Mouse buying guide
Use a mouse. Not a trackpad, vertical mouse or trackball, which are all slower.
Close your eyes and drag the mouse across your desk pad or table, both up/down and left/right. Do this repeatedly, while paying attention to how it feels. Switch back and forth between the two mice so that you’re able to perceive the differences. A good mouse moves smoothly, while a bad mouse drags, such as having its left and right sides catch the mat in a way that doesn’t feel good.
A lighter mouse is typically better than a heavier one.
Consider buying a sculpted mouse, where the part of the mouse nearer to you is raised:
I’ve found this to be ergonomic, unlike flatter mice like the Apple Magic Mouse…
… which may be a good museum piece but is a bad mouse. Apple prioritises form over function1.
Prefer a wired mouse. Wireless mice can interfere with Wifi. I used to use a costly Logitech MX Master 2S that had a USB receiver. This would cause my TV’s Wifi speed to drop from 80 to 3 mbps (on one occasion). When I turned the mouse off, the TV reported a speed of 80 mbps again. This was because three networks were competing on the 2.4 GHz band: Wifi, Bluetooth, and the custom protocol Logitech uses2. Besides, the USB receiver doesn’t fit the C ports of my laptop.
Buy a basic mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel, not one that has extra buttons. You won’t use them, and they require the manufacturer’s bad software. Logitech’s crappy software3 was an aggravation. I installed the Logitech Bolt app, and it didn’t detect my mouse. After some frustration, I realised that Logitech makes two different kinds of receivers — Bolt and Unifying4 — and that they require two different apps. When I installed the right app, it prompted me to install a third one, which told me that it doesn’t support my mouse. Why, then, was I prompted to install it in the first place? These apps also occasionally crash. I can flip the scroll direction in the Logitech app or in the Mac’s mouse settings, which raises the question of where I should configure it, and which one overrides the other? The Logitech MX Master 2S can also pair with up to three devices, which was unnecessary complexity. Besides, I plug in my mouse into my monitor, so whichever laptop I connect via USB-C gets the mouse automatically. A basic mouse is less headache.
Considering all this, I recommend the Logitech M100r, which solves all the above problems for just ₹500.
It’s debatable whether Apple knows what design means.
The mouse can also work as a standard Bluetooth mouse, but that tracks worse, so don’t use it that way.
These clowns treat software as an afterthought.
How is it unifying if it doesn’t support all the mice and keyboards?