It’s 2018 and I Still Can’t Find a Computer Mouse That Fits…or Have I?
I’ve opted to embed separate video reviews of the mice included in this post. I recognize that my problems may not be reflective of everyone’s potential experience and I encourage you to try these mice even though my experience was just plain horrible.
As with many of my “life equipment” purchases of the past few years, I’ve relied heavily on The Wirecutter to guide me in the right direction, typically going with their Upgrade Picks on items. Unfortunately, in the arena of computer mice, I wasn’t able to find anything good. Let’s rewind for a moment to a couple of years ago when I stopped using mice and transitioned to an Apple Magic Trackpad 2. I’ve really enjoyed using the trackpad (although there’s no way I’ve found to utilize even basic PC functions when it’s plugged in via USB to a non-bootcamp Windows machine) and given that I’ve worked on a laptop with a trackpad for the better part of my life, it was a logical move to make when using my laptop shut with an external display. However my computer use increased tremendously in 2016 when I began writing and working on other media (such as this site) to a much greater degree than I ever had before in my life. The result was that I began to experience discomfort in using input peripherals such as my keyboard and mouse. I’ve written a separate article on my keyboard quest, and I am currently on a one-year test of the Leopold FC660C (deemed by a Wirecutter editor as his favorite for nonstop 40 hour per week typing…if not officially reviewed and picked by the site). You can read up on that separately. So far…it’s decent. But the trackpad had also become a bit uncomfortable as well, not in my wrists per se, but the top of my hand was definitely feeling it. And so I turned to the WireCutter for mouse advice. At the outset, I was at a disadvantage as I didn’t want anything wireless that would require battery charging, and it seemed that The WireCutter had only three categories they had reviewed mice in, and all three were wireless. The categories were: As a rule, I always go with the upgrade pick as, well, it’s better than the best according to Wirecutter, and they haven’t let me down yet…scratch that, they did with the Matias Ergo Pro, but that’s a separate post, and technically, it was Matias who let me down, not Wirecutter. I didn’t want a wireless mouse because I always have issues with connections and don’t like to charge or replace batteries. I didn’t want a gaming mouse because I didn’t want extra buttons nor glowy-flashy rainbow lights (which are just silly), and I didn’t want a trackball because I’ve never been a fan of trackballs. Regardless of all my policies, I decided to give Wirecutter a chance on their picks. For best Wireless Mouse Upgrade Pic, The Wirecutter chose the Logitech MX Master 2S. Luckily, unlike many Wirecutter choices, this was something I could actually find in a store so I went on down to Best Buy to check it out. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t buy the thing. It felt cheap and flimsy and imprecise in its handling, and at $75 (at the time), I just didn’t think it was worth giving it a chance. Given that it was the upgrade pick, I saw no point in pursuing the main pick because I was already not interested in a wireless mouse, let alone a lesser one. So we can check this one off the list. While at first I thought I was done, I then considered the possibility of using a gaming mouse, given their reputation for precision movement and ability to have their myriad of extra buttons customized. In looking at the Wirecutter’s upgrade pick, the Logitech G703, I was at first turned off by the fact that it was wireless, but was intrigued by its DPI settings and configurable buttons. Given my proclivity for writing, I had warmed to the idea of having hotkeys/buttons for, among other things, cut/copy/paste (which I wound up doing to my keyboard) Also, ironically, it was easier to find the G703 in stores and it did allow for use when plugged in via USB. I also liked the fact that full mouse functionality was available across both Mac and PC platforms, something that is not the case with my Magic Trackpad 2 (I cannot scroll or right-click on it when using a PC). I found the G703 in stock at the local Fry’s Electronics (Amazon had a 1-3 week shipping estimate) and went down there only to discover that it was a bait and switch. They were plum out of G703’s but had the top of the line G903 in stock there, naturally, for more money. After some hemming and hawing and some youtube review research, I came to the conclusion that G903 might in fact be the better choice as reviewers claimed its strengths over the G703 made it better suited to media work (audio/photo/video) It was f*********g terrible. Where do I begin? Anywhere, so we’ll start with the wired/wireless aspect of it. I decided that at home I would use the G903 via its USB connection as that is where I do most of my photo and video work, and at work in the office, I would use the wireless USB receiver for convenience’s sake and one less cable to tote back and forth with me. At home I didn’t want to deal with any potential latency or choppiness that might result from a wireless connection that, Logitech claims, is eliminated by using their super spiffy light wave speed whatever technology that includes a female-to-female USB adapter that lets you plug in the USB receiver for the mouse to a normal USB cable so you can have it near the mouse itself. To me that was an utterly ridiculous concept (in photos on the Wirecutter they show this application and seriously, you might as well plug the mouse in for a better and guaranteed connection), but also one that I guess matters because I found myself needing to use it because, YES, the mouse does have latency issues and cuts out even when using an extension cable with the USB receiver right in front of the mouse. Another thing I noticed (which was reflected in a YouTube review) was that the fit/finish/refinement on the mouse was not particularly great for the price point of $126. The scroll wheel was wobbly (probably due to its half-baked implementation of left/right scrolling that