A $100 mouse you hold like THIS?? - Logitech MX Vertical Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,351 words · ~6 min read
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Oh, hold it. Run that back.
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Sector G6. There. Zoom in.
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Whoa. There. Freeze that. What is it?
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Enhance. Enhance.
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Look at his wrist. It's uh
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Nobody walks with their arms pronated like that.
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It's ergonomics 101, Jim. My god. If we can get an ergonomic
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Logitech vertical mouse to him, he might just have a fighting chance before
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before what? Well, before he develops a repetitive
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strain injury and gets fired,
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Logitech's MX series of flagship mice,
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including the fullfeatured MXM 2S, travel friendly MX Anywhere 2S, and MX
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Erggo for track ball enthusiasts. now
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has a new addition to the mischief. That
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the mischief? Really? A group of mice is called a mischief? Well, you learn
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something every day. Okay. Anyway, it's the MX Vertical, Logitech's first
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vertical mouse. Now, the idea behind vertical mice, which have been around
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for an eye on 20 years now, is to maximize comfort and avoid carpal tunnel
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syndrome and other repetitive strain injuries that can be caused by lying
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your hand flat for long periods of time.
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This is known as pronation and actually
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causes your two forearm bones, the radius and the ulna, to scissor, which
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can pinch the tissue inside the forearm, increasing pressure in the carpal
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tunnel. It can also inflame tendons. So,
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yes, that's right, folks. Going prone sometimes hurts more than it helps. Now,
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the MX Verticals design mitigates this by putting your hand in more of a
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natural handshake position of 57
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degrees, which is higher than the MX Erggo's optional tilt, but still less
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than the 90°, which in theory would give you enhanced unccissoring, but then
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would also introduce new problems because instead of driving mouse clicks
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down towards the desk, they'd be going sideways where there's nothing to push
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against. So, you just push your mouse away. I mean, you'd probably end up with an injury from squeezing the mouse
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constantly to try to hold it still instead of being able to relax, which is
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what the vertical's angle and wide thumb pad do allow for. Okay, so your
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armbbones are aligned and all that, but what is this thing like to use?
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Honestly, quite a bit weirder than I
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thought. And there's definitely a bit of a learning curve before you can point
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with the degree of accuracy that you're probably used to because you have to
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learn to move your ARM on a totally
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different axis. Now, on a normal mouse, most of us execute big movements by
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pivoting from the elbow or from the shoulder and then fine movements by
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moving the wrist sideways a little bit like this. But while this does offer a
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lot of precision, it's actually an unhealthy movement with another fancy
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name, ulner deviation. But with the
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vertical, you actually do your fine movements like this, which becomes
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second nature after a week or two, except for an unexpected problem that
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James, who I immediately unloaded this thing to when it arrived, ran into,
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which was a frustrating increase in what we're calling fake clicks. where you go
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to click on something and nothing happens
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causing you to have to click again. So, it took me a couple of goes to figure
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out why it wasn't registering sometimes. And it turns out that whether it's some
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combination of the vertical position or maybe the difference in fine motor
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control between moving your hand like this versus like this. But basically,
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what's going on is that it's really easy to inadvertently click before you've
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actually stopped moving the mouse. And if you look closely, you can actually
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see that the mouse is basically registering a tiny micro drag instead of
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a discrete click. Now, it's possible that the main factor in all this is just
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that we have so much practice using horizontal like regular mice and that
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this could be a complete non-issue over time. Uh or it's possible that you don't
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experience this issue at all and it's just a James thing. But all we can do is
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tell you our experiences and this is what I experienced. So, there it is. One
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thing we expect to be agreeable to everyone, though, is the MX Verticals
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looks. Despite Logitech's obvious focus
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on ergonomics, the mouse itself still manages to look, frankly, like a work of
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art. It looks like a sea shell or a or a
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sailboat or like a a sick jump. But even
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seemingly design focused decisions here often have practical elements to them.
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So, the soft touch rubber top, for example, is accented with these vertical
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ribs that play with the light more than the graphite color otherwise would, but
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also give it a pleasing grippy texture in the hand, so you can't accidentally
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slip. Unfortunately, this mouse doesn't exist in a vacuum, and comparison is the
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thief of joy. So, when we bring other mice into the picture, the MX Vertical
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loses some of its luster. Even though the MX Vertical is lightweight and
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advertised as having the elevated performance of the MX series, and even
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though it has forward and back buttons, a DPI selector that goes up to 4,000
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DPI, and left and right buttons that are rated to 10 million clicks, it still
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feels like it got a little shafted in terms of features compared to its
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siblings. So, despite demanding the same $99 price, the Vertical has the fewest
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programmable buttons. It lacks a horizontal scroll wheel and gesture
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control and dark field tracking for use
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on highly reflective surfaces. And while I understand that the angle of the mouse
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might have restricted Logitech from putting one of their awesome hyper
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scrolling wheels on here, I feel like at least a tilt wheel probably wasn't too
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much to ask. Honestly, other than ergonomics, the only thing about this
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mouse that makes it stand out against the others in the lineup is the fact
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that it uses USB type-C. So, you get the
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reversability and the improvements to durability. Not to mention that it will
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be handy to be able to use the same cable to charge your laptop, your
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Android phone, and your mouse. But James
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and I actually had a pretty good debate about this when we were going through this. You could make the argument that
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some of those missing features that we mentioned before would be more important
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to many users than the type of USB port.
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In spite of all of that criticism, though, I can't think of any reason to
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hate this mouse. Even if it was clearly
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built for folks with medium to large hands, uh the forward button is a bit of
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a a top shelf in the kitchen kind of experience for a smaller person like me.
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It is expensive, but it's a high quality right-handed mouse with modern Logitech
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benefits like dual connectivity via radio and Bluetooth, flow across
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multiple machines, and this neat graphical DPI selector, which
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unfortunately didn't work until I installed Logitech's options software.
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So, so if you're looking for a vertical mouse to help you prevent or recover
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from a repetitive strain injury and you don't mind spending three to five times
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as much as the competitive offerings in exchange for the Logitech Pedigree, then
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we can easily recommend it. Just don't try to game with it cuz it gets pretty
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warm actually all that surface area. So, thanks for
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