Sorry, I know that’s a long title, but I had to get the whole name in there. The Kensington Pro Fit Ergo Vertical Wireless Trackball needs a nickname. The KPFEVWT? Alright, from