The Logitech Pro X2 Superstrike is a game-changer. By ditching the microswitches that have been used in gaming mice for decades, Logitech’s new model delivers noticeably snappier left and right clicks and fascinating new tuning options. It won’t make you a pro player overnight, but it narrows the gap like never before – and it looks essential for actual esports players, whose intense interest in the X2 massively accelerated its development.

Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike – Design, HITS and Shape

The Pro X2 Superstrike gets its super powers from what Logitech calls HITS, or a ‘Haptic Inductive Trigger System’. It’s a fancy way of saying the X2 uses an analog sensor to detect how far each main mouse button has been pressed, while a haptic motor beneath rumbles to signify that a click has been recognised, aping the normal tactile feedback you’d expect with a surprising degree of fidelity. Mechanical gaming keyboards have used analogue sensors like this for nearly a decade, but they still relied on the physical movement of a switch to signify a key press – so Logitech’s solution feels like a mixture between this and the haptic feedback Apple has been building into its MacBook trackpads since 2015.

The benefits are easier than I expected to feel in person.

First, you can set the X2 to react to a button-press after just 0.1mm of travel, rather than the 0.6mm commonly seen in gaming mice using traditional optical or mechanical microswitches. That near-elimination of physical movement hugely reduces input latency – the ‘up to 30ms’ quoted in Logitech’s marketing materials is an order of magnitude more than the speed-up you see from polling rates jumping from 1000Hz (1ms) to 8000Hz (0.125ms), for example.

The benefit here is fairly obvious: if you come around a corner in Counter-Strike 2 and spot another player just as they spot you, your bullets will be recognised by the server a few ticks before they start firing back, all else being equal, which makes it a lot easier to kill rather than be killed.

Secondly, the X2 supports rapid trigger, another feature brought over from mechanical keyboards. This is a mode where, rather than button presses and releases being detected based on physically moving past a set threshold, they’re detected based on a change of direction. For example, if you wanted to right click as fast as possible to move your champion and dodge spells in League of Legends, you would ideally be somewhere in the middle of the mouse button’s travel distance, quickly moving up and down without waiting for the mouse to fully reset. On a traditional mouse, this would only work just around the 0.6mm actuation point, but on the X2, this works anywhere, making the technique much more consistent.

The move from a traditional microswitch below the left and right mouse buttons to the Haptic Inductive Trigger System has required some internal adjustments, with a thinner chassis and base plate, titanium screws and a ventilated PCB. These changes trimmed 7g from the initial 68g prototype, allowing the mouse to hit a final kerb weight of 61g - just a gram heavier than the Superlight 2.

Elsewhere, surprisingly little has changed from the Superlight 2 to the X2. Logitech’s new mouse possesses exactly the same shape as its forebear – it’s a medium-sized, gently-sloping symmetric potato, in contrast to the miniaturized Superlight 2c or ergonomic Superlight 2 Dex. It’s not surprising that Logitech is sticking with a proven ‘safe’ shape that works for the vast majority of hand sizes and grip styles to start off, and I’m sure we’ll see the same Superstrike tech in a compact or ergonomic design at some stage. The side buttons also remain of traditional stock, and feel a little odd next to the nearly silent main mouse buttons.

The X2 Superstrike also gets a bit of an external glow-up, with black left and right buttons and some extra wordmarks contrasting nicely with an otherwise white body. Of course, this is Logitech we’re talking about, so I expect to see a magenta version – or another tasteful alternative color scheme – before too long.

Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike – Gaming Performance and Battery Life

It’s rare that you can plonk down a new gaming peripheral and feel a difference before you’ve even hit the loading screen of a game, but that’s exactly what I got with the Superstrike. Just clicking on the play button in Steam feels more snappy and immediate; it’s the same tight and connected feeling you might experience when using a high refresh rate gaming monitor for the first time.

In-game, the difference is more profound. I wouldn’t say that it felt like cheating, exactly, but there’s a thrilling sense of ease when it comes to clicking heads in a Counter-Strike 2 or Battlefield 6 deathmatch. Single-hit kill weapons like the AWP or AK-47 in Counter-Strike feel deadlier than ever before, and spray-and-pray guns like SMGs still feel pretty hooked up. Of course, you’ll still live or die based on your map knowledge, muscle memory and general awareness – a healthy course of CS2 matches proves that there’s plenty more I need to practice to get good – but having a rapid left click feels like a valuable way to even the odds.

Notably, the Superstrike also doesn’t need de-tuning to feel totally natural in other games, either. After selecting the fastest actuation settings and enabling rapid trigger, I was expecting a rough time surfing the web or clicking on static targets in strategy game Battletech, but I didn’t experience accidental misclicks or other issues whatsoever. That was a pleasant surprise, and led to an extremely easy adaptation process.

