Once, many many years ago, I went over to my friends house and was amazed and very curious about an input device he had plugged into his computer in lieu of a traditional mouse. Ever since then, I've wanted to try out a trackball but never did. Recently I've been using my computer from my bed, my keyboard on my lap, my mouse to my side. This position wasn't that efficient for mouse use, the mouse wanted to slide towards me so i had to put some books under the mouse pad in a very ghetto setup, and prolonged use from that position made my shoulder sore. I decided I would try out a trackball and see if that was better. I did my research and it looked like the kensington expert was exactly what i wanted: a large ball you control with your fingers not your thumb, multiple buttons, had a scroll wheel, the price was decent, it got good reviews, and most importantly looked awesome. And it relieved my sore shoulder. This trackball was everything I was hoping for.
- The ball is very large and allow precise movements, which was my primary interest when looking at all the trackballs on the market. I tried out the extremely popular logitech thumb trackball and the thumb movement wasn't for me, it's imprecise and made me sea sick in FPS games. The ball is pretty heavy but once you break it in (ie cover the ball in hand oil) the ball rotates very smoothly and doesn't stick.
- The two extra buttons are invaluable. After using a mouse with 2 extra buttons, it would be hard to go back to a mouse with only left and right click. The buttons on this trackball are huge and do take a bit of getting used to. Left clicking with your thumb becomes second nature after a bit of use, but the two upper buttons are more difficult to reach and for me, it took me quite a while to press the upper buttons when I needed to without really consciously thinking about it. Once you get used to it it's pretty awesome though. A word of warning if you enjoying gaming though: moving the cursor + clicking the upper two buttons is kinda difficult, with the upper left button being near impossible (when using your right hand; left hand vice versa). This is probably the worst thing about trackballs in general: you're controlling the cursor with your fingers instead of your hand movement. In order to have smooth cursor movement, it's difficult to press harder to reach buttons or press multiple buttons simultaneously. This negative isn't a deal breaker for me, but it is something to keep in mind. This trackball's software enables button chording (pressing the two lower or two upper buttons simultaneously for a third input [ie press left + right click at the same time to get middle click]) but I hate the software so I can't use it. More on that in the tips n tricks section below.
- This trackball has a scroll wheel. It's not bad but I'm not 100% happy with it. The scroll wheel works fine, it scrolls exactly when it's supposed to and it doesn't feel terrible, but sometimes (maybe it's just mine) the wheel doesn't feel very solidly in there, it has a bit of jiggle, but it only feels that way sometimes. In addition the "grating sand" texture isn't amazing but it's not bad. I thought I would dislike it a hell of a lot more after reading all those bad reviews. The scroll wheel isn't bad, it's not enough to drop my review down a star, but I wouldn't say I love it either.
- Trackballs are pretty expensive, it seems like they either fall into the overpriced and crappy category, or the overpriced and good category. This trackball falls into the latter. Compared to other trackballs or similar price I would say this is a pretty good value. At the time of this writing, $70 is pretty dang amazing (I bought it for $75).
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Here are some miscellaneous tips n tricks about my experience with this trackball:
* The software that you can download from the kensington website, trackballworks, is the worst piece of crap. Mouseworks or whatever the previous version was called I hear was significantly better and allowed a lot of customization, but sadly it doesn't work past windows XP. The feature I was talking about earlier, chording, is useless if you game AT ALL. The way chording works in this software is thusly: You press a button, but before the input for that button goes through, the software waits about half a second to see if you're going to press another button. This works ok outside of games where you rarely push two mouse buttons at the same time. I thought "oh ok I'll just turn the feature off." NOPE. Even if you don't assign anything to the chord input, there's still a half second delay, AND if you do push both buttons simultaneously, instead of sending both buttons inputs like you would expect, it sends NO INPUT. This effectively makes the software worse than useless for gaming. I called kensington support about this issue I was having and their answer was "that's just a limitation of the software, there's nothing you can do." So I thought "ok I'll just close the software" but for some reason that completely screwed up the scroll wheel, making it act weird as hell. After a few days I had the thought to uninstall the software which disabled chording and restored the scroll wheel's function. If you game, don't install the terrible software.
* If you don't install the software but still want to assign different inputs to the buttons than the defaults (left click, right click, button 4, middle click, going counterclockwise from the bottom left button) then install x-mouse button control. I found that program searching for an answer to my question with trackball works. x-mouse button control is amazing, you can assign whatever inputs you want to the buttons, and even have each button do a different thing depending on the program you're in. Just pretend x-mouse button control is the software that comes with this trackball and never look back.
* For those of you who are concerned about the reviews talking about the ball sticking, don't worry, after a little use it loosens up. For very precise movements, if the ball is stiff, it won't move at all until you reach a certain level of force, then it will suddenly unstick and the cursor will move way further than you intended. If this is happening, just use the trackball for a few hours and eventually the ball will be coated in natural hand oils. If it becomes smooth and then starts sticking again, trying cleaning the metal contact points the ball rests on with a bit of rubbing alcohol, this always makes the ball roll super smooth again for me. And here's something I recently found out: microfiber cloths are amazing. Wiping the ball for a few seconds with a microfiber cloth made the ball roll like new again and prevents sticking for days/weeks.
* This trackball was uncomfortable to me at first. My hand didn't know how to properly use it and my wrist would get sore. After just a few days of heavy use, it became waaay more comfortable to use. It's all about how used to it you are. Don't listen to the negative reviews saying how uncomfortable this trackball is, all trackballs are more ergonomic than mice, and this one is no exception.
This is by far the longest review I've written for an amazon purchase but this trackball deserves it. I love this thing. Do your research and buy the trackball you think is best for you, but if you do end up buying this one you won't be disappointed.
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