Wireless Mouse Technology Testing at the Logitech Daniel Borel Innovation Center
Wireless Mouse Technology Testing at the Logitech Daniel Borel Innovation Center
2016-04-04
logitech brought us here to switzerland
to check out the g 900 chaos spectrum an
interesting looking mouse but with some
really bold claims especially when
comparing it to a wired mouse which
traditionally would have been a lot
better in like almost every possible
metric they claim however that it has
now reversed s-- they're claiming that
the g 900 is better than a wired mouse
let's do some science and figure it out
so we're starting off the RF labs this
is probably one of the most important
things about this most is its wireless
performance that's what they've been
trumping really really hard this whole
time so we need to benchmark it we're
going to test it with huge amounts of
interference without interference all
this different kind of stuff and see how
it compares to other mice we're going to
do that by coming inside of an anechoic
chamber but this time it's on the
anechoic chamber in terms of sound it's
an anechoic chamber in terms of signals
so RF Wi-Fi bluetooth all that kind of
stuff isn't going to be able to leave
the room once the door is closed and is
gonna be able to come on in to the
inside but to cause that interference we
have this antenna right here which is
going to be shooting out massive amounts
of amplified RF Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
signals what they did was they went to a
land of about 300 people measured the
signal noise and then amplified that by
a little bit more to make a crazy
worst-case scenario over on the other
side the room there's all this foam kind
of stuff everywhere that's so that
signals aren't bouncing around
throughout the room and you just get a
solid trajectory so it's better and more
consistent for measurement here we have
the most rigs so this is a jogger that
keeps a pad moving under the mouse so
that the actual sensor is constantly
firing and sending information which is
important because you need to most be
actually working and then the mouse is
held in place above that across the room
a little bit right here is the receiver
so this guy is actually talking to the
mouse that wire goes through a tube to
the outside and then we're measuring
actually the tracking of the mouse out
there where the actual interesting stuff
is let's check that out so as you can
see back here on the spectrum analyzer
they have a crazy amount of noise being
fired in that room right now but over
here you can see a tracking tester where
it's just tracing the cursor movement of
the mouse as that joggers going around
and it is in a very I'm going to reset
this you can see it drawing it isn't a
very consistent kind of pattern which is
good there's going to be some drift from
the sensor but that's actually fine all
sensors have some amount of drift but
the good thing about it is that it's
consistent it's not going all over the
place and if you're not making robotic
exact circular movements it's going to
be extremely pretty
where everything's going to be anyway so
this is a good sign and this is for the
G 900 so now we're testing the Razer
Mamba exact same scenario this time
we're going to try it with the signal
noise on and with the signal noise off
so you can see what it is in a more
perfect scenario the Mamba is currently
set up and good to go powered on joggers
running and ten is over here let's go
check the results all right so the Mamba
2015 is hooked up inside that's what's
running right now on the tracking tester
as you can see on the spectrum analyzer
in the back there's nothing really going
on that's because we have the antenna
off so what I'm going to do is come back
here crank the antenna on so I'm going
to turn this dial a little bit there
that's all good to go the spectrum is
now crazy you'll see it actually moves
where it's where it's kind of firing
huge amounts of spectrum so it's not
going to be a consistent problem you can
already see on here I'm going to reset
it so that we have some more room to
actually see it get messed up but it's
jumped all over the place these lines
that you see is where it stopped
tracking completely for a second and
then engage back in somewhere else
you can see that instead of just simple
sensor drift it's actually jumping all
over the place I'm going to reset it
here it's going okay at the start but
then you see one big jump there I'll
wait for it to do a few more there's one
jump right there so there's going to be
bad spots sometimes it'll be okay
because maybe it's away from where the
antennas firing huge amounts of
information but then other times as you
saw before it might actually start
jumping all over the place because it's
kind of getting overpowered which is not
very good so there's a line there
there's another line there it's getting
a little bit worse now yeah so that's
the mob of 2015 let's move on all right
next up on the chopping block is the
Ouroboros a little bit of an older Mouse
it's currently running on the jogger
it's sensor is currently over here we're
good to go one other little bit of
information that I want to give you guys
is this is the antenna that's receiving
the signal so when we show you guys the
spectrum analyzer this is the thing
that's outputting that information just
in case you're interested so next up
razor or Bose that's on the inside right
now you see it going with nothing really
happening on the spectrum analyzer seems
fine a little bit of sensor drift which
is completely normal
now let's hurt it a little bit
Oh turn things up there we go spectrum
analyzers going like crazy stuff
sweeping across like we saw before
moving back now that happy little bit of
sensor drift is no longer really very
happy as you can see there's already two
major jumps and it's completely changed
direction three major jumps now yeah so
not the clean nice patterned thing that
we saw with the G 900 it's a little bit
more of a mess now looking back there's
one two three four five six major jumps
I think and instead of just drifting
nicely upwards like it was before you're
going up and then cranking way over to
