Logitech will pull a Nintendo — only European mice will come with replaceable batteries

In June, Nintendo announced a new version of the Switch 2 that should let you easily replace its battery pack — but only for Europe. Logitech will do much the same. User-replaceable batteries will be the law in Europe in February 2027, but instead of bringing them to the rest of the world, Logitech plans to ship one version of its wireless mice to Europe and a different version everywhere else.

That’s the word from Logitech’s new gaming boss, Robin Piispanen. We talked about it over iced vanilla lattes at my local cafe, right after discussing how Logitech isn’t sure it wants to make another gaming handheld.

Why? Logitech believes that less-repairable peripherals might actually be superior, once you consider the tradeoffs.

“It’s not just the cost, you’re also adding weight,” Piispanen tells The Verge. He says that Logitech typically ships devices with a lightweight soft-sided lithium-based battery inside, with a very thin cable, because the company knows most people won’t take them apart. “But that is not safe for you to operate on, we can’t give that to you in good conscience and say, hey, go replace a soft-pack battery.”

Instead, Logitech’s wireless products in Europe will ship with a hard-pack battery, a more rigid design that’s harder to puncture accidentally. (Not to overstate the risk, but punctured lithium-based batteries can quickly start fires.) For extra safety, Piispanen says Logitech will offer certified replacement batteries in Europe, too.

But he says he won’t ship them to the United States, for example. He says Logitech ran the numbers, and its forecasts suggest few people will bother replacing those batteries.

“How many people are going to open up their own mouse, take out the battery, put in a new one because the battery ran old?” he asks. Piispanen says replaceable batteries make more sense for expensive products like laptops or phones, but that people tend to replace Logitech’s $50 to $100 wireless mice as they wear down.

While I agree that Logitech’s mice are currently disposable products, I strongly disagree that they should continue to be that way. Isn’t the right-to-repair movement about changing that outlook on the world? Would consumers change that behavior if the devices were easier to fix?

So I ask Piispanen, who says he believes in right-to-repair: Why doesn’t Logitech actually sell the wear-and-tear parts for its mice, despite claiming it does? Why doesn’t it sell the rubber grip pads on the side of my Logitech G502 Lightspeed, which I’ve now worn a hole through, or the mouse switch that’s beginning to double-click on the side of my mouse?

It sounds like the answer is: Logitech isn’t actually ready to trust consumers with repairs themselves.

“Mouse switches means you have to open up the whole mouse, and you’re most likely going to break something,” he says. Replacing the grips means cleaning up old adhesive and replacing it with new adhesive — “that’s a process for you to do it well.”

“I don’t want to like, sell you a part just for you to screw it up and then be sad about it,” Piispanen says later.

That said, he says he sees the passion in the community, how some people are willing to void their warranty to modify their Logitech gear, and he seems to take my point that Logitech isn’t fulfilling its “wear and tear” right-to-repair promise yet.

He says that “the bigger question” is how Logitech can design new products that don’t wear out as quickly. “The mouse you’re talking about, that was seven years old, and I salute you for really wanting to keep on using it,” he says.

But he also tells me he’ll take a look at those mouse grips: “I want to see what spare parts we’re lacking that is wear and tear, because if we’re talking about things that we actually could do, I want to look into that.”