While the Superstrike represents a night-and-day difference versus the Superlight 2 when it comes to gaming, its battery life figures are competitive with the older mouse. The G Hub software does warn you that increasing the amount of haptic feedback can reduce longevity, but I used the mouse at 1000Hz with haptics set to 3/5, and the mouse easily lasted through around 20 hours of testing while dropping from 75% to just under 50%. Logitech quotes 90 hours of constant motion for the X2, versus 95 hours for the Superlight 2, so if the predecessor was fine for you, this will be too.

Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike – Software and Connectivity

Like the Superlight 2, the Superstrike uses Logitech’s G Hub software for settings adjustments, with no web option available just yet. Here, you get all of the same options as before – sensitivity, key binds, polling rates, and so on – plus the new tunable left and right mouse buttons.

The new HITS settings include actuation distance (how far you have to press for a click to register), rapid trigger sensitivity, and haptic feedback strength. There’s not a huge amount to tweak, but you can independently set up HITS on each of your left and right mouse buttons and share your settings with a single code, in case you want to mimic the setup used by a pro (or your friend Ross). I also appreciated the inclusion of a live read-out of your button presses, so you can see exactly how far you’re pressing down and choose your settings accordingly.

The best thing you can do in the settings to understand the mouse is completely disable the haptic feedback. Instantly, the X2 feels like a dead fish, even though it still clicks exactly as well as before – underscoring the magic that Logitech's engineers have achieved here with the artificial tactile response.

Connectivity is also the same as the Superlight 2, with wired USB and 2.4GHz Lightspeed wireless being the only options – Bluetooth has been excised in that nearly limitless push to cut weight and less useful features for the competitive gaming crowd.

Will is deputy tech editor for IGN, specialising in PC hardware, sim racing and display tech. He has been publishing about games and technology since 2001 (age 12). Will was formerly Deputy Editor at Digital Foundry. He is currently playing MechWarrior 5: Clans.

Still searching for a good Valentine's Day gift? Power banks and chargers might sound like a boring gift idea, but not if they look as stylish as the ones that mfish offers. Even better, you can save an extra 15% off sitewide with coupon code: "MFVAL26" through February 14. mfish power banks, chargers, and cables are a huge step up in build quality, design, and features compared to the standard Anker, Baseus, and Iniu products you generally find on Amazon.

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Amazon is running another 'Buy 2, get 1 50% off' sale this week and some of my favorite books are included here. Whether you're hoping to grab a Valentine's Day gift for someone who loves to read or just looking to stock your own library, right now is a great time to find savings on actual physical books.

If you already know what you're looking for, I'd recommend just diving into the full sale yourself. There are a ton of books included in the promotion and you can easily type things into the search bar to see if they are eligible for that extra 50% off. Otherwise, you can check out some of my top picks for both reading and gifting.

Books I Recommend From the Sale

My overall top pick from this sale is Dungeon Crawler Carl, which has consistently been one of my favorite LitRPG books. It's not a series I'd recommend for everyone, but it's fast, fun, and filled with a surprising amount of explosions. The story follows a guy named Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat as Earth gets taken over by an alien game show and straddled by a completely unhinged AI. There are currently seven books in there series so far and the next book is releasing in May.

If sci-fi is more your thing, then I highly recommend checking out Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. The movie adaptation is coming out in March, so right now is the best time to read it before the movie ruins it for you. Assuming the trailers for the movie haven't already spoiled you on the plot, I'd suggest going in cold and just enjoying the story. It's incredibly well written and you don't need to be a sci-fi nerd to enjoy it. Plus if you like it enough, you can also grab the new LEGO set collaboration coming out next month.

My last big recommendation on this list comes from my deep love for Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe. In case you missed the news, Apple TV and Sanderson recently struck a deal to adapt his sprawling fantasy universe for streaming. If you've never read any of the Cosmere books before, you're going to want to check out the Mistborn trilogy or the Stormlight Archive first. Amazon has box sets for both included in this sale, so it's a perfect starter pack for anyone new to that universe.

The Best Books to Give as Gifts

For those looking for gift ideas, there are a lot of different options available. My overall favorite reading gifts to recommend, however, are illustrated editions. More specifically, I'd suggest checking out The Lord of the Rings Illustrated edition and the Harry Potter Illustrated editions. The Lord of the Rings book I've featured here includes drawings and maps from Tolkien himself and is a really fun way to read the LotR books. Whereas the Harry Potter illustrated books feature gorgeous art from Jim Kay that really capture the magic of the series.

There are also some really cool gift editions of classic stories that I'd suggest checking out. The complete Sherlock Holmes collection looks awesome and features all of the novels from Arthur Conan Doyle in one volume. The Winnie-the-Pooh gift edition is also one of my top Disney gift picks and I'd definitely recommend that. My copy is currently sitting on a shelf in my son's nursery and we've already gotten some good use out of it.

