They'll definitely see you rolling at the office when you drop Kensington's Expert Mouse Wireless Trackball on your desk. And they'll be hatin', too: This mouse replacement offers a compact, more accurate, and more ergonomic pointing solution that will have the marketing department totally jealous.
Kensington hasn't dramatically changed the design of its trackball product in over a decade, but subtle refinements have evolved it into a mature and reliable input device. It remains a sturdy wedge with a large, pool-cue-sized trackball front and center. Four programmable buttons occupy the quadrants of the base, and a ring around the ball serves as a scroll wheel. A detachable wrist rest affixes to the base of the trackball to make extended use more comfy.
The key update with this release is its enhanced wirelessness. Kensington has cut the cord and embedded two different wireless protocols inside the trackball. Connect to your computer natively via Bluetooth, or pop out the mini dongle (safely stored in the battery compartment) and connect via 2.4GHz radio. Either method works with PCs; Macs are 2.4GHz-only if you want to use Kensington's downloadable configurability software (which mainly lets you program the extra buttons).
I have tinkered with trackballs on and off for years, and continue to find myself drawn to them. On a crowded desk they take up less space, and they're generally less prone to the accumulation of pointer-impeding crud because of your sloppy snack habits. The wireless Expert Trackball is even better because it gets rid of one more piece of wire clutter—but performance doesn't suffer for it. In fact I find I am consistently more accurate with the trackball, because using your fingertips to spin the large ball allows for more fluid motion and easier precision than using your whole arm or wrist to move a mouse.
$100 is a lot to pay for a mouse replacement, but it's not out of the realm of sanity. Look at it another way: If you imagine that every time you misclick because your mouse jumped at the last second costs you a nickel in lost productivity and internal turmoil and aggravation, the Kensington Trackball will probably pay for itself in a month.
9/10 - Nearly flawless, buy it now.
