Logitech MX Revolution

Intro

Picked up an MX Revolution from PC World Yesterday (it was the last one on the shelf, but I'm not sure if that's because they sold out or whether they only got one in stock under the assumption that not many people are going to want to pay £70+ for a mouse).


Well I was one of the those people who did pay £70+ for a mouse. Even the guy on the counter was shocked by the price, but I justified it by saying I worked in IT (which I do) and I end up using a mouse 8 hours a day 5 days a week (plus in the evenings and weekends, but that just tells you what a sad individual I am).

I was slightly dubious at first as I have had contoured mice from Logitech before, and whilst most people rave about how comfortable they are, I have never found them to be particularly well suited to my mousing style. I generally preferred Logitech's ambidextrous offerings (have been using an LX7 for the past 6 months or so as my preferred mouse and it has served me well).

The good news is that the MX is Superbly comfortable, I did suffer some very minor aching after my first bout of 3-4 hours use, but that is to be expected from any new mouse that is not the same shape as your old mouse, as with the LX7 my grip should become accustomed to the new shape after a couple of days.

New Features

Now on to the meat and potatoes as to why you WILL want this mouse, aside from the ergonomics the mouse does have a number of nifty new features, the main one of these being the switchable scroll wheel. This is probably one of the few mousing innovations within the past few years that stands out as worthwhile (the main one being the move from 'balled' to optical mice) - anyone still using a 'balled' mouse - shame on you.

The wheel can operate in one of three mode...

• Freespin
• Click to Click
• SmartShift

Freespin is my weapon of choice, it basically allows for what I would term 'Frictionless' wheeling. There are no clicks when spinning the wheel, it just spins 'Freely' so Logitech has come up with the perfect term for it (Freespiin). You can also flick the wheel and it will spin freely for 6 or 7 revolutions (which is a fair bit of scrolling). Obviously the process isn't completely frictionless (or the wheel would spin indefinitely) but in use it feels pretty frictionless.

I should point out that Freespin is not without it's issues...

• It's fairly easy to accidentally nudge the wheel and cause an inadvertent scroll (but thats not the end of the world).
• Slightly annoying habit of scrolling back one line at the end of a complete scroll (you will work out what I mean if you buy the mouse yourself).
• More worrying is that when you flick the mouse in some applications (namely Excel) with a particularly long document it seems to lock in scroll mode and will continue scrolling right to the end of the data (and beyond) - there is little you can do when this happens except wait for the document to stop scrolling (the actual wheel will have stopped spinning sometime before the document stops scrolling) - will be raising this with Logitech, but won't hold out for a sensible response as unboubtably they will not be able to replicate this.

Click to Click is the more traditional mode of wheel operation (exactly the same as 99% of mice out there). The click operation is not as smooth as it could be (but it may wear in after time). It's not much of an issue as I can't actually see myself using Click to Click very often (if at all) as Freespin is usable in 99% of situations and is much more responsive and useful anyway. The final mode of operation is Smartshift, basically the Setpoint Software (if you choose to install it - it's not actually necessary to use the majority of functionality of the MX), will work out what the correct mode of operation for each application is (switching between Freespin and Click to Click). As I chose to use Freespin in ALL applications I left the Smartshift functionality turned off, but you may find it useful ?).

Other Buttons

The MX is actually a 7 button mouse (not including the Wheel button itself - which can actually be used to manually switch between Click to Click and Freespin - there is a noticeable clunk using this as the gearing mechanism is engaged or disengaged - it doesn't sound particularly high tech, although the gearing mechanism itself is obviously fairly complex (for a mouse at least) - again this may loosen up in time, but I can't see myself switching that often anyway).

There is what appears to be a second chrome and rubber scroll wheel on the right hand side of the mouse (just in front of where your thumb rests in it's rubberized enclave (which incidentally is also very comfortable in use), this 'second' scroll wheel doesn't actually spin at all it, it has a simple three position mechanism, forward, back or neutral and is reasonable easy to use (although I have relatively small hands and have to consciously move my thumb forward to use it - those of you with large hands may find that your thumb rests much closer to this third 'Switch' wheel which may make it more intuitive for you to use ?).

The 'Switch' wheel is actually mapped to Logitech's own Application switcher - although as I had no real use for this (I don't use Windows own task switcher), I changed it to use if for zoom functionality (much more useful in my eyes).

There are also more traditional back and forwards buttons on the upper edge of the mouse (just above the 'Switch' wheel. As with the rest of the mouse these appear to be relatively high quality, but again with my less than man size hands (I am a bloke but I certainly don't have workman's hands) I find them slightly difficult to reach (but again it's not functionality I crave in a mouse so I won't really miss their use).

The final button (for computing use - there is an on/off switch on the bottom of the mouse) is located on the top of the mouse just behind the scroll wheel. Once again it's not immediately accessible for me but by default is mapped to word search functionality on the Web (so for instance you can set it up to use Google Search and when you highlight a Word in ANY application and click this button it will open up your browser and search for that word). Again not something I would find particularly useful so I re-mapped it's use as an 'Enter' button - useful for when you are not that close to your keyboard (don't ask).

Before anybody panics about my negative views towards additional button placement, I should point out that I have yet to use a mouse (and I have used 10's of mice over the years), where the additional button placement was perfect - in fact having the buttons fall beneath where your fingers / thumb rests is NOT necessarily a bonus (I had several problems with accidentally clicking these buttons on several of my Microsoft mice - which was actually more annoying than the buttons being just out of reach (as they are with most Logitech mice).

Until somebody comes up with some sort of radical button strategy I would stick with Logitech's 'slightly out of reach' strategy.

Build Quality/Other Features

No complaints here, all the materials used and the general feel of quality all lend weight to the asking price of £70+. In addition although a bit lightweight and plasticky the docking station (charger) allows easy placement of the mouse (it just drops in and contact is made). I have had some fiddly chargers in the past where you had to 'Click' in the mouse to the charger (I always got the impression that the contacts would eventually snap off and occasionally it would be difficult to line up the contacts), no such problems with the MX, it just slides into place naturally.

I can't comment on the battery life as I have only had the mouse for a day, but it came partially charged for immediate use, I did charge it fully (which took about 3 hours) and I still have all 4 battery lights after a good 8 hours use. The charging lights do fill up with charging and stay lite when fully charge (a small thing but better than some charging indicators I have seen).

A small issue (mainly for gamers) is that the mouse does power down fairly quickly (in order to reduce power consumption), but I would say the MX is mainly intended for Home / Office use anyway (I can't comment on it's use as a gaming mouse as all my gaming is done on my XBOX360). That's not to say that it wouldn't be a perfectly serviceable gaming mouse (but from my previous Quake 3 online experience, the Freespin mode is not suited to weapon changes - you need Click to Click for that, although the 'Switch' scroll button WOULD be useful for zooming).

Final Impressions

Overall I would give the MX Revolution 9/10, it's not perfect (but it's pretty darn close). It's maybe not as big a 'Revolution' as people are expecting, but that doesn't stop it being one of the best desktop mice currently available.
If I could work out how the fix the few annoyances it has (the one line scrollback and the continuous scrolling in Excel) I would give it 9.5.

Should you buy this mouse ? Well if you have £70+ knocking around, go for it ! I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed, and all your friends / colleagues will be jealous as you will be buying the Jaguar of mice (build quality and sportiness in one good looking package).