Kensington Pro Fit Ergo TB450 Bluetooth 2.4GHz with Dual Wireless Capability, Up to 18 months of Battery Life, Ergonomic 34mm Thumb Operated Trackball Mouse, Made from 50% Recycled plastic (K72194WW)

Excellent ergonomic trackball
Surprisingly good. After reading the reviews, I have to admit I was a bit unsure about this purchase. I have and use an expensive thumb based trackball which is very good, but the rubberised coating is beginning to deteriorate.I wanted to try a finger based trackball and decided to give this a go. I work nine hour days on average from home and have used it solidly now for about two working weeks. The thumball has been relegated to the shelf at the minute. I absolutely love the feel of this thing. It took a few days to get the muscle memory for thumb and ring finger clicking. After that it has been plain sailing.Pluses:*Super smooth trackball feels great.*Scroll ring is great (scratchy feel at first though, but has smoothed out a bit now)*excellent ergonomics, no tired aching joints or wrists.*very configurable via software.*AA battery lasts a long time, apparently.*easy to configure keyboard keypress to invoke/disengage high precision mode. (Super useful for detail work)Minuses:*No Bluetooth or wired connection.*not found equivalent for left-right scroll wheel click.*cannot seem to find an equivalent for logitechs gesture mode.*no proper manual for how to configure or use kensington software.All in all, the ergonomics and sheer pleasure of using this device has probably converted me to fingerball type devices. This has surprised me because I was fairly certain thumballs were going to remain my weapon of choice so-to-speak.Although I do still love and will still use my mx-ergo it will just not be as my daily driver. There are things I would like to see on the next version of the orbit fusion, highlighted in the ‘minus’ section above. It’s a pity that a product such as this couldn’t have Bluetooth and also a wired option, like it’s main competitors. However, it’s ergonomics, just about make up for that minor irritation for now.I also use a number of (usually about seven) virtual desktops on my work pc, on the scroll-wheel of the thumball, I’d configured left and right tilt to shift between screens. The orbit fusion doesn’t have this function so for now I’ve reconfigured the forward and backward buttons for that purpose but it’s not ideal. However, on the logitech you can configure a gesture key and swipe the ball left and right if you don’t want to use the tilting scroll wheel. I cannot find an equivalent method on the orbit fusion. If it’s there I haven’t figured it out yet. Still searching a solution for that one. Not a showstopper though, just a nice to have, first world issue, lol.Obviously, I canot speak to it’s robustness or reliability over such a short time. However it seems we’ll made, it’s very comfortable, isn’t covered in that stupid rubbery goo like coating manufacturers are so fond of nowadays and it just works.A note on the wireless dongle. I read a review here that suggested it wasn’t useful for extended periods of use due to overheating or something like and others that bemoan its reliability at a distance.I’ve plugged the dongle into a USB port on the front of my kvm and use the trackball seamlessly on two pc’s and a macbook air. It’s plugged in 24/7 and in two weeks it has been fine. No issues, except one, once. On day three, USB connectivity from the kvm to pc 1 failed upon waking the pc from sleep. Quickly switching to pc 2 and back solved it. Not sure if it was a pc issue a kvm issue or a dongle or driver issue. But it only happened the once in the first week and took five seconds to solve. It’s not something that occurred before with the logitech, though.The dongle itself is plugged in fairly close i.e.: less than the width of a 34 inch monitor so I cannot say how well or not it works from a distance, but sat at a desk I cannot see it as an issue, most monitors have usb hubs and ports in them nowadays, as do some keyboards.I haven’t tried it for gaming, and am not likely to. I use a console controller when gaming, so can’t comment. But as a productivity tool it is very useful.Hope this review helpsUpdate 8th July 2022:A quick note to say that I’m still just as impressed and it still working flawlessly as my daily driver. Absolutely no issues whatsoever. I thought it worth updating today because it is the day 11 months in that my original battery needed replacing. To me that is excellent.Update 12 May 2024Another short update to say that this is still my daily driver. Everything is still working as if it were brand new. Absolutely no signs of use any other problems. Battery life is ablsolutely amazing, I only just replaced the battery again; I’m getting about a nine-months to a year from a single AA cell, which I think is superb. I never have any connectivity issues, it just works. Uprating to 5 stars.Update May 2025.Still my daily driver, no degradation, everything just as good as it was last year. Battery life is so impressive, I forget completely about it. Basically 1 AA battery per year. This is a true five star product.

Good trackball, just not for me
I am a long time trackball user, having used Slimblade and various Elecom trackballs. When my Elecom Deft Pro died, I decided to try the Orbit Fusion. I turned out to be a good trackball – reasonably well built and with a smooth ball out of the box – the Elecom for contract was a struggle in the first couple of weeks. The scroll ring could have been executed better – it feels lower quality compared to the rest of the unit. I used Steermouse to scroll with the ball – so that was not a big issue for me. Also, the wireless range is very poor – requires the dongle to be very close to the trackball. I ultimately did not like the shape of it – there angle between the buttons and the ball makes it really uncomfortable for me – a personal preference that does not affect the rating.

I’ve been using Kensington mice ever since their early entrance into the market. They never failed me then and they are still #1. This track ball is “wireless”. I had a wired Kensington mouse, but got fed up with the wire getting in my way at a very busy work station. It is battery driven and you will know when it’s drained by the fact that the mouse pointer becomes lazy and won’t go as fast as it should or you have trouble putting the pointer on any specific place on your screen. As far as I’m concerned, you’d be tragically missing out on possibly the best mouse ever made. And I stand behind it!

Wish I’d read some proper tech reviews, instead of just the Amazon reviews, before buying. The scroll wheel has a plastic on plastic scrape as you spin it, which apparently can be fixed if you pull the thing apart and do some modifications, but for this price it shouldn’t need fixing. The ball will jump in it’s socket if you try and do a quick flick move, so definitely no good for gaming. The left mouse button under the thumb also has two switches under it, one front and one rear. If your thumb rests at one end, you’ll get good consistent clicks. If you rest in the middle though, when you click it will sometimes fail to register if both switches are triggered, which is a very bad design flaw. Overall it’s decent, but those flaws have annoyed me. I’d likely need to spend a lot more though to get the same feature set without flaws like this, so it’s not a complete fail.

Did not need to download any software on my Imac.Ergonomically is easy to use