Kensington Slimblade Trackball

Kensington Slimblade Trackball

Published May 24, 2009 at 08:48:12 PM, by Travis Simon

Trackballs have been around for awhile, and even though they have the history, they don't seem to have the demand that other peripherals gather. Everyone can use a normal 2 button, but to utilize the mighty trackball takes patience and some learning. Once you get the hang of it, they are often far superior in comfort and need very little space to operate. They don't require a special surface, and you don't have to pick it up and move it when you reach the edge of your screen. When we heard that the new Kensington Slimblade trackball was available right after Macworld, we dug hard to get our reviewing hands all over it to give you an in depth review. Let's cut the chase then, shall we?

Setup and Design

Setting up the Kensington Slimblade trackball requires 3 things: desk space to set the trackball on that it won't move, the drivers installed on your computer, and an open USB 2.0 port. That's pretty much it. Oh, and a hand to use it (not trying to offend anyone here, just stating obvious items perhaps).

Before you get all happy about going crazy with your trackball, you should install the software that Kensington supplies with the device. You don't NEED to use this software for a standard two button procedures, but to utilize the top two “function” buttons, you DO need to use the software. There's no way around this I'm sorry to report, as these buttons seem to be software triggers, and not hardware based.

The design of the Kensington Slimblade Trackball is pretty simple, not saying that it's boring, but very simple and sleek. It looks like it was meant to be caressed, and thankfully, it likes to be. There are four tactile buttons on the trackball itself, 2 of which operate system commands, and the other top two that operate software commands for the dedicated software / drivers that belong to the device.

Being a trackball, and since it's not meant to moved around much, it comes with a standard USB 2.0 cable. As a note, this model is upgraded from the previous Trackball Pro offered by Kensington for many years and still on sale today. What's the big upgrade? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Features

The features of a trackball vary from one to another, some have lots of buttons, some are controlled by your thumb, and some are controlled by your forefingers. Some have a scroll wheel, and like Kensington's previous model, it carried a scroll dial surrounding the trackball.

Compared to the previous model, the shape of the device is much slimmer, and carries more of a square surface area than the previous rectangular shape. It also has lost the scroll dial – but never fear, the dial has been implemented into the trackball itself. Yep – all you do is TWIST the ball in a horizontal manner, and watch the screen scroll up and down. That's not all – remember those two buttons at the top I mentioned earlier? Well, when you install the software / drivers for this device, those two buttons turn into different functions for the trackball. A tap of the upper left button switches the device into 'media mode'. This mode makes the 'scroll dial function' of the trackball adjust your volume of your computer. Want to play / pause? Hit the left bottom button. Want to skip to the next track – try pressing the right lower button.

The media functions are nice, but some might appreciate the other top button’s function – the view function. When enabled, it places a navigational twist and allows you to move up and down with the trackball, and when you twist, it zooms in and out.

To get back into 'normal' mode, just tap either buttons to disengage that function, and you're back to moving your cursor around like a pro. On another note, when you are in normal mode and you do give that ball a twist for the first time, you might think you are shuffling your old school iPod (yeah, before they went all touch-screen happy). That's because the Kensington what appears to have a mini internal speaker that outputs a scrolling sound, just like the classic iPod does / did.

Performance and usage

The performance measured by this device is subject to what you want to use it for. Heavy hand users and those with extremely small hands might be frustrated with the design, but for the most part, this mouse seems pretty well designed. The tracking was smooth, accurate, and a pleasure to follow on screen. Since this device utilizes dual sensors for pitch/yaw, and latitude tracking (for scrolling) it has a special ball and special sensors, but they aren't laser like previous models.

I'll have to admit, I'm one of the lucky ones that still has an original Trackball Explorer mouse from Microsoft – a gem of a tool, that has been my trusty design sidekick for almost 8 years running (and knock on wood, continues to run) and I have to say that I love the feel of the Kensington Slimblade trackball. It tracks well, the scroll function is an awesome integration, and having the buttons so large to hit and easy to press, it makes clicking easy. However...

I'm not sold on the software that it ships with – especially for designers. Having a zoom function seems silly to me if you know your Photoshop, Acrobat, or any other program. ALT (apple) SPACE brings the zoom command up like a champ, and if you want to rely on zooming in with just the scroll function, what happened to just checking that command in Photoshop under your preferences? Or better yet, how about holding option (alt) and scrolling? It will do the same thing.

And the media function – although very intuitive, it seems like a waste of function space when nearly all multifunction keyboards offer some sort of forward, next, or play pause. Not to mention Mac's themselves have the volume function built in along with handy dandy mute. Compared to the previous model with actually having 4 buttons, this model seemingly only (in my eyes/hands) has two.

Conclusion

Ok – lets be fair, it's an awesome tracking device, and if I had to choose between a two button regular mouse, or this, I would choose this hands down. However I have major gripes with the fact you can't customize the top two buttons. Heck, I have a 4 button mouse from 10 years ago that has simple forward / back capability when browsing the web. To me, that would be more beneficial – unless I can't take the 2 seconds to press pause on my keyboard / media player.

Overall, you're getting an amazing trackball, that only has two buttons. The media and viewing functions are moot if you know what you’re doing in your program or have some media functions on your keyboard already (not to mention you can't assign these buttons for dashboard or expose in Mac – a real bummer as the one button mighty mouse does more than this device).

The Bottom Line

I'm torn between the love of the smooth trackball, the twist scrolling, and the much needed updated design...but leaving me with little to no configuration options other than the proprietary software isn't what I was waiting for. It's a really nice attempt, and if you don't care about a back button, or a expose button, or even another button to do something OTHER than what Kensington says you can – then I suggest looking into the new Kensington Slimblade trackball. If the above doesn't fancy you – I'm afraid you're going to have to keep waiting.

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Technical Specifications

No specifications are available.