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When comparing the specifications of wireless mice, the battery life figures I encounter (as reported by both manufacturers and users) can be wildly different, even between similar mice.

For example:

  • the Cyborg R.A.T. M advertises "Up to 1 Year of Use from 2 AAA Batteries"
  • for the M.O.U.S. 9 it's "Up to 1 Year of Use from 1 AA Battery"
  • whereas the R.A.T. 9 specifications say "Up to 9 hours continuous gaming, up to 4 days normal use"

Similarly, compare the Logitech G700S with the Logitech G602:

  • G602 - "Performance mode: up to 250 hours; Endurance mode: up to 1440 hours"
  • G700S - "Discharge time: Up to 10.5 hours"

I understand that different battery types, built-in memory, signal transmission methods, higher precision sensors, etc. can affect the battery life, but I just don't understand how this could amount to such extreme disparity - orders of magnitude difference. It's absolutely staggering, and it has bothered me for years. So I ask: can anyone explain this?

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  • Your are comparing a nascar (g700s)to a ford pinto (g602)
    – cybernard
    Aug 2, 2014 at 21:07
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    I'd also guess its how agressive it is about power saving - I have a logitech M310 (I think) that's rated for a year on AA - I'd also suggest that the shorter lifetime may be on rechargable batteries
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Aug 3, 2014 at 5:53

2 Answers 2

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The G700 has up to 8200dpi and the G602 has up to 2500. That is a lot more pixels to process and the CPU inside the mouse has to work much harder to process that many pixels many times per second.

http://gaming.logitech.com/en-us/product/g700s-rechargable-wireless-gaming-mouse

http://gaming.logitech.com/en-us/product/g602-wireless-gaming-mouse

Go to the bottom and you will see the specs are vastly different

Max accelartion 20g vs 30g
max speed 2m/s vs 4.19m/s
USB rate 500 vs 1000 per second.

Clearly the CPU in the G700 is vastly more powerful.

In summation:

  • cheap(non lithium ion) vs good lithium ion batteries
  • Large MP (mega pixel) sensors
  • Low refresh compared to 1000hz+
  • Worst cases are battery life based on different conditions
  • Some have superior battery saving technologies.

If it uses a standard battery size, you can replace cheap generic batteries with lithium ion and 3x the battery life.

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  • At first I suspected this may be the reason, but then I compared the R.A.T. 9 with the R.A.T. M : DPI range, tracking speed and acceleration is identical between them, yet battery life differs by thousands of hours. That is why I'm not particularly convinced by this theory (not that I'd rule it out completely). But in any case, I appreciate your input.
    – Cauterite
    Aug 3, 2014 at 5:28
  • If you want to see a dramatic example load 3dmark on android phone and loop it. A phone that would have lasted all day will be dead in an hour. Obviously battery capacity/size also make a huge difference. RAT9 has 2 lithium ion batteries nearly 3x the capacity of the batteries found in RATM. Maybe more. Plus gaming is way more demanding than web surfing.
    – cybernard
    Aug 3, 2014 at 6:01
  • Addition RATM 120 samples per second RAT9 1000 samples per second. The techs specs for the RAT9 clearly state Always ON so no power saving of any kind.
    – cybernard
    Aug 3, 2014 at 17:29
  • Well, it says "dynamic up to 1000Hz", so presumably the rate is reduced during inactivity. I don't know what they're talking about when they say "always on" though — you'd think it's a pretty inaccurate claim after reading about the mouse's sleep states in the knowledgebase.
    – Cauterite
    Aug 4, 2014 at 6:25
  • They make the worst case battery assumption for the gamer who games for 16 hours straight which keeps it at 1000hz for most of the time as results in the shortest battery life.
    – cybernard
    Aug 4, 2014 at 14:34
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Did you ever move your wireless mouse and have it seem like it took too long to wake up? Like many other battery and even non-battery operated tech devices they can go to sleep, when asleep they can be primed to use only small ammounts of power.
Even the sencor led/"laser" is put to sleep with the sencor checking reduced to a slow rate, transmission turned off completly.

Some wireless mice are so half asleep on the job they have to be moved larger distances before they realise your have even moved, then another delay as they send the data out.

UpTo is often a quite meaningless marketing term that is fully ambigious, I can say that box of cookies in your kitchen can last UpTo 1 year , it isn't likely , but it could happen :-)

The delay for wireless wake-up isn't even noticed by some people, and some people it is totally unacceptable. Different devices will make that better or worse with the ramifications (usually) of taking more power to do so.

Some devices have constant leds showing that are unnessisary to actual operation that continually have a tiny drain on the power source, curcuit efficency for power conversion, varying methods of curcuit design, varied methods of sleep, or even ways they fixed a possible bug or reported user complaint could change the total power consumption.

On standby a device can be using as little as pico amps to check to see if anything moves, up to milliamps to do the same thing, or a device could stay awake and alert and react in way less miliseconds, all based on different designs.

For the most part any of them will drain the power down to nothing in short order when the user is using it constantally, and run what seems like for months when just sitting there next to you waiting for you to wake it up.
You have in your list some devices that are designed for gamers , gamers that would far prefer to replace a battery then to lose a few miliseconds. It is possible that those devices can even be set to never sleep, never stop transmitting, always be on full alert :-)

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  • 1
    Thanks for the input. Interestingly, my R.A.T. 9 doesn't wake up at all when I move it - I have to press a button to bring it out of sleep. On the other hand, the basic Microsoft wireless mouse I had before (which lasted months on a pair of AA batteries) awoke almost immediately from any disturbance.
    – Cauterite
    Aug 2, 2014 at 10:36

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