Logitech VX Revolution Review Hardware

Finished typing up the hardware aspect of the review. I'm going to give my final thoughts in the next post.

Hardware
The mouse is very ergonomic, and is my first real ergonomic mouse as my previous Logitech mouse was symmetrical, which was not as ergonomic though it allowed both right and left handed people to use the mouse. The shape of the mouse is contoured to the shape of your hand. For me I guess my hands aren’t the largest so it covered the mouse well. Though I have never seen a left handed version of this mouse, which is the problem due to ergonomics as left handed people can’t use the mouse. For me the mouse just feels right and the build feels solid. The plastic grips are very nice. On my v470 they used glossy plastic, which made it quite easy to get fingerprints and grease all over the mouse. For a matte finish, which this mouse has, a lot less dirt is visible. There is also a special grip for the thumb, which is quite nice.

The mouse comes with a small RF dongle that fits inside the mouse. There’s a small door where you can store the dongle. There’s an eject button which ejects the dongle and automatically turns the mouse on, a nice feature. Though it would be nice if the mouse came with a small pouch to store it in as this is the “VX” brand which is designed for laptops meaning that the user will be mobile. At least for my previous Logitech V470 I had a rudimentary pouch to store the mouse in.

The mouse only accepts one AA battery, which I at first was surprised about. For my V470 it accepted two AA batteries. This is obviously detrimental to the battery life, though I would assume that the extra space is being taken up by the RF dongle that fits inside the mouse. One way to remedy this issue would be by using rechargeable batteries, which is what I have done. Though the first time I put a AA battery in I realized that the battery was quite short for the mouse. After a bit more than month it told me to replace the mouse, which was surprising. Though I think that when I first charged up the battery it wasn’t full, so next time I’m going to put in a fully charged AA battery and note the battery life of the mouse. Also, dust collects pretty easily on the mouse, and grime does stick onto the plastic pads on the bottom of the mouse. I don’t clean it regularly but when I see that there’s too much grime on the mouse I just clean it with a cloth.

The mouse also has a built in battery status indicator. The steermouse software did not have a battery status feature, unlike setpoint, though I didn’t mind the omission since the mouse itself has a battery status indicator. All you do to activate it is press the power button, and then it would show the battery indicator. Full battery means three bars, and as of now it says I have two bars. To turn off the mouse you just hold the battery indicator for a couple of seconds until the LED light on the bottom of the mouse turns off. I don’t regularly turn off the mouse but rather I just leave it to sleep.

Another interesting point about this mouse is the plethora of buttons. I have never had that many buttons on a mouse. On my v470 it was just the right and left click, scroll wheel (had vertical and horizontal scroll) with middle click and that was it. On this mouse there’s the usual right and left click, a scroll wheel with a middle button, and two buttons for the thumb, a zoom slider, and a find button right below the scroll wheel.

After several months of use I conclude that while some buttons are in a good placement, others aren’t. The two buttons near the thumb were easy to press. For me I set them to dashboard and expose. However, for the “zoom” slider and the “search” button they were generally hard to press. For the zoom slider it was not easy to slide, and for the search button it was in an awkward position thus it was hard to press. I would have to arch my middle finger back to press it, which was quite difficult. Now that I think about it, my most used buttons were just the thumb buttons and I don’t use those very often either.

Now for the scroll wheel. In my opinion the scroll wheel is excellent, it also offers vertical and horizontal scrolling. For vertical scrolling they have two options, and you move a slider on the bottom of the mouse to choose. For one position the movement of the scroll wheel is unhindered and feels frictionless. Logitech calls it “hyper scrolling.” The other position gives the default scrolling behavior found on most mice, which has the usually clack sound and it doesn’t allow for a lot of movement. Hyper scrolling is even more usable due to the precision of the scroll wheel. As for hyper scrolling one small move might mean a huge jump on the web page, etc., having a precise scroll wheel means a lot, and I must say that the scroll wheel on the Logitech mouse is pretty precise. Granted, it did take a couple of days to get used to in the end I would say it was worth it.

Regarding middle clicking I think that it wasn’t very easy to middle click, probably due to the design of the scroll wheel’s hyper scrolling feature. It is vastly easier to middle click on my v470, so I don’t middle click often (on firefox I tend to right click and press new tab or press the tab while holding the command key). On Amazon I read a review that claimed that the scroll wheel is fragile and breaks easily, though for me I haven’t experienced any issues like that thus far though I will report such issues if they occur. At least for me I don’t press the scroll wheel button very often, and not very hard either, I doubt that the scroll wheel will break in the near future.