Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Logitech, Kensington, Mouse | Themes: Business Notebooks, Laptops and Notebooks
3. Ease of Use
Here I consider these mice as, well, mice. They each glide smoothly over any flat surface, and they both feel comfortable in the hand. Clicking feels solid and obvious with each mouse’s buttons, too, but the Kensington SlimBlade makes quite a bit of noise with each click, where the Logitech V550 is much quieter. In fact, the SlimBlade’s explosive clicks made me feel a bit self-conscious as I paged through a photo slide show.
Speaking of photo slide shows, while the Kensington’s remote control can help you flip through them with ease, its loosey-goosey 360-degree scroll ball (there is no wheel) also scrolls through them—though not intentionally.
The scroll ball is designed to make browsing the Web easy by allowing scrolling in all directions (beyond up, down, left, and right). This works well in most applications, but for screens with low resolutions where web pages that would normally fill the screen are reduced, the ball can cause inadvertent scrolling all around the screen.
And back to the photo slide shows—for example, at a Web-based photo album such as one on Facebook—the ball, when flicked the wrong way, will send you speeding through dozens of photos when you simply wanted to see one at a time. It might help if Kensington implemented a click into the wheel, making it a button, so that you could control when and where 360-degree scrolling takes place.
The V550’s scrolling mechanism is a wheel that can be pushed in or pulled out depending on the speed of scrolling desired. Pushed in, the scrolling progresses at a slowed speed by passing through clicks at every short interval. When pulled out, the wheel can spin extremely fast, unimpeded by clicks. Have far to travel in a list? Pull the scroll wheel out and get there quickly.
Only the Kensington mouse came with a software installation disc, but it seemed superfluous. The mouse worked well as soon as I inserted its receiver into a USB port on my laptop.
Ease of Use Score:
Logitech: 4.5 Kensington: 3.5
- Previous page Design Appeal
- Next page Shortest Receiver, Longest Battery
"But Kensington receiver?though a bit longer?has an ace up its sleeve as well. Though you might not want to leave the Kensington receiver in your computer at all times, it does have a safe home to go to when you remove it from the computer. The bottom of the mouse snaps off to reveal the battery compartment and a perfect hidey-hole for the receiver. Just don?t forget where it is..."
I think the Logitech mouse also has space to store the receiver in the battery compartment also (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2327551,00.asp).
You should update the review to mention this. Its misleading to praise the Kensington mouse for having it but omit to mention the Logitech mouse has the same feature...
J
"But Kensington receiver?though a bit longer?has an ace up its sleeve as well. Though you might not want to leave the Kensington receiver in your computer at all times, it does have a safe home to go to when you remove it from the computer. The bottom of the mouse snaps off to reveal the battery compartment and a perfect hidey-hole for the receiver. Just don?t forget where it is..."I think the Logitech mouse also has space to store the receiver in the battery compartment also (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2327551,00.asp).You should update the review to mention this. Its misleading to praise the Kensington mouse for having it but omit to mention the Logitech mouse has the same feature...J
Thanks Jon, you make a good point. I've changed the review to reflect the fact that the Logitech mouse also has a receiver compartment built in, however, this compartment is not as useful in the Logitech mouse and because it is so small, not nearly as impressive to me as the Kensington receiver's compartment.
Thanks for reading.
Rachel Rosmarin, Editor, Tom's Guide
Nice review.
I just wish there were mice that werent such a strain to use over time.
features and software and looks are great - but if my hand hurts After using said mouse for an hour or 2 (airplane flights, long meetings, etc), then the mouse quickly becomes a paperweight or a suprise gift to little brother (Thus was the fate of my Logitec G9).
You should mention the Logitech will last 5 years while the Kensington 5 months. All jokes aside, Logitech have better quality than any other manufacture.
Trackball on my Kensington Media mouse quits working within three months. I'm still trying to figure out how to get a replacement from Kensington.
Hey, if you're testing a presenter, then test the distance it can actually work from. I've seen huge discrpencies in this from different manufacturers. How about a whole article on presenters! I'd love to read that.
That self adhesive hook is like getting a *n00b* tattoo on your forehead. Only a complete oaf/geek would glue stuff to the outside of their notebook.