the right and it's probably going to
screw up again later on not the end of
the world but not perfect
last but potentially not least is this
sensei so we have the sense I rigged up
on the jogger and we have its receiver
on the other side something to notice
about the configuration of things as
well the receivers are always placed in
line with the very front of the mouse
and the way that the jogger works
there's little arms going all the way
around so that it can hold it in place
perfectly despite the movement of the
actual jogger and it doesn't have to
press any button so it's not pressing
left or right buttons it's not pressing
the back buttons it's not doing any of
that kind of stuff and it's holding it
in place which is pretty cool so the
sensei isn't doing so great
you can see on the spectrum analyzer
there's nothing really going on we
basically have it off and that's not
just simple normal nice unified sensor
drift
that's quite messy let's start over
again somewhere clean give it a nice
clean slate and then hit it with the
antenna as hard as we can go
just to see what happened Wow okay so
this one oh that is just that is
horrible so one of the interesting
things that this one does that none of
the other ones actually had a problem
with as you can see the lines get kind
of squiggly and they start doing weird
spirals and actually making things that
aren't at all the shape of what it's
doing which is a huge unusable problem
again something to remember this
is an insane worst-case scenario it's
beyond like a normal kind of worst-case
scenario because they went from a like
300 person ComputerLand which is an
insane scenario for any wireless device
that made it a little bit harder but
this thing is completely failing the
other ones were failing pretty hard and
the G 900 had zero issues whatsoever so
I think that's pretty cool so to create
the device the G 900 that beats all of
the other devices in this crazy
worst-case scenario test it takes a lot
of things skill science testing all that
kind of stuff it's not just by the
better thing put the better thing in and
then you have a better object it's not
that simple so what they do is they use
simulators in order to test what the
actual end result is going to be that's
not always perfect and just putting
something in there and running a single
error won't magically solve all of your
problems that's where the skill
component comes in they're able to get
their RF simulator results to be
extremely similar to their actual
measurement through skill that's
extremely important because it helps
with your iteration process you that way
you don't have to build a new full
device every single time you want to
test it which is going to help a lot
because they have to release a product
sometime then they also have to pay
attention to where different components
within the mouse go like the battery
battery is a huge deal with some older
mice that even Logitech had the
positioning of the battery could cause
weak spots in your signal as it went
around but the sizing and the
positioning of this battery is a little
bit better they they have it on a
different z-axis within the mouse so
that the emitter should be able to have
a strong signal going all the way around
super cool next up we've got the sensor
lab so what we're going to be doing here
is testing motion latency so how long it
takes for a movement of the mouse to
actually go to the computer we're not
worried about the last rest of the
latency in the system this is just what
Logitech would have control over so
we're going to do that by coming in here
and using this turntable the service on
here is just like a SteelSeries qck type
surface so probably something that's
pretty common in someone's home we're
going to start with the logitech g930
exactly how much someone would be
pushing down on the surface because II
don't want to grind against the mousepad
you don't do anything like that that
would mess up with the results next up
we'll have a Razer chroma which is
actually a wired mouse so we'll compare
it against that and then we have a Mamba
2015 which is another competitor
wireless mouse there's a little bit of
plus/minus here that could be plus zero
to one millisecond or anywhere in
between due to polling rate but spoiler
alert it's going to win by more than
that so it doesn't really matter
another thing I forgot to mention is
that the mouse is placed very
specifically on the turntable mousepad
it's placed at a 45 degree angle so that
x and y axes are contributing the exact
same amount they have to be very precise
about these things because extra
variables like that could screw with
something in a way that would mess up
your results so they have the right
amount of tension down they have the
right angle and they have a huge amount
of samples all of which are good alright
so we're going to run our first test
here you can go right now and what
you'll see on the screen in a moment is
it's going to accumulate data over time
so what's actually going to be displayed
graphically is rounded a little bit just
more for presentation so that you can
kind of see where about things are but
below that is more of the hard core math
no rounding and you can see the mean so
we have to wait a little bit for it to
gather some data and then we'll give you
a more accurate need so after taking 33
samples of movement the mean latency was
four point seven nine milliseconds so
that might not sound impressive yet but
just wait till we try the other mice
we're about to run test - this is
against the Razer chroma which is
actually a wired mouse you can see here
in the device info it is in fact the
Razer chroma we're going to be comparing
it against our previous file which was
running the G 900 so we're gonna have
blue data showing up on the chart that's
for the previous Mouse and the green
data you as you can see in here color
green will be actually for the chroma so
let's run the test so we have our first
results the G 900 versus the Razer
chroma as you can see here the green is
much higher than the blue which means
that the green lost this is motion
latency so you want a low number as you
