Evoluent Mouse Review: In short, the best mouse I have ever used, though it is far from perfect.
Back when I was young, ergonomics meant nothing. I was made out of rubber and could adapt to just about everything. Now that I’m old and rigid, there is only one way and that is “My Way”.
the Poor & the Better
How can this mouse be the best, and still be far from perfect? I suspect the answer lies, in the modern drive to reduce cost and do whatever everyone else is doing.
It is the best because:
1) When used the wrist is in it’s most natural position thus reducing some of the most common strain. Most mice have your palm resting parallel to the working surface. Most other ergonomic mice rotate the wrist slightly in the direction of moving the thumb up. The Evoluent mouse does the rotation a full 90 degrees. If you let your hand hang down by your side and then raise it up to the hand shake position, you will find that your wrist is in the “Evoluent” position. Very natural and restful.
2) The mouse buttons work well. The action is light, positive and with good tactile feedback.
3) The mouse slides well with less effort than any other mouse I’ve used. The lowest friction mouse pad I have is from Fellows, with this pad the Evoluent mouse slides too easily. I now use the mouse on bare pine wood.
The bad:
1) When grasped normally your wrist is rotated almost 90 degrees. This means that only a small part of the wrist is in contact with the desktop, resulting in a stress point where the wrist contacts the desktop. If you look at that “Fellows” mouse pad you’ll see it comes with a palm support intended for use with a regular mouse. Well the Evoluent needs something similar but tailored for the wrist in a verticle position and it should be integrated into the mouse. My current solution is to grasp the mouse so my wrist does not contact the desktop. In this position the weight of my hand/arm is supported by my palm resting on the mouse. After a month of use, this has been a reasonable solution, although my fingers no longer align perfectly with the mouse buttons and wheel.
2) With the wrist in the verticle position your fingers are now elevated and subject to the weight of gravity. There needs to be some contouring of the mouse buttons to support the fingers in their proper position. With my adaptation of using my palm to support my arm weight mentioned above the fingers no longer droop in response to gravity, but as mentioned they are not perfectly aligned with the mouse buttons.
3) The wheel is one of the best around but still a long way from perfect. It has detents that serve to indicate definitive wheel action, such as, to scroll a single line for each detent. Depending on the software application used, these detents may correspond perfectly or not. This deficiency in correspondence is probably an industry deficiency and not something a mouse manufacturer can get right at this point in time. As usual the industry is in no hurry to implement a correction. In a perfect world the wheel would not have detents and some magic would detect when we intended a discrete response from wheel movement. I have never used a detentless wheel that worked well, where are the good engineers when you need them?
4) It is hard to pick up the mouse without depressing a button. This can be quite a pain especially when constrained to a mouse pad of limited size.
Moving the Evoluent Mouse:
1) Movement top to bottom is the same as a traditional mouse. Sideways movement on the other hand is different due to the differing orientation of the wrist. With Evoluent mouse I can move my wrist through 120 degrees. With a standard mouse I can move 60 degrees. Score one for the Evoluent. I also have better control in my sideways motion both in terms of fine motor control as well as in maximum force, score two for the Evoluent.
2) Because sideways movement is different some people are not going to like it. I personally had no problem adjusting.
Other additional points:
1) The palm rest and wheel are covered in a non slip rubber like material that works well. While the bottons are covered with a slippery material. Well done.
2) It is a USB mouse, which is good and bad. In most ways USB is not as good as PS/2, but our idiotic industry is moving to USB. Laptops do not support PS/2, but then laptops don’t do anything well except be portable. The PS/2 was designed specifically for the mouse and keyboard and works well, while the USB was not (e.g. USB has limited key roll over and response can be slow, may be important when gaming). Although I have not tested this, the dedicated hardware interface and interrupt driven nature of PS/2 should provide more robust and quicker response than USB. The PS/2 uses pin and socket electrical contacts while the USB uses the much less robust edge contact. USB has one nice advantage over PS/2 and that is, Plug and Play support. When Plug and Play was invented the boys decide not to include PS/2 because it was different, and not because it couldn’t be done (Those boys were just plain idiotic). In practice, lack of Plug and Play for PS/2 is not a big deal. It means that the mouse and keyboard must be plugged in when power is turned on (The mouse and keyboard are always plugged in, except for laptops). Once the computer is up and has recognized the mouse and keyboard, you can swap PS/2 mouse and keyboards. At this point in time 2011, I think all desktop computers support both USB and PS/2, while laptops only support USB. Another small point, most computers have limited USB ports, and I don’t like using two of these slots for mouse and keyboard, especially on a laptop.
3) The length of the USB cord is much longer than normal, easily allowing connection to a floor mounted computer. It could still be a couple feet longer supporting even stranger computer positions such as the one I use (I employ a USB extension cord). Of course in the ideal world there would be no cord. In our world the cordless models often leave too much to be desired.
4) Like many USB mice and keyboards the Evoluent comes with special software that must be installed to get access to all it’s buttons and activate vendor specific features. This is just idiot industry nonsense that no sensible consumer should put up with. Without the vendor S/W you get a two button wheel mouse, which is just fine by me (but I would like a good thumb button, but not enough to install S/W that may or may not work well).
I purchased my Evoluent mouse from NCIX.com because these guys are in the habit of trying to offer good equipment which is kind of rare these days.
Now, further on the subject of “good”, why is it that in my search for a decent mouse I could only find one and that was this Evoluent mouse.
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Tags: "Evoluent Mouse'
