Microsoft Sculpt Ergo Mouse Black Forbus 5LV-00001

The market is inundated with weird, alien looking ergonomic mice from the Handshoe and the variety of cheap knock-off vertical mice. You'll find mice at ever tilt and shape and size all claiming to fit your hand and wrist naturally. At first glance, the MS Sculpt Ergo looks downright simple compared to many of the designs. It is basically a ball with a thumb rest. And the fact is, it is simple. It is comfortable to grip a ball and it is comfortable to grip the Sculpt mouse. The buttons are angled just right to keep your wrist at a comfortable angle. My pinkie doesn't drag when I move it. It is easy to lift. I will say that I don't like wireless mice. I wish MS made a wired version, but this is a small price to pay for a very comfortable mouse. I have arthritic hands and mouse after mouse has given me terrible pain after a day of use, except for the Sculpt. The Anker vertical mouse worked well for a while, it was an improvement, but even it wasn't as good as this. I use this mouse now for work 8 hours a day and for gaming when I get home and it works great. It is fast and accurate enough for the best action FPS games, my only complaint is it doesn't have a DPI button like many other gaming mice, but I'd adapted and it is well worth the pain reduction. I have medium sized hands, and it works well for me. Of course, it is a one-size-fits all, so your mileage may vary, but considering it is just a ball, it probably will fit most hands very nicely. Read more

Pleased to once again have this responsive, reliable and comfortable mouse. Has a very limited number of buttons by modern standards. Ridiculously comfortable for me, far more than I'd expect of a near "flat" mouse if I hadn't had these a decade or so ago - as comfortable for me as my modern vertical mice and much handier around the room being wireless. These are used and the one I received has scratches on the shell around the wheel that I would have disqualified it from sale at this price point, very moderate or no signs of wear otherwise. Still very pleased with the comfort - performance etc.. 4 star battery life rating due to the difficulty I still have with remembering to manually turn the mouse off at the end of the day. Read more

I don't know why Microsoft is so great and making mice and keyboards. They have built some terrible software over the years, but I have yet to by a mouse or keyboard that I don't love. I just replaced a mouse that had been with me for a while with this one. It is accurate, comfortable, and was affordable. I write software for a living from my home office, so this mouse has been getting 8+ hours of use a day since I purchased it, and I have no complaints. Read more

Wheel: Absolutely the best wheel implementation I've felt. Perfect tactile response and ease of control. Clicking the wheel as a middle button is simple where many are difficult to press often leading to random other buttons getting hit. The left right tilt of the wheel is also controllable and you feel the click clearly. Shape: I've been calling it the snowball. The tilt of the wrist away from horizontal makes all the difference in comfort, and the sphere-ish shape really fills the hand which makes for a great feel. I have big hands, long fingers and I end up pushing a mouse around with my fingertips. When you curl your palm around this mouse it seems super comfy and took under a day to get acclimated for precision mousing. In the words of John Wayne, "Fill your hand you son of a b....". (would make a good ad for this mouse) Software: Latest Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse center software is a major improvement over prior packages. Fewer restrictions on what you can do with the buttons. You can reprogram everything but the wheel tilt. Add X-Mouse Button Control (free download) and you can get about anything working. Exception is the wheel tilt addressed below. (Cons) Undercarriage: Love the magnetic underside. How many mice have you had blue tape holding on the battery door because the mouse fell to the floor and broke the door. I have one with no door, just an exposed batt. This one is easy to pop off and is only held together with magnets. On/Off switch makes it handy for tossing in a bag or preserving the battery when you'll be gone for a long time. Cons: 1. Wheel tilt changed in it's reporting. Prior MS Mice would have the left/right wheel tilt report like another button. This mouse implements it as a constant report. So instead of a "clicked" event sending one code, there is a message that constantly emits while pressed. Thus you cannot reassign the left/right tilt to other keystrokes in the MS software. X-Mouse will intercept and replace the message if you like, but since it's a constant message, that's not very useful. I tried to make the wheel tilt be forward/back for web browsing. This worked with old MS mice. But with the new design, if you sniff the output, one click of the left tilt produces like 10 "back" commands. Couldn't find a way to change that. But it works nicely as a horizontal scroll... in the rare occasions where you need that. Seems a waste. 2. When you first transition to the new shape, you may find stray right-clicks happening when you're grabbing the mouse. But it reduces as you acclimate, and if you're mousing habits keep stray right-clicks happening, X-Mouse can intercept the right-click and only send it after a set amount of "hold". I set it up with a 200ms delay and have eliminated stray clicks without impeding intended right-clicks. 3. Side button is flush and concave such that you have to really dig in with your thumb to get a click. Makes for a super conscious effort to get a click, sometimes requiring a couple attempts. a tiny bump on that button would make it easier to push. Since it's smallish and flush, it's like a flush button on a flat surface. Think of trying to hit the head of a countersunk screw with a hammer. You'll never get it. Since you're pushing against a flush surface with the side of your thumb... it's not an easy click. Also it's a bit stealthy visually. Once you know it's there you're fine, but you can hardly tell there is a button under the big blue START button. The cons are tiny compared to the other mice and their issues... still giving a 5 star. Best overall package with a reasonable price point. Update, dropping star: 15 months and it's sending erroneous double-clicks when I click. So not built to last. Also had to stick some foam under the palm to prevent getting hot hand. Need some air flow. Read more

If you have really small hands this might not be the mouse for you but I like it. Its pretty big really but comfortable in the hand. I like the magnetic bottom plate and the nice power switch too. Works well. The only thing I would change is the length of the wireless adapter, its long and thin so I have to remove it from my laptop so I don't break either when I put it in a case. I'd still buy it again though. Read more

I got my first one in a set with an ergo keyboard. It, immediately, felt wonderful to my tired hand and wrist. I've had wrist problems from computers and have used ergo keyboards since 1995. I finally found a mouse that doesn't bother me much, at all. When I wore out the first keyboard, I ordered another. When I got my new laptop, I got one for work and one for home, so my wrist has the same mouse, wherever I am - consistency is good. Very comfortable, indeed! Read more

This is a rather large mouse, but if you have hand problems, this will rotate your hand a bit taking pressure off of the medial nerve. My ONLY gripe with this is the button where you place your thumb sometimes get pressed when you lift the mouse do to desk space. I've had the goofy thing back page on me inadvertently. You can change this function, but I haven't yet. Anyhow, I'd recommend this mouse without reservation. Read more