The real magic mouse is made by Logitech, not Apple

We may never know why Apple doggedly insists on you charging its mouse upside down, like a beetle with its legs in the air, year after year after year.

But I do know this: if you want a mouse that actually feels magical, price be damned, Logitech has the gadget for you.

When I want to charge my wireless mouse now, I don’t need to plug in a cord or place it on a dock. In fact, I don’t think about charging at all. It just… does. Because this past Christmas, a very generous brother-in-law effectively bought me a wireless mouse that charges itself.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

What you’re looking at here is the Logitech Powerplay Wireless Charging System, effectively a mousepad with a wireless charger that magnetically beams electricity to a special puck. Logitech’s been selling it since 2017 — nearly as long as Apple has subjected us to the upside-down beetle.

To give you an idea, here is the complete description of what I did once I received this product:

• Opened the packaging
• Placed the charging slab on my desk
• Plopped an included soft cloth mousepad on top
• Removed my Logitech G502 Lightspeed mouse’s wireless USB dongle from my PC
• Plugged in the Powerplay’s USB cable instead
• Snapped the magnetic puck into the bottom of my mouse
• Switched the mouse off and on

And then, I never thought about charging my mouse again. Not until this very story.

Seriously, it’s been three months, and I’ve never had to lift a finger — because it charges all by itself. Always. Automatically. Just by being on the mousepad.

Magic.

Image: Logitech

I have never reviewed a perfect product before, and I’m not saying this is one — I’d hate to jinx myself. Particularly when some customers do claim their mice eventually stopped charging or that the mousepad peeled apart and had to be taped or glued. Plus, it’s incredibly pricey at $120 for the mousepad alone, no mouse included. And no, it doesn’t double as a phone charger or use Qi: it only works with its own magnetic puck, which only fits into a handful of the priciest Logitech mice, including the G502 Lightspeed, G703, G903, G Pro Wireless and G Pro X Superlight.

Still, it carries a 4.7-star rating on Amazon with surprisingly few negative reviews. The most common complaint is that nearby speakers or headphones can pick up a hum when it’s charging, and I haven’t noticed that myself.

What I have noticed so far is that there’s nothing to notice. It just works. No disconnects, no on-off switches, nothing to adjust. It is true that the charging coil doesn’t cover the entire mousepad, but I’ve never had to think about it, never come back to a dead mouse. It’s always sprung to life every morning at work and every evening I game.

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It probably doesn’t hurt that I’m using it with the Logitech G502 Lightspeed, our pick for the best wireless gaming mouse, whose comfortable grip, loads of well-placed clicky buttons, incredible performance and adjustable weight put it head and shoulders over the also-excellent, also-wireless Razer Mamba and Logitech G900 I owned before. But that’s a $140 mouse, and there’s no discount on a bundle with both. Even the least expensive compatible mouse, the G703 Lightspeed, will typically cost you $70 on sale — and the Powerplay charging pad rarely goes on sale at all.

But you could do what I did: get the mouse, use it until the battery bugs you, and then add Powerplay. (Find a generous brother-in-law while you’re at it, too.)

That was kind of the idea, recalls Andrew Coonrad, who was technical marketing manager on Powerplay (and wrote the reviewer’s guide) back in 2017. It was designed to be the ultimate solution for demanding gamers willing to spend extra to solve charging once and for all.

At the time, there was still a stigma against wireless gaming mice, and battery life was part of that — while the Razer Mamba and Logitech G900 convinced me that low-latency gaming was possible over wireless, neither could hold much of a charge after a couple years of use. With the G900, Coonrad says that’s because while its PMW3366 sensor was capable, it used an order of magnitude more energy than Logitech’s newer Hero sensors.