Kensington Professional Trackball & Pro Fit Gesture Mouse Review
A Closer Look – Expert Mouse Wireless Trackball
The trackball is the one I’ve been most looking forward to, as I’ve had a good amount of experience using them over the years and I’m eager to see how the latest from Kensington holds up. As you can see, it comes bundled with a soft padded palm rest, as well as the trackball mouse its self.
The unit is quite large, although for a trackball this isn’t a problem as it doesn’t need to move around your desktop, so despite the large size, it actually requires a lot less space than a traditional mouse/mousemat setup. The size is also beneficial to the function as it means we’ve got oversized and easily accessible face buttons and room for a much larger ball, which means smoother and easier navigation of the cursor.
The mouse ball can be taken out by turning it upside down, and it’ll simply drop out, allowing for quick and easy cleaning should any dirt or debris get caught in it, which is fairly inevitable with extended use anyway, so it’s nice that it’s easy to maintain. The ball has a really nice weighed design and a perfectly smooth finish that makes it lovely to control and make smooth and accurate adjustments.
The grip size is excellent too, allowing any finger(s) to take control of the wheel for super smooth navigation, but also giving you easy reach of the four programmable control buttons.
There’s a wedge shape design to it too, which improves the overall comfort and ergonomics of the trackball and makes the top bottoms easier to reach.
On the inner section, you’ll find an infinite turn scroll wheel around the trackball, this is fantastic for zooming in/out or navigation of editing software; we used it on Sony Acid Pro and it’s ideal for fast forward/rewind of the editor timeline. Hold control or configure on of the trackball buttons to it and you can use it to also zoom in and out of the editor for making those finer adjustments to your project.
The buttons have a good tactile response with a well-defined click and while you won’t be using them for FPS gaming anytime soon, they’re perfectly designed for productivity.
Navigation of web pages, work documents and more is a joy on this mouse ball, and while it may look strange to many users, it’s incredibly intuitive to use for first time trackball users. However, it’s editing software where the trackball is king, and those using Sony Vegas, After Effects, Pro Tools, or anything of that sort will find it has a lot of advantages to these applications.
On the base, you’ll find four rubber grips that keep the unit firmly in place, although the weight of the unit also helps prevent it from moving around also.
There’s a small battery compartment for two AA batteries, which come included in the box. You’ll also find a small USB dongle stored here for wireless connectivity, a master power switch, as well as a switch to toggle USB dongle/Bluetooth mode, as if your desktop/notebook has Bluetooth, you won’t need the USB adaptor.
The dongle is tiny too, so it shouldn’t get in the way of your usual day-to-day work.
Finally, we can see that large palm rest attachment. It locks firmly in place and is very well padded to help take the strain off your hand and trust me, when you’re editing video/music for hours on end, you’ll be glad you’ve got this added comfort.
The software is easy to use and allows you to set single or multiclick functions for each button, as well as profiles for each application.
You can set up a whole host of functions, as well as modifiers on your keyboard to expand the functions on offer.
