depending on what you’re used to.

I don’t think anyone will complain about the skates on the bottom of the mouse. The glide feet are massive, covering over half of the bottom surface, and they’re made out of a slick PTFE that rivals just about anything else out there. They felt great from moment one on my SteelSeries QCK pad.

I get a much better grip on the G303 than I do the G Pro X Superlight, which is also burdened with a Micro USB port. Photo taken by the author.

I’m hopeful that the features package here will be Logitech’s standard for high end mice going forward. They finally ditched the terrible forked micro USB port that they’ve put on so many gaming products in favor of a USB-C port with quick charging support. The lack of RGB and the HERO sensor mean that you’ll easily clear 150 hours of battery per charge, and you can charge it most of the way back up during a lunch break. The included cable is rubberized instead of braided, and not ideal for using with the mouse in wired mode—but you shouldn’t really need to use this in wired mode at all thanks to the long battery life. The back of the mouse has a hilariously over-built magnetic sliding tray that holds the USB dongle for transport, and while I think it’s great, Logitech could probably cut it from a future revision to save some weight.

I was in on this mouse from the moment I saw its absurd box, and doubly so when I first held it in my hand. It’s one of the least “safe” shapes on the market, and it’ll either fit perfectly in your hand, or make you feel like you’re holding a weirdly uncomfortable angular box for some reason. The button feel, sensor performance, and battery life are all world class, so it really is down to whether it fits into your hand right or not. If it does, you’ll probably never want another mouse again, and if it doesn’t—try one of the many other safer recommendations out there.

I’m so glad that I’m done buying mice. It was getting crazy.

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Thanks for reading, and happy Shrouding I mean Gaming!