Logitech Pop Icon Keys and Mouse review: Quirky design with a hint of AI goodness

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere from your smartphones, laptops, televisions, cameras and even audio devices so why should a keyboard and mouse be any different. Logitech’s new Pop Icon Keyboard and Mouse aims to fill this gap by bringing ChatGPT to merely a click of a button.

The Pop Icon combo is priced at ₹9,295 ( ₹6,695 for keyboard and ₹3,595 for mouse) but does it deliver a premium experience worthy of the price. I have used the keyboard and mouse for over 2 months and her’s my two bits on how the combo fares in the real world.

Logitech Pop Icon Combo: Design and performance

Logitech Pop Icon Keyboard and mouse combo comes in four different colourways: lilac & off White, graphite & green, rose & off White and off white & orange. I received the rose colour variant which looks catchy with a combination of white and pink coloured keys. The keyboard will definitely catches a lot of outside attention and if you are minimalist like me it would be wiser to opt for the green or off white version.

The combo comes in an ergonomical design with a weight of around 530 grams for the keyboard and 80 grams for the mouse. The relatively lightweight design meant that I was easily able to carry the keyboard and mouse in my work bag easily.

The Keyboard departs from the mechanical design of its predecessor and instead opts for a more conventional design. The membrane switches on the keyboard make for a relatively quiet and comfortable typing experience. The keys themselves are relatively similar to what you see with a normal keyboard with a few nifty additions. I particularly liked the addition of brightness up/down and mute buttons.

On the back of the keyboard, you see a little bump that provides the keyboard stability even when typing at high speeds. It also hold the 2AAA batteries and space for the Logitech USB dongle (which sadly isn’t bundled with this combo and needs to be bought separately).

The keyboard also isn’t backlit, which could be a dealbreaker for those who prefer working late at night. I believe this is a major miss on Logitech’s part, considering that even much cheaper keyboards in the market come with built-in backlighting.

Moving on to the mouse, the minimalist dual tone pink design on this little device adds a nice bit of contrast to the vibrant keyboard. There were no problems with the performance of the mouse but its compact size makes it a little uncomfortable to hold for people with larger palms like myself.

If you have read any of my previous reviews, you’ll know I am a sucker for details and one thing I really love about the Logitech Pop mouse is the kind of whizzing sound it makes when rotating the wheel fast. I know it’s a tiny thing, but it’s that kind of small thing that makes you live with your accessories a little bit longer.

The keyboard is claimed to last 3 years and the mouse 2 years without replacing the batteries. While there is no way of telling how long the batteries will actually last, I am inclined to believe Logitech at their word given that my mouse still has 95% battery while the keyboard is 100% charged despite rarely turning them off.

In case you are worried about compatibility, the keyboard and mouse combo will run on all major operating systems including Windows, macOS, ChromeOS and Linux.

AI comes to keyboard:

The standout feature of Pop Icon combo is the companion Logi Options+ app which is available on Windows and Mac. The easy to use app allows users to check the battery percentage of both devices and customize 15 buttons on the keyboard and 2 buttons on the mouse.

Logitech not only makes it easier to connect with ChatGPT using the default app but fine tunes the prompt according to the needs of the users. The AI prompt builder can be set to any of the customizable keys on the keyboard and mouse. It can be used to generate prompts for rephrasing or summarising text, replying to a conversation or creating an email, keeping in mind the tone and length required for the task at hand.

There is only support for ChatGPT at the moment but one could assume that Gemini, Claude and other chatbots may not be very far behind.

While the prompt builder is definitely a good start, I am not fully convinced about the usefulness of the feature. In my experience, my personalized prompts yielded better results with ChatGPT than the ones suggested by Logitech.

Verdict:

Logitech Pop Icon Keyboard plus Mouse combo while being a little price is a must buy for someone wants their accessories to stand out. The lack of backlighting and additional cost for USB dongle could make it a dealbreaker for some people but I feel that it more than makes up for it with the quiet typing experience, seamless connectivity, long batter life, excellent software support and nascent AI features.