was slow and arduous at best) and button on top to switch from smooth up/down scrolling to ratcheted (or stepped) scrolling had an incredibly cheap-sounding spring mechanism that brought back memories of switches from the 80’s. While its optical sensor tracked well, its scrolling functionality on a Mac was abysmal with choppy vertical scroll, and an atrocious forced incremental horizontal scroll that I could count a full second between each increment it moved to the left or right. The $20 purchase of the utility USB Overdrive helped a little, with the vertical, but did nothing for the horizontal. All of these things were dealbreakers, but the worst part of this mouse wasn’t that it functioned, well, barely. The worst part of it was its ergonomics. It caused (and I am not understating this) my carpal tunnel syndrome to explode with my right hand/forearm becoming the symphony orchestra equivalent of amplified CT symptoms. Really. It was intense beyond belief and lasted for a couple of days after I gave up on the mouse. I can’t believe I’m the only person who’s had such a viscerally negative physical reaction to this mouse and I don’t see how an esports athlete could possibly use this for extended periods of time. To be fair to the Wirecutter, they didn’t recommend this mouse at all, but I thought that it was merely because its price point relative to the additional features it offered over the G703 wasn’t justified. I only wish they would have noted it’s severe ergonomic shortcomings. Either that or I have freakish joints, which I don’t think is the case. And so I gave up on the G903 and returned it. I couldn’t help but notice upon returning it to Fry’s that when I walked the gaming mouse aisle, there was an unusually high number of open-box G903’s for sale in the Logitech portion of the aisle. It would seem to be the case that users, be they gamers or otherwise, aren’t happy with it. Also, the G703 still was not back in stock.(I have no idea if this review is any good but 60 days is a good amount of time to suffer through this mouse’s strengths and weaknesses) Not the one to be deterred, and still believing in the Wirecutter, I went back to the site to look at trackballs (which I had in a former life not been a huge fan of but thought things might have changed in the 15 or so years since I last tried one). I settled on the Wirecutter’s pick for a thumb-operated trackball – the Logitech MX Ergo Advanced Wireless Trackball. It appeared to offer a natural resting position for my hand, seemed comfortable, and I liked its heavy solid construction. But of course, its weaknesses far outweighed its strengths. Like the G903 it was wireless, but unlike the G903, it was simply normal bluetooth and didn’t make use of the G903’s super-fancy Light-dingle-dangle technology. Like the G903, that didn’t matter anyway as I found it had the exact same latency and skipping issues the G903. But it also had other problems. One, that was irredeemable, was that it emitted an extremely high-pitched whine. You know the type of sound. It’s the unnerving sound your USB battery pack makes while charging that makes you think it’s going to combust. The thing about this trackball though, is that it did it all the time and it was loud enough to keep me awake at night (if I didn’t remember to switch off the mouse…but then again, who ever does that?). The other baffling thing about this mouse was that the only way to connect it to a computer was via bluetooth or a Logitech Unifying USB receiver. The micro-USB plug on the mouse itself did not work for connecting it to a computer…so no luck in avoiding latency or interference issues there. To me this was a bizarre thing to leave off a $90 trackball. Scrolling had the same issues, although this being the fifth Logitech mouse I had used in recent memories (apart from the G903 I’ve gone through several at work), I have now come to the conclusion that there is ZERO consistency in terms of feel and feedback from the scroll wheels on all of Logitech’s mouse offerings. Each one is different, and bad, and Logitech needs to do something about this or at least do a better job of giving would be users the option of tailoring the scroll wheels to their individual liking. There are clearly a variety of ratchet settings and styles Logitech offers, so why not make them optional on every mouse they make? I’m probably asking too much. While I originally perceived the MX Ergo’s shape to be comfortable, it turned out to not be good enough to make up for the rest of the device’s shortcomings, and so I also wound up returning this mouse too. You might be wondering why I haven’t included any photos of these devices in my post. Well…it’s because I disliked them so much I saw no reason to photograph them. You can’t really articulate the feelings of carpal tunnel syndrome and other discomfort while using a mouse in a photo, so I didn’t bother. I do regret not recording a video of the piercing noise the MX Ergo made though. In hindsight, I should have done that. You can also find pics of all these mice (not the Trackpad) on the WireCutter’s site, or google images and youtube of course. After these two frustrating and genuinely painful experiences, I wound up reevaluating my Magic Trackpad 2. In the end I realized that, for my needs, it remained the best of the bunch. It’s only shortcomings being that it can’t right-click or two finger scroll on a native PC, and so I keep a dirt cheap mouse nearby for its right button and occasional scroll. Other than that, the Magic Trackpad scrolls beautifully (whether by bluetooth or connected USB) and naturally and takes into account “physics” so-to-speak in the way the scrolling action decelerates over time. It also scrolls smoothly from left to right, making it ideal for media timeline work unlike anything else I’ve tried. On top of that, I have never suffered from latency or choppy movement from the cursor. I did wind up buying a cheap Glorious Gaming wrist rest for use with the track pad and that has helped quite a bit with my discomfort, so until somebody comes up with my grail mouse (which should have happened by now…), I’ve decided I’m perfectly content to continue on with my Magic Track Pad 2.