can see the mute
in for the G 900 was 4.8 as we already
discussed the blue is the same numbers
that we had running on our previous
tests but the mean for the chroma is
about six point eight eight which is two
milliseconds more which is a lot because
you have to pay attention to each
segment of your latency throughout the
entire entire equation so your graphics
card your monitor your mouse all that
kind of stuff and reducing each one by
relatively small amounts is a huge deal
so you can get the total number lower
so having Logitech's number of the input
from their mouse due to motion lower is
good and that means that it's lower than
a wired mouse which is pretty damn
impressive another kind of cool thing to
look at is that the lowest so the
fastest rate at which the motion was
able to go from the mouse to the
computer for the Razer Mouse was about
five point five which tied the highest
or worst results from the G 900 just
kind of a fun little tidbit so this time
the most we are testing is the Razer
Mamba as you can see in the top we're
comparing it yet again against the G 900
so the compare with file is the original
G 900 tests that we ran again we're
doing 33 33 trials the exact same that
we're doing every time this time it's
going to show up as pink so yeah let's
get started okay so we're done testing
the Mamba 2015 and this is kind of why I
haven't liked Wireless mice in the past
and probably why a lot of people haven't
either look at the data it's a mess
you've got results from 0.5 which are
junk data we'll explain why that's junk
data in a moment all the way up to 18
point 5 which is probably caused due to
lag in the transmission of data over the
wireless signal if it misses a report
and then has to do it later it's going
to be massively delayed your mean is at
about nine point three which is much
higher than the four point seven nine of
the G 900 but probably more within the
actual capabilities of the sensor the
problems with the junk data and the
really really high late reported data is
more due to the implementation of the
sensor instead of the standard
capabilities
last but not least we have click latency
so realistically what all of these
different stations have been
explaining is that we don't necessarily
need to be afraid of Wireless anymore I
was afraid of Wireless before but I
think that was justified before this
mouse came out because as we've seen
there were some problems with wireless
mice now click latency would be a huge
one if it was worse than say a wired
mouse so what we're going to do here is
actually measure that so I'll explain
how we'll do that now they have a wire
going into here but you can see that
it's not the actual normal one this is
wired directly into the switch instead
of actually the mouse itself so that you
have your wireless adapter still running
that has been done on the G 900 arrival
300 and a Razer chroma so you can see
there's two wires going into each one of
these because these are more naturally
wired mice I'm going to move these guys
out of the way this wire from the switch
is going into a signal adapter this then
sends it to a latency measurer so what
this one is recording off the bat is
exactly when the switch is pressed and
then it starts a timer from that point
in time to when this adapter is able to
send the signal to the USB analyzer so
that's when it actually receives the
signal that the switch was pressed
because that one isn't wired in that's a
wireless signal so you get to see the
total latency of the mouse within your
system similar to how we were testing
total latency of the mouse in previous
sections this isn't the total latency
until something would appear on your
screen because there's other things
within that equation like your graphics
card on your monitor and whatnot but
this is what Logitech can control so in
order to actually run the test they set
up this kind of game thing where you go
click on the lit up circle this is just
causing you to click a number of times
at different intervals so that can be
recorded over here much like the motion
testing motion latency testing that we
did earlier it'll show up a graph which
will have some slightly rounded numbers
but will give a good visual
representation of the results so we're
going to run this about 30 clicks and
then get a result after that so as you
can see graphically our average is about
4.5 it kind of all Huddle's in a nice
bell curve right around that area and
our
called not really rounded as much
average is at about four point three so
prizing lee similar to the latency in
our motion input latency tests so yeah
let's move on and try the other mice the
first contender is the SteelSeries rival
300 which has its firmware updated to
the most recent one since last Friday so
it's a wired mouse so theoretically up
until now it should be faster so we'll
see if it rains and holds that title
let's begin the results and then
compared against the G 900 okay so
looking up here we can see the blue data
is from the logitech g930 naita is from
the SteelSeries rival 300 you can see
again the mean or general average from
the Logitech G 909 300 it's kind of less
of a more perfect bell curve the mean
looks somewhere around 7.5 though moving
over to the actual math of things it
looks like the average is d about 7.6
which is a pretty significant increase
which is not good you want a lower
number again it's more like golf so it's
not over yet let's try one more so the
program can only store two sets of data
at a time so for round three I'm
actually going to have to redo the G 900
so here we go G 900 test two and then
the G 900 test two will be compared
against the Razer chroma okay so that's
not really very good for the other team
looking at the graphical average now
it's probably at like a little bit below
11 and yeah that's about right ten point
nine milliseconds compared to four point
two nine
sounds like Wireless wins okay that was
actually kind of Awesome I'm pretty
convinced let me know what you guys
think in the comments down below or on
twitter at luke underscore la Fr thank
you to Logitech for sending us here if
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