Because I use a mouse heavily at work and also use a computer at home for gaming, surfing, you name it, my wrist does tend to get tired and sometimes develop some pain. Sort of naturally I slowly developed accuracy of my wrist movements, which allowed me to use higher and higher sensitivity. Eventually I could move my mouse cursor from one screen end to another with relatively small wrist movement. Plus I brought my own Razer Copperhead to work, which is really accurate mouse. At home I use Logitech G5. Co-workers always got annoyed at my highly sensitive mouse settings.
But it wasn't enough, I wanted to get rid of wrist movement altogether. But my options in trackballs weren't many, particularly ones that might be good for gaming too. But then a co-worker mentioned this
Logitech M570 to me. A brand new thumb-operable trackball, not long after I ordered two of them. One to home and another to work, the company I work at ordered and paid the second trackball.
A lot of people shrug off trackballs, either due to their mixed reputation, weird shapes or just simple prejudice. Most trackballs are ill suited for gaming, but there have been several exceptions. Namely Logitech Trackman Wheel and Microsoft Trackball Optical, both are thumb-operated trackballs.
The Logitech one was released back in 2000, so the tech is really outdated today and can't really match modern gaming mice. The Microsoft one got bad reputation because later production batches botched up the trackball manufacturing. Instead of fixing the problem, Microsoft stopped manufacturing the device instead. Idiots.
The new M570 is a successor to the decade old Trackman lineup, I got this little gem last Tuesday and have been using it exclusively since at home and at work. There's only two things I really miss in this new trackball mouse: horizontal scrolling and on-the-fly sensitivity control. Placement of the forward and back buttons is probably a hit-or-miss, it really depends on size of your hand if they can be used comfortably. Other than that, it's really great. I mean it. For office work it's a heaven compared to normal mice. At home it may not be a heaven, at least not yet. But it is decently good in gaming as well.
Since I've had it less than a week, I haven't had much practice yet, particularly in gaming. I'm quite certain my gaming skills with this gem will only get better and better as I get used to it. I did try FS2 briefly, it was definitely easier than with conventional mice. I suppose this would be potential replacement for those who like to play FS2 with kb+mouse combo.
What was most difficult was finding the best, most suitable sensitivity and acceleration. Of course my settings for normal mice were way too sensitive, at least for now they are. I believe I'll be able to increase sensitivity as my thumb's accuracy improves. With normal mice I've used highest DPI settings the mouse can use and highest sensitivity Windows offers, with "enhance pointer precision" selected. The "enhance pointer precision" is awesome, really. A lot of gamers scorn and hate it, saying their accuracy is off with it enabled. I think they just never bothered to learn it, it always has predictable acceleration depending on speed of cursor movement. My accuracy was pretty good in games with it enabled anyway. And now same settings applies to this M570, though sensitivity is lower than max.
I also tried sensitivity and acceleration options found in Logitech's SetPoint software with both my G5 and M570, but they were always worse than native Windows settings. I only wish Windows settings would offer even higher sensitivity than current max, for normal mice anyway. I wonder if I can eventually use highest sensitivity Windows offers with my M570.
At 60 USD, the M570 is not cheap unfortunately. Putting that much money into a trackball you may not like does put one off, I know. I took the same risk since I had never used a trackball before, but I don't regret it. Would I recommend this? Even at 60 USD I feel the risk is worth it. If you buy this knowing that you need to re-learn how your mouse works, I have high hopes it won't disappoint. Make no mistake, you will spend a lot of time finding the right sensitivity and acceleration settings as well as learning to use your thumb accurately. For this reason I miss the on-the-fly sensitivity control you often find in gaming mice.
