Logitech Cube Mouse review

Functionally, the Cube is a bit cramped for big hands or long mousing sessions. It's not very comfortable at all. The boxlike design definitely looks neat, and it's small enough to use on your laptop's palmrest, but it's not anywhere near as ergonomic as its close competitor the Swiftpoint mouse. All the basic functions are there, though. Like the clickpads you'll find on recent notebooks, the entire top surface of the mouse is one big button, but the function changes depending on where your finger is. If you press down in the finger indent at the front, it left-clicks; if you press further back, it right-clicks, and if you slide your finger across the top of the mouse, you can scroll fairly well, albeit with a slight delay. There's no middle mouse button, I'm afraid to say.

The accuracy of these gestures depends heavily on software, though, and they're not foolproof here: when I tested out the right-click in the game Batman: Arkham City (where it's critical in order to keep criminals from pounding on Batman's skull) I found that it required a very deliberate, careful press to get the gesture to reliably register. Also, though Logitech offers a piece of desktop software that's supposed to improve scrolling, it had the opposite effect for me: out of the box, the Cube felt like it had fairly smooth inertial scrolling with a little jitter on occasion, but it got worse after installing the client. Your milage may vary.

Pick up the mouse, and the laser sensor automatically shuts off as it switches to presentation mode, where the controls are as simple as can be: tap the mouse button to go forward one slide (Page Down) or flip it upside down and tap to go backward one slide (Page Up). It works seamlessly just as advertised, so I can't really complain, but it feels like Logitech missed an excellent opportunity here. Once you flip the mouse upside-down, there's a handy laser sensor right in front of your face, but it's turned off: why couldn't Logitech invert the sensor's vertical axis when it flips, and turn it into an optical trackpad as well? Go ahead and turn your own mouse upside down, and drag your thumb across the sensor surface. See what I mean? With its embedded sensors and uniform design, the Cube Mouse could be a proper air pointer, but perhaps that didn't occur to the company.

What I can complain about is the Cube's battery life: where most of Logitech's portable pointers can last months or even years on a couple of AA batteries, I only got about a week out of the Cube before it had to be recharged. It's pretty easy to charge it, mind you, and just about any Micro USB cable will do the trick, but it's one more thing you'll have to worry about before your big presentation. Also, while the Cube Mouse's wireless range is fairly good assuming a straight line of sight, and shouldn't be any trouble in a large conference room, it dips quite a bit as the battery drains.