The mouse is painted black with a scroll wheel that is partly silver. With the current faceplate, the Logitech logo is in red and the G9 logo is in silver. Right off of the bat you'll notice the dpi increase/decrease buttons and the LED screen. The scroll wheel also has a horizontal scrolling capability, which is a plus. This faceplate's surface is very slick and smooth. The back of the mouse has three large surfaces for smooth gliding on the mouse pad. One of those surfaces is connected to the faceplate that is currently on. The "MicroGear" button is how you enable the frictionless scrolling capability, which is something I absolutely love. When it's not enabled, the scroll wheel acts like a normal scroll. If you click the "Profile" button you can easily change between the profiles stored on the onboard memory.