Logitech Wireless Trackball M570 Review

The Logitech Wireless Trackball M570 is a hand-friendly trackball that lets you work and play wherever you want. Just roll the ball with your thumb and click. Precision never felt so comfortable. Thumb-operated trackball and laser sensor for smooth, precise cursor control. Works anywhere you do with the powerful 30 ft. wireless range with tiny leave-in Logitech Unifying receiver. It has up to 18 months of power on a single AA battery. Scroll wheel and Back/Forward buttons for easy document and web page navigation. Enhanced comfortÑrefines the time-tested shape of the popular Logitech Trackman Wheel. The M570 is a little bulky, but it has to be to support the trackball. It measures in at 1.7 by 3.7 by 5.7-inches. It is designed like a traditional mouse with 2 mouse buttons and a rubbery scroll wheel at the between. There are also back and forward buttons for quick navigation in web browsers, they are very convenient but they seems to be placed too far from the fingers, sometimes you may need to move your hand to reach the forward button. As this is a wireless trackball, Logitech provides it with a unifying receiver; it is so small that you can leave it on your laptop even when not in use. The tiny receiver is very helpful if you are using other wireless devices from Logitech, it can connect up to 6 compatible devices at the same time. The device uses only a single AA battery but its battery life could go up to 18 months without battery change. The battery indicator light will remind you when the power is running out. As a standard five-button mouse, the peripheral works well. The trackball design works in its favor since the fourth and fifth buttons don't have to be shrunken or tucked away on the side. You could also middle-click very easily without accidentally scrolling, and it was actually faster to mass-select text than on a usual mouse since a trackball flick covers much more space quickly. Compared to some other mice, though, the scroll wheel's feature set is disappointing. While the option to freely spin the scroll wheel like the MX/VX series would be a luxury, there's no horizontal scrolling at all. That's a definite setback and somewhat odd given how much space Logitech had to work with in the design. Not everyone will notice, but if you regularly have to work with large images or app windows that don't have as much width as you'd like, you might find it intolerable. Customization does go a long way towards keeping the M570 useful. For those that need it, Logitech's SetPoint app (for Windows) or Control Center (for Macs) helps you reassign buttons to specific commands. And while it's a desktop mouse, the M570 has the appreciated extra features of both a dedicated on/off switch and a compartment for stowing the very small Unifying Receiver when it's not being used. Both are valuable, especially if you use a notebook. Overall, The Logitech Wireless Trackball M570 is one of most precise and usable trackballs. It's lightweight, includes well-placed buttons and a scroll wheel, cradles your palm comfortably as you use your thumb to operate the ball and is coupled with a set of optional features to enhance the experience if you're a righty, that is.