Logitech MX Master 4 Review: A Great Mouse With One Feature It Has to Justify

Logitech MX Master 4 Wireless Mouse — manufacturer/retailer product photo.

Listen to the verdict

Verdict

4.5

Excellent — the best productivity mouse you can buy, and a weak upgrade for MX Master 3S owners

Compared against Logitech MX Master 3S, MX Anywhere 3S, MX Vertical, MX Master 4 for Business

The MX Master 4 is the fourth iteration of a mouse that arguably peaked two versions ago, and Logitech knows it. The shape, the free-spinning MagSpeed wheel, the thumb wheel, the 8,000 DPI Darkfield sensor that tracks on glass and the ability to flow across three machines are all carried straight over from the MX Master 3S. What is new is a Haptic Sense Panel in the thumb rest and the Actions Ring, a radial overlay of eight app-aware shortcuts that appears at your cursor. Both are clever. Both are also, right now, tied to a limited set of applications. Add Quiet Clicks, a USB-C receiver at last, and a €30 price bump to €129.99, and you get a mouse that is an easy recommendation for a new buyer and a genuinely hard sell to anyone who already owns a 3S. Buy it if you are coming from a cheap office mouse or a worn-out MX Master 2S. Keep your money if the 3S under your hand still works.

Watch before you buy

What Actually Changed From the MX Master 3S

Put the two mice side by side and you would struggle to tell them apart at a glance. That is deliberate: the MX Master silhouette — tall, steeply sculpted, with a thumb shelf and a secondary horizontal scroll wheel tucked under it — has been the reference shape for productivity mice for the better part of a decade. Logitech did not touch it, and it was right not to.

Four things are genuinely new. First, the Haptic Sense Panel: a touch-sensitive area built into the thumb rest that vibrates to confirm actions, shortcuts and notifications, with intensity adjustable in Logi Options+. Second, the Actions Ring — press that panel and a circular overlay of eight shortcut buttons appears around your cursor, and its contents change depending on which application is in focus. Third, Quiet Clicks, which Logitech claims cut click noise by 90%. Fourth, connectivity: the bundled receiver is now USB-C rather than the old USB-A Logi Bolt dongle, and Logitech describes it as delivering "2X more powerful connectivity" via a new radio chip and optimised antenna.

Everything else is continuity. The MagSpeed electromagnetic wheel still shifts between ratcheted and free-spin and still claims 1,000 lines per second. The Darkfield sensor is still 8,000 DPI and still works on a glass desk. Battery is still quoted at up to 70 days, still charges over USB-C, and still gives roughly three hours of use from a one-minute top-up. You still get three device channels and Logitech Flow for dragging files between machines.

The Haptics: Clever, Real, and Narrower Than the Marketing Suggests

This is the feature the entire €30 premium rests on, so it deserves a straight answer.

The haptic engine itself is not a gimmick. Notebookcheck's review of the mouse describes it as "more than just a gimmick," and the physical sensation — a small, well-damped pulse under the thumb rather than a buzzy phone-style rattle — is the part Logitech clearly spent its engineering budget on. Where the picture gets more complicated is coverage. Notebookcheck's two named criticisms are precisely the two that matter here: the haptics "only work with certain programs" and the effect is "limited to the thumb area."

That is the crux. Logitech has built app-aware haptic responses around a shortlist of creative and communication tools — Photoshop, Lightroom and Zoom feature in its own launch material — rather than a system-wide feedback layer. If your working day runs through Adobe apps, that is a genuine workflow win: brush-size changes and slider adjustments get a tactile detent that your hand can read without your eyes leaving the canvas. If your working day runs through a browser, a terminal, a code editor and a text document, you will feel the panel confirm a click and not much else.

So the honest framing is not "does haptic feedback work" — it does — but "does haptic feedback work in the software you actually use." That is a question only you can answer, and it is worth answering before you spend the money rather than after.

The Actions Ring Is the Better Feature

Slightly buried under the haptics story is the thing that will probably change more workflows: the Actions Ring. Thumb the Haptic Sense Panel and a radial menu of eight shortcuts materialises at your pointer, populated with commands relevant to whatever app has focus.

