Peripherals manufacturers can hawk their glass trackpads and other touchy-swipey desk candy all they want. There are still a lot of us who prefer to use a real mouse. Maybe I open myself to ridicule by saying so, but I find it immeasurably satisfying to use an input device that punctuates every marquee selection, every drag and drop, and every navigational nudge with a bona fide mechanical click.
So this is my new spring fling: Logitech’s MX Master. The third-generation entry in the company’s MX line, it’s a precision-engineered mouse that’s comfortable to use. It has a bevy of customizable buttons and wheels, as well as a feature that lets you connect it wirelessly to up to three different machines. It goes on sale in April for $100.
The stand-out feature is the MX’s speed-adaptive scroll wheel. Scroll slowly, and the little metal wheel goes “click-click-click” beneath your finger, giving you a nice bit of haptic feedback and a sense of precise control. To quickly scroll all the way up or down a page, you just flick the wheel with your finger, at which point the click-to-click mechanism disengages, and the wheel spins freely. Your document zooms by until you stop the wheel by resting your finger on it. It feels great, very machine-like.
You also get the two traditional mouse buttons, a third button behind the wheel, and a set of thumb controls. The little platform where you rest your thumb is its own button—just press down on the pad under your thumb to register a click. Above that platform, there’s a pair of small thumb buttons and a thumb scroll wheel. This thumb wheel is great for horizontal scrolling, but just like all the other buttons on the mouse, you can program it to do anything. If you’re a Mac user, the buttons are set up by default to work with Exposé and Launch Pad, but Logitech provides a free download of its utility app that lets you set it up however you’d like. WoW fans rejoice.
To connect the new MX mouse, you can use Bluetooth, or you can use Logitech’s proprietary “unifying receiver”—a little USB dongle that comes in the box. The mouse can be paired with three different computers, which is handy if you switch between a laptop and a desktop several times a day. All it takes to jump between machines instantly is pressing a button on the bottom of the mouse.
Logitech claims the MX battery lasts about 40 days between charges. There’s an LED meter that alerts you when it’s running low. And if it ever goes dead, plugging it in for one minute will earn you an hour of mousing, so you’re never left stranded for longer than it takes you to visit the water cooler. Then you can get back to spinning that wheel. Zip, zip! (It’s really cool.)
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