Ordered one of these and have had it for a few days now, so here are my thoughts in case anyone has any of the same questions I did. I’ve been interested in the form factor, but these are largely unavailable in stores near me, so when I saw this here for a modest discount I impulse bought it. As usual for an impulse purchase, I’m both glad I bought it and unsatisfied with it.
TL;DR up top: If you’re interested in this, you should probably skip it and go with either a Pebble 2 (model M350s, exact same form factor but with multi-device and dongle support for about five bucks more), or a Pop Mouse (slightly thicker/taller, with an extra programmable button as well as multi-device and dongle support for about ten bucks more). If you know for sure you don’t care about button customization and only plan to use this with one device, (iPad, MacBook, PC, whatever), go ahead and save the $5-$10 here (or head over to the mothership and pick up the white version for $13.29).
The good:
-Doesn’t just work with iPad; This will pair with any device that supports a bluetooth mouse. As an added bonus, pairing is fast. When I turn on my Magic Trackpad 2, it takes several seconds to connect with my MacBook, where this mouse starts responding near instantly when switched on.
-Very, very quiet clicking and scrolling, while still offering sufficient tactile response.
-Powered by a single AA battery, so no plugging in to charge and no internal LiIon battery to fail over time and turn the mouse into e-waste.
-Super packable, fits easily into pretty much any bag.
The subjective:
-The shape took some getting used to. For comparison, the mice I find most comfortable in my hand are the Logitech G502 and Razer Basilisk, either of which I can use with either a relaxed palm grip or a faster fingertip grip as need. This mouse is short enough that a ‘standard’ fingertip grip makes my hand hurt pretty quickly as my pinky needs to flex in toward my palm more than is comfortable. I’ve found a couple of modified grips that work well for me, but your mileage may vary, and this is obviously not a gaming mouse.
The bad:
-The feet are pretty terrible. This is by far the cheapest mouse I’ve purchased in years, but I think these may offer the worst experience out of the box I’ve ever encountered. They’re still attached with adhesive, but rather than the slick PTFE feet virtually all of my other mice use, these feel like a hard textured plastic, not dissimilar to the shell material itself. They seem to be designed for hard surfaces, and glide very well directly on a desktop, but are quite loud. On a mousepad/mat, they create enough friction that I have to alter my grip again to prevent hand fatigue. I’ve ordered replacement feet, they should be around sometime next week, we’ll see how they do. All that said, if this lives in your bag and travels with you, chances are it’ll mostly be used on hard surfaces, and it really glides well on them, even if it ends up being a lot less ‘silent’ than the quiet clicks/scrolling would suggest.
-No customization options. This won’t be detected by any of Logitech’s customization software, so you’re limited to the options offered by the OS you pair it with. This is fine for me, but seems like a silly omission.
-Strictly single-device, no pairing with multiple devices at once. If you have this paired with your iPad and want to use it with your PC instead, you’ll have to open your PC’s Bluetooth settings, put the mouse in pairing mode, and pair it. This process has to be repeated on each device each time you switch. That leads me to:
The ridiculous:
-The bottom of this mouse has a bluetooth pairing button; Press and hold to put the mouse in pairing mode. Next to that button are two glyphs, one Bluetooth logo and one USB receiver logo. Toward the back of mouse bottom there are two more glyphs, the Bluetooth logo again and the Logitech Unifying logo. Under the top cover, next to the battery compartment, is a slot for storing a receiver. The single device limitation was slightly annoying while I was testing this, so I found a Unifying receiver I wasn’t using, fired up the Unifying app, and tried to figure out how to pair the mouse with the receiver. Turns out, this simply isn’t possible. Seems like they changed the screen printing on the bottom that indicates the model, but the USB receiver and Unifying glyphs are part of the mold they reused from the m350. To be fair, the packaging doesn’t indicate compatibility with Unifying receivers, but if the logo is going to be on the mouse itself, I shouldn’t have to track down a support page via a search engine to confirm that it’s meaningless.
All in all, I like this thing pretty well. I think with new feet it’ll be a pretty great travel mouse. I’m glad I bought it because I satisfied my curiosity regarding the form factor and have a perfectly usable device that I probably will find a place for. I’m annoyed because this isn’t what I expected; A rebadged m350 without the receiver included to save on cost/use existing tooling by marketing to a different demographic. That’s on me for not doing sufficient research beforehand, but Logitech sure didn’t make it easy to find answers to these questions. I’ve ordered a Pop Mouse, which I think will ultimately fit my needs better, and this will end up either living in my office or going to my wife.
A final note: I have read, but cannot confirm, that another difference between this mouse and other Pebble versions is an adjustment to the default scrolling rate, increasing it to make it feel better on iPad out of the box. I haven’t noticed any significant difference versus other mice using it with my Mac, PC, or my wife’s iPad, but don’t have another Pebble version to compare it to.