I’ve been testing gaming gear for years — here are the 4 best products I actually own | Tom’s Guide

At Tom’s Guide, we review a lot of gaming gear every year. I don’t have a comprehensive count of how many gaming mice, keyboards, headsets, monitors, desktops, and laptops we’ve gone through over the past decade or so, but it’s enough to fill a small electronics warehouse.

I’ve been writing about gaming gear for TG since 2013. During that time, I’ve evaluated some great products, a handful of truly execrable products, and a ton of products that fall somewhere in the middle. Of all the gear I’ve ever tested, though, only a few have impressed me enough to the point of wanting to incorporate them into my personal gaming setup.

It’s one thing for a Tom’s Guide writer to share a positive or negative review; it’s another to pull back the curtain a bit and show you what we use ourselves. With that in mind, here’s a small glimpse into my PC gaming setup at home, and the five peripherals that make it all possible. To be clear, these may or may not be the perfect products for your setup, but I will personally vouch for each and every one.

A gaming rig and a monitor

While there’s a whole subreddit dedicated to PC gamers showing off their battlestations, that’s a bit beyond the scope of this piece. My gaming desk is nothing special, and it’s often pretty messy on top of that. But it might be useful to give a little background about what my general setup looks like before we dive into specific peripherals.

First off, I built my machine back in 2020, and you can read more about it in our “How to build a gaming PC” series of articles. (Many of you have already read it, and yes, I have received your angry e-mails on the topic.) The sheer variety of PC builds, whether custom- or pre-built, is positively dizzying, so discussing this one in particular probably wouldn’t be too useful.

Similarly, I don’t want to spend too much time discussing my monitor, for two reasons. First, buying a monitor is highly dependent on your personal setup — how much space you have, your PC’s performance, your own preferences on resolution vs. frame rate, and so forth. Discussing my monitor in great detail wouldn’t be terribly useful to anyone but me. Second, I have an ancient Samsung monitor that’s been discontinued for years, so it’s not as though anyone could buy it.

Instead, let’s talk about the topic I know best: peripherals. Every device discussed here should work beautifully with any gaming PC, and they’re all currently available for purchase.

Logitech G502 Lightspeed 

When I first reviewed the Logitech G502, I gave it an unprecedented five-out-of-five stars, and declared it was “hands-down the best all-purpose gaming mouse on the market.” When the mouse first came out, I was still putting my well-loved Logitech G500s through its paces, so I didn’t have much need for it at home.

However, by 2020, my G500s was starting to give out, and I decided to transition to an all-wireless setup. I didn’t think twice; I got the Logitech G502 Lightspeed, and I’ve been using it ever since. This mouse boasts a comfortable design, easily programmable software, flawless wireless connectivity and decent battery life — although I’ve never needed to worry about that. (More on this shortly.)

There’s only one reason why I’d recommend against the G502 Lightspeed, and that’s because Logitech has recently released a slightly better successor, the Logitech G502 X Lightspeed. However, you may find some excellent sales as stores try to sell through their G502 Lightspeed stock, and I recommend you pick one up as soon as you see a good bargain.

Logitech G PowerPlay 

The Logitech G PowerPlay is probably the one “superfluous” part of my gaming setup, in that nothing bad would happen if I ditched it completely for one of the best gaming mouse pads. As I pointed out in my initial review, “Let’s not mince words: The PowerPlay system is a $100 mouse pad.” However, that’s no longer strictly accurate, as the PowerPlay has ballooned up to $120 in the past few years.

And yet, I can’t deny that the PowerPlay does exactly what it promises to do. You get a large, high-quality Logitech mouse pad, with either a hard or soft surface. As you work and play, the PowerPlay charges your mouse, provided it’s a Logitech G Lightspeed model. That’s the whole setup. It makes your mouse wireless 100% of the time rather than 99% of the time. It’s overpriced. It’s extravagant. It’s borderline silly. And yet, I use it every single day, and it’s never let me down. Take it for what it’s worth.

Logitech G915

For years, I wondered when we would see a true wireless mechanical gaming keyboard from a major manufacturer. Logitech gave us one in the Logitech G613 — which I didn’t actually love. I appreciated the comfortable key switches and decent wireless connectivity, but the design left something to be desired, as did the lack of a rechargeable battery.

A few years later, though, Logitech came out with the much-better Logitech G915. This was the wireless mechanical gaming keyboard I had been waiting for, with a sturdy chassis, slim keycaps, low-profile switches, full RGB lighting and a much sleeker profile. I had to bring my own wrist rest, and the $250 asking price is positively eye-watering. But in this case, you get what you pay for.

Friends and readers often ask me why I bother with a wireless keyboard, since keyboards are usually stationary, especially in a gaming setup. I don’t have a great response to that point, except that you’d be amazed how often you move your keyboard around when it’s not tethered to one spot. The lack of an extra wire is a boon when you’re installing new hardware or cleaning your desk, and the G915’s Bluetooth connectivity makes it easy to bring all around the house and hook up to other devices. It’s not as useful as a wireless mouse or headset, but it’s a worthwhile luxury.

Logitech G Pro X Wireless 

If there’s one piece of my PC gaming setup that gives me pause, it’s the Logitech G Pro X Wireless headset. I adored this device when I first reviewed it, citing its comfortable fit and excellent sound quality. It turned out to be a wonderful accessory when working from home, thanks to its strong mic and robust software options.

While I still like this headset, however, a few problems have cropped up. After two years, the battery has started to degrade — and 20 hours was never the most generous uptime to begin with. I’m probably down to about 15, and there’s almost no time between the “low battery” tone and total shutdown. Furthermore, it’s not a versatile headset. The earcups don’t fold, so you can’t transport it. It connects via 2.4 GHz USB, and that’s it. There’s no Bluetooth; there’s no hardwired connection.

At $200, it’s also much more expensive than some of the best gaming headsets, even many wireless models. The soundscape and fit are so good, I can’t quite bring myself to investigate other options yet (even though the Steelseries Arctis 7x is my go-to headset when I travel). But the day is probably coming.

Why Logitech gear? Why wireless? 

Astute readers may have noticed two themes in this article: All of my gear is from Logitech, and all of my gear is wireless.

The latter point is actually quicker to address. I’ve been reviewing gaming gear for almost a decade. In that time, I’ve seen wireless gear evolve from a curiosity into a perfectly good alternative to their wired counterparts. The old canards of lag and connectivity issues died a long time ago. Frankly, if you get wireless gear from a major gaming manufacturer, it should work perfectly — and if it doesn’t, it’s probably a defective unit rather than a linewide problem. Wireless gear is still expensive, however, so it’s worth considering just how much you want it.

As for why I use Logitech gear, the answer is twofold. First and foremost, I like using gear from the same manufacturer when possible. I don’t like running multiple gaming software packages, as they can be a drag on system resources. You can sync RGB settings easily and create software profiles that activate for all of your gadgets at once. From an aesthetic perspective, it also just looks cool when all your gear matches.

The second reason is because Logitech is designed to last. A few years back, I traveled to the Logitech headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, and showed one of the engineers a well-worn Logitech laptop mouse that I’d been carrying around in my backpack for about a decade. When I mentioned that it still worked perfectly, the engineer replied, “Why wouldn’t it?”

In any case, there’s lots of great gaming gear out there, and these four products are by no means the be-all, end-all of PC gaming setups. But if you’re on the fence about a gaming mouse, keyboard or headset, these are the ones that I trust in my own home. Maybe they’ll serve you well, too.