The reason this matters is distance. A conventional mouse shortcut sends you to a toolbar at the edge of the screen, or forces a keyboard chord your other hand has to find. A radial menu at the cursor makes every one of its eight targets roughly equidistant and roughly zero travel away, which is why radial menus have persisted in professional 3D and CAD software for thirty years. Logitech claims the Actions Ring can save up to 33% of the time spent reaching for tools — a vendor figure, not an independent measurement, and one to treat with the usual scepticism — but the underlying interaction model is sound and well proven.

The Actions Ring is also the feature with the clearest upgrade path: it is software, it is customisable, and its usefulness grows as Logitech adds app profiles. The haptics are constrained by what a thumb can perceive. The ring is constrained only by how much effort you put into configuring it.

How the MX Master 4 Compares Inside Logitech's Own Range

The MX Master 4's real competition is not another brand — it is the three other Logitech mice a productivity buyer will be cross-shopping, including the one it replaces.

List prices taken from logitech.com (EU store) on 30 July 2026; street prices at Amazon and other retailers are frequently lower, and the MX Master 3S in particular is regularly discounted. The MX Vertical is often on promotion below its €99.99 list. Weights are manufacturer figures.

Read that table from the point of view of someone spending their own money and the shape of the decision is obvious. The MX Master 3S is the same mouse minus two features for €30 less. Unless the haptics and the Actions Ring land squarely in your workflow, the 3S is the better value — and our MX Master 3S review still stands.

Living With It: Weight, Software and the Missing Cable

Three practical points that the spec sheet does not make obvious.

It is heavy. At 150 grams the MX Master 4 is nine grams heavier than the 3S and about 50% heavier than a small travel mouse like the MX Anywhere 3S. Notebookcheck calls it "quite heavy" and flags it as an annoyance for mobile users while noting the mass does help precision. On a desk, with a palm grip, that weight reads as planted and premium. In a laptop bag, it reads as a brick. This is a desk mouse; treat it as one.

The software is the weak link. Logi Options+ is where every one of the new features is configured — haptic intensity, Actions Ring contents, per-app profiles, Flow — and it is also the part reviewers keep flagging. Notebookcheck notes that Options+ "remains in beta phase." Nothing here is broken, but if you are the sort of person who resents installing a 200 MB configuration utility to make a mouse do what you bought it for, budget some patience.

There is no charging cable in the box. Notebookcheck lists the missing cable among its criticisms. You get the mouse and the USB-C receiver; the cable is your problem. Given a quoted 70-day battery and a one-minute-to-three-hours quick charge, you will need it perhaps six times a year — but it is a conspicuous omission at €129.99, and worth knowing before you unbox it on a day you have no spare USB-C lead.

Technical Specifications

Specifications from Logitech's published product data and retailer listings. Percentages and performance claims marked as Logitech's are the manufacturer's own figures.

Who Should Buy the Logitech MX Master 4?

Buy it if you: are replacing a generic office mouse, a worn-out MX Master 2S, or anything that has left your wrist aching by 4pm, and you want the mouse you will still be using in five years. It is also the clear pick if you work in Adobe apps or spend hours a day on video calls, because those are exactly the contexts where the haptic layer and the Actions Ring have real app support today. And if you run a multi-machine desk — a work laptop plus a personal one, or a laptop docked to a monitor — Flow and three-device switching are worth the price on their own. Pair it with a Logitech MX Keys and the two share a receiver channel and the same Options+ profiles.

Consider alternatives if: you already own an MX Master 3S — the honest advice is to keep it. You will get identical ergonomics, identical scrolling and identical tracking, and the €30 you save buys a decent USB-C hub or a chunk of a monitor arm. If you travel constantly, the MX Anywhere 3S is 51 grams lighter and fits a laptop sleeve. If your problem is wrist pain rather than productivity, the MX Vertical solves a different problem and the MX Master 4 will not fix it. And if you want the whole field at every budget, our best wireless productivity mouse guide lines the options up side by side.

The €129.99 value calculation: spread over the four-to-six years an MX Master typically survives, this is somewhere around €2 a month for the single input device your hand touches more than anything else you own. Framed that way the price is trivial, and that is the framing Logitech is counting on. The counter-framing is equally true: the MX Master 3S delivers 90% of the same experience for €99.99, and the missing 10% is a feature set whose value swings wildly depending on which apps you open. Decide which of those two sentences describes you, and the buying decision resolves itself.