If you're willing to spend a bit more, Amazon also includes quite a few box sets in this sale that are worth a look. Fans of the Game of Thrones books will love the leather-bound box set of George R.R. Martin's series. There's also the entire hardcover set of Sarah J. Maas' Throne of Glass Series included here that I'd recommend for any fan of the romantasy genre. And the Calvin and Hobbes collection is just a great gift for anyone regardless of their preferences.

It's never a bad idea to keep a power station on hand to keep your mobile electronics charged up during emergencies. If you're of the same mind and plan to look on Amazon, then you might want to check out this better deal from AliExpress.

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Ecoflow River 3 Power Station for $130.84

The Best Buy Presidents Day Sale starts this week, and one of the best deals is a great fit for anyone who likes to listen to tunes while running. Right now you can save $60 off the Shokz OpenRun Pro wireless sport headphones, now just $99.99, a savings of nearly 40% off. The OpenRun Pro is the best non-earbuds headphones for running. It uses bone conduction technology which is tailor-made for situations where you need to be fully aware of your surroundings.

Shokz OpenRun Pro Sport Headphones for $99.99

Wuthering Heights opens in theaters on February 13.

Three years after Wuthering Heights was first published under the pen name Ellis Bell, Charlotte Brontë, the sister of its true author, Emily Brontë, issued a correction in its new edition. "The immature but very real powers revealed in Wuthering Heights were scarcely recognised," she wrote in 1850. "Its import and nature were misunderstood."

That sentiment holds up with the arrival of “Wuthering Heights”, writer-director Emerald Fennell's fast and loose adaptation of the beloved book. I now understand why she opted to put the title in quotation marks, because this is by no means a faithful homage. It's shallow fan fiction that has more in common with E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey than Brontë's unflinching portrait of obsessive love, vengeance, the violence of class, racism and generational trauma. If, as Fennell has said, this is her teenage recollection of Wuthering Heights, then it speaks more to the white affluence of her upbringing than Brontë's novel.

The writer-director dispenses with the book's beginning and end, as well as multiple characters who fully contextualize the toxic atmosphere of the eponymous estate. Instead, she opens with black and the grunting sounds of a man. Is he having sex? No, he's being strangled to death in a contrived public hanging scene, gleefully watched by young heroine Catherine Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington), as other kids laugh at his "stiffy" and the camera follows some common folk engaging in promiscuity. This sets the highly sexualized tone for the rest of the film, charting Cathy's sexual awakening from child to "spinster," as her father, Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), calls her, once Margot Robbie takes over the role.

There's been valid criticism of the whitewashing of "dark-skinned gipsy" orphan Heathcliff, a role shared by Owen Cooper and Jacob Elordi, who washes up at Wuthering Heights via Mr. Earnshaw – no longer the novel's loving adoptive parent but redrawn in, from the book, Hindley Earnshaw's revolting, drunken likeness (Hindley being his son, who doesn't appear in the film). But Robbie's casting is equally ill-fitted. The novel's Catherine is a dark-haired, dark-eyed teen, whose unruly stubbornness and violent love that she shares with a similarly-aged Heathcliff speaking volumes for their juvenile nature.

Robbie looks amazing for 35, but here her age works against the authenticity of Catherine's youthful recklessness. She struggles to exude the naivety of a teen who thinks she can have her cake and eat it, by having both Heathcliff and the social status of wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), after he moves into the nearby Thrushcross Grange and proposes.

Robbie and Elordi are obviously very attractive people, and with the number of steamy sex scenes shoehorned in, you'd be forgiven for thinking this amounts to palpable chemistry. But it all feels too forced, like a sales bin, smutty romance novel come to life, working too hard to hide the erasure of Brontë's far more complex ideas about the hell of societal convention.

That's due in large part to the script, which ignores the Gothic supernatural elements and too often paraphrases Brontë's earnest, expressive dialogue in key scenes. Fans hoping to hear Catherine's "If all else perished, and he remained" speech will be left wanting. It also strips away the compelling social commentary about Heathcliff's ethnic ambiguity and sanitizes the brutality of his revenge narrative, softening Heathcliff's aggressive cruelty into something coldly charismatic. His Yorkshire accent isn't bad, but Elordi's performance recalls his Euphoria character, Nate, more than Brontë's antagonistic antihero.

Supporting players like Nelly (Hong Chau) and Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver) fare better. While Nelly's backstory is changed from servant to bastard companion, Chau affords Nelly a quiet composure as a vulnerable witness to (and sometimes meddler in) Catherine and Heathcliff's destructive romance. As Edgar's ward (she's his sister in the book), Oliver nails Isabella's sickly sweet innocence. Even as the film weirdly pushes Isabella to evoke the spirit of Brontë's Catherine, she brings a deviant edge to her infatuation with Heathcliff. It's a wonder they didn't just cast the Irish actor as the lead.