Logitech MX Revolution Review

In my quest for the perfect wireless mouse I have spent many hours at Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, etc.  You  name the electronics store and I’ve been there.  At first, I wanted to get a bluetooth mouse as to free up a USB port on my Mac Book Pro because we all know the MBP is just loaded with them /sarcasm.  Back on topic.  After testing out many models, and reading many reviews I decided against a bluetooth mouse for a few couple reasons.  One, they aren’t as smooth. I would be moving the mouse across the screen only to have it jump randomly for a second or two.  It would go on these random outbursts every 10 to 15 minutes.  Als0, for some reason the bluetooth mice kept disconnecting, if only for a split second, still it was a pain.  After eliminating bluetooth mice, my selection to choose from became substantially longer.  I have had my eye on the MX Revolution for over a year now but have held off largely due to the $100+ asking price.  It wasn’t until a few days after Christmas where I discovered it on sale in Best Buy at $50, plus a $30 gift card made the mouse only $20 in hard cash.  A sweet deal indeed.  

Upon opening the box I found a couple of papers inside, a manual, the charging cradle, the wireless adapter, and the mouse. The MX Revolution uses an internal rechargeable battery.  Charging the mouse is simple, you place it on the charging cradle (which by the way actually looks nice as well as doing its job).  So far, after two days of heavy use (6+ hours each day) I am at 85% battery remaining.  It does drain much faster than older wireless mice I have had, but the fact I can just pop it in the cradle when I’m done each night and charge it negates the lower battery life easily.

The mouse is a haven for button lovers, they’re everywhere.  On the top you have the typical right and left buttons and a scroll wheel (more on that in a moment), along with a search button.  Highlight a word and click the search button and you can either launch a search in you OS or you can set it to do an online source, a neat feature that does work very well.  Now back to the scroll wheel.  I love it.  It brings iPhone like scrolling to your desktop!  It is practically frictionless.  If you want to reach the lower part of a web page or document, one quick swipe and lift your finger off of the scroll wheel and it will keep scrolling until the wheel stops, the bottom is reached, or you place your finger on the wheel to stop it scrolling.  On the left side of the mouse you have your forward and back buttons.  underneath that you have a thumb wheel that you can flick forwards or backwards as well as pushing like a button.  you can configure the thumb wheel for various different functions in your respective OS.  On my Mac Book Pro running Leopard, I have the thumb wheel set to control spaces.  A flick either forward or back brings up the spaces panel, hovering over the space and either left clicking, or flicking forward or back on the thumb wheel will select the appropriate space.  Pushing the thumb wheel in like a button will bring up dashboard.  I like it because it is a quick way to access my widgets without having to touch the keyboards.  One last feature I like is the battery meter on the mouse.  It doesn’t give you an accurate percentage reading, but more of an approximation with a green glowing battery icon with three dashes above.

img_5723

The software that comes with the mouse is very straight forward to use. Set up is a breeze as well as configuring the individual buttons to do the jobs you want them too.  In OS X, a Logitech icon is added to the system preferences pane that allows you to access all of the settings for the MX Revolution.  In that settings tab you can also monitor the battery life of the mouse.

Everything is not perfect however.  Occasionally, the mouse will stop responding to scrolling for 5-10 seconds, but the clicking still works.  I don’t know if its is a quirk with OS X or if I have a defective unit.  I may take it back and get a replacement if it keeps happening.  But it is a small gripe.  Switching the power button on the bottom of the mouse off and on quickly resolves the issue.  Also it only happens once every couple of days, so for me it’s not a big issue, just a minor annoyance.  All in all I highly recommend this mouse!  It is a great full featured mouse that has a ton of customization options to keep even the most geeky control freaks happy!  Check the gallery below for more shots of the mouse.

Other Expert Reviews: