Truly, the ring feels like a feature that every trackball designer should steal gong forward, and it's shocking that other devices handle scrolling in other ways.īut let's talk a bit about the limitations of trackballs.
The scroll ring, in particular, feels incredibly natural to use: You can easily scroll up and down using one finger without moving the others out of rolling position. Though it's a four-button setup, with less functionality than most basic mice, each input feels like it's in the right place. Compared to other ergonomic mice and keyboards, that's nothing. It takes just a few minutes to get used to the setup, even for a new trackball user. With slightly stubby fingers, I occasionally needed to move my wrist slightly to reach the top click panels, though people with larger hands or longer fingers should not have that issue. None of the buttons requires you to bend or extend your fingers into uncomfortable positions.
With proper "posture," your middle three fingers rest on the trackball, with your thumb and pinky on the bottom click panels, which serve as left- and right-click by default. The simple, elegant button placement is more important than you might think. Your hand stays in position, even during long sessions. (That's important, especially for new trackball users.) It isn't really plush, but it's soft enough that your wrist and hand feel supported. This thick, firm, leatherette-coated pad serves as a guide, much like the hump along the left ridge of a mouse, ensuring that your hand sits in the right place with your fingers in the correct position over the trackball. The device grows about three inches longer when you add the detachable wrist rest. It fits into the rest perfectly and stays in place, so long as you don't pick it up. The ball itself is a large, smooth sphere of shiny red plastic. The panels are loud and frankly a bit springier than what you find in most mice it's mostly a non-issue, but can occasionally become a distraction.Īround the ball is a textured scroll ring that looks a bit like the ring around an old kitchen timer. The roughly rectangular block, measuring 2.7 by 5.1 by 5.8 inches (HWD, including the ball), has four large, triangular click panels that frame the hemisphere crater in which the ball sits. The Perfect Trackball? Roll With Me Hereįor an "expert" device, the Kensington Expert Wireless looks and feels quite simple. A few improvements could be made and power-user features added, but the Expert Mouse earns an Editors' Choice for providing everything you need to adapt to the trackball lifestyle.
Plus, it’s cordless, so less desk clutter. The $99.99 Expert Mouse Wireless Trackball is comfortable to navigate, and compact enough to suppress strenuous motions. It should come as no surprise that Kensington, a company known for making trackballs, would design what I see as the platonic ideal of the form. They offer economy of movement-all the work falls to a few fingers that, while they move a lot, never have to stretch. But if you have wrist or shoulder troubles, trackballs keep your whole arm still. It can feel strange to switch from using a mouse, which feels like an extension of your arm, to rolling a ball to move your cursor. Like many ergonomic products, trackballs are an acquired taste-often, acquired by sheer painful necessity.
#Kensington expert mouse wireless trackball software#
0 kommentar(er)
