What is your take on ergonomic mice?

Question

I've never had a particularly ergonomic mouse, and I'm not sure what problem they solve. For now, they just make me think the entropy of mouse shapes is proportional to their price.

But since I'm in front of a computer for long periods and I do use a mouse, I should be in their target audience, am I right?

Do you have an ergonomic mouse? Ever tried one? Are they worth the weird shape?

Answer 1

For me, most ergronomic mice actually add more strain to my hand. I've tried probably a dozen or so mice and other pointing devices and have found that trackballs help me the best. There's a lot less overall movement needed and it doesn't over-use my hand/fingers as much as mice seem to. The model I've been using lately is from Logitech that allows me to switch hands, beneficial since I'm ambidextrous.

Answer 2

My take on it is that it is mostly marketing hype.

That said, repetitive strain injury is real and painful, and contrary to intuition the mouse is more conducive to developing RSI than the keyboard. Therefore, if you suspect that you are experiencing the onset of RSI, my advice is to take it seriously and look into the cause. If you can borrow an ergonomic mouse (or keyboard) just to try it out and see whether it alleviates the pain, do so. If it does, buy one. If it doesn’t, don’t blindly assume that it will solve the problem when it clearly doesn’t.

Answer 3

I was pretty sceptical about ergonomic mice until about three years ago, when I found Evoluent Vertical Mouse, it was one of the standard-issue mice at Google at the time.

The other ergonomic mice always reminded me of some kind of gadget from a bad 80s sci-fi movie and did not feel much different from ordinary mice in hand. And the first time I tried this one it felt very extremely natural for the hand. Never looked back since.

Answer 4

I absolutely love thumb trackballs. Unfortunately, I only have one option (well, two with the wireless option):

You only have to move your thumb, and your arm (and wrist) rests on the table

Answer 5

I tried the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 and I admit that I'm not a fan. I briefly touched other ergonomic mice, and some of them felt quite nice, but at the moment I'm just using a plain mouse and hold it differently, and am extremly satisfied with that.

Here's a picture of how I hold it: To accomodate the shift in hand position I switched the buttons on the mouse so left click is still achieved using the index finger (actually I use both the index and middle finger simultaneously). Rightclick requires a slight stretch, but since it's relatively rare compared to the left click, that's OK.

The reason I did that was so that I could rest my hand without putting pressure on the area where the fingers meet the hand, and to avoid my wrist getting into an upward slope due to the curve of the mouse. In this position my hand rests on its side on the table, my fingers' tendons are pressure free, and the hand is in an overall more natural position. It's as ergonomic as it can get.

Answer 6

I'm always on the computer... and I get incredible pain if I don't use a ergonomic mouse. The factory mouse the comes with a computer almost always is the culprit. I need something with a sensitive click button and something that fits the contour of my hand.

Something in this shape will be good, but I usually to to Best Buy and try it out before I actually buy:

Answer 7

I don't have hard data on this yet, but I suspect the most ergonomic mouse is a keyboard.

Answer 8

I once worked with someone who just had several mice laying around, so he could change every few days. Small, large, standard, ergonomical: it was the variation that prevented pain.

Because I could find no mouse that didn't start to hurt after a while, I got a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch. I wanted the pen, and got the combined version because I like a large trackpad, but I currently only use it in pen mode. I really like it: I never felt pain in my hands anymore. It is possible that it is slower than using a mouse, but on the other hand people think that you are more creative, because you use a tablet like the cool graphics people :-)

Answer 9

When I was buying my laptop, it turned out that the shop placed wrong price and I saved 50€. I saw the Logitech VX Revolution mouse in the store and in impulse decided to spend the extra money on it. I wasn't a big believer in ergonomic mice before, but it just seemed nice.

After several months of using that mouse exclusively, I had to use a cheap mouse at the university. The difference was HUGE! The cheap mouse felt like a brick. Also, the scroll wheel is great when working with long source files.

Answer 10

Ergonomic mice (and keyboards) can definitely be beneficial for preventing a variety of repetitive stress injuries. The problem I have always had with them is that after getting used to an ergonomic version at work it becomes difficult to use a non-ergonomic version any where else (like at home) and I ended up having to get one for home as well. Not necessarily a big deal (depends on price and who else might be using the computer) but something to be aware of.

Answer 11

Like Walter, I've found they do more harm than good...

'Twas a Microsoft "IntelliMouse" that finally drove me to use a trackball. After about a year using the thing, my right wrist hurt so much I could barely stand to use it at all. It took me about a month to get accurate enough with a trackball that I could comfortably resume image editing and gaming, but by that time the pain had also subsided, and hasn't returned.

For me, the biggest problem with the "ergonomic" mice is their tendency to fit my palm. And I know that probably sounds like a good thing, but, heh... It meant I was able to rest the heel of my palm on the back of the mouse, effectively palm-gripping it even when at rest. Which was wonderful for my accuracy when pin-point accuracy was required - my palm stabilized the mouse while I used my fingers for precise movement - but was a constant and unnecessary strain when, say, scrolling through a text file or web page.

I may try a mouse again when one of my trackballs finally wears out, but if I do I'll be careful to choose one too small / short to contact my heel or elevate my wrist.

FWIW, I also hate ergonomic keyboards. When I experience pain from typing, it's from hitting the keys too hard - the best solution I've found for this so far is a keyboard with a decent amount of travel on the keys, and good tactile feedback - my 20+ year-old Model-M is the gold standard for typing comfort in my book. All a split/bent/warped/twisted layout does is cause me to make more errors when typing, magnifying the damage caused by each each tap.