While Apple’s Magic Mouse lets you do a few multi-touch gestures, I’ve never liked how it felt in my hand, and I hate how it scrolls — I’d much rather have a real scrollwheel for navigating the long pages of text I read day in and day out. When I plugged in Kensington’s Pro Fit Mid-Size Mouse, it felt so much more comfortable and responsive that my Magic Mouse immediately went in a drawer and might never come out.
Lefties need not apply here — the ergonomic design is shaped to be held in your right hand, but its curves and button placement make it feel great under your fingers and palm. The scrollwheel gives me just enough tactical feedback without any extra noise. (A couple of years ago I used a Microsoft mouse with such a loud scrollwheel rattle that my coworkers made fun of me.)
It has a few extra buttons: two under where your thumb goes, and one below the scrollwheel. The lower under-thumb button opens the Application Switcher (the thing that pops up when you press Command-Tab), but the other two did nothing. System Preferences > Mouse let me set the tracking, scrolling, and double-click speeds, but it wouldn’t let me reprogram those extra buttons. And when I opened System Preferences > Mission Control, I was able to choose a new function for Mouse Button 3 (the upper of the two under-thumb buttons). But I couldn’t reassign Mouse Button 4 to do anything besides open the Application Switcher, and Mouse Button 5 (under the scrollwheel) wouldn’t do anything. It’d be cool if Kensington supplied a driver to fix that, but for $25, just having a comfortable, responsive mouse will suffice.
The bottom line. Size-wise it hits the sweet spot between too-small notebook mouse and big-honkin’ desktop versions. The tiny nano USB receiver snaps into the bottom of the mouse for travel. And it feels great in my hand.
Pro Fit Mid-Size Mouse
USB port, right hand
Really small receiver. Comfortable. Nice colors. Great battery life. Inexpensive.
Not for lefties. Can’t reprogram all the buttons.
Francesca_F
March 05, 2013 at 6:04am
I've just bought this mouse and have been able to assign all of the buttons (except the one under the scrollwheel). Under mission control it let me choose the buttons I wanted for mission control, application window, show desktop and show dashboard. Been really pleasantly surprised with how good this mouse is especially for the price.
I am running mountain lion on my macbook so don't know if this makes a difference.
nbrowser
January 02, 2013 at 7:31am
And yet another non ambidextrous rodent I won't be buying, c'mon mouse makers, enough with the right hand biased mice, us lefties are getting sick of this.
All jokes aside, sure a high end gaming mouse should be tailored for a specific hand, but everyday tasks, a mouse should be ambidextrous, just saying.
James Dempsey
January 06, 2013 at 7:58am
Given that 90% (probably a lot closer to 95%) of computer users are right-handed, I wouldn't hold your breath for any relief from manufacturers.
Apple makes a mouse perfect for lefties (not that I'm saying the Magic Mouse is a perfect mouse). But really, the Magic Trackpad is about as close to perfect as you're going to get. Mouse makers will like start shifting focus to touch-devices because that's what Apple will be doing in the next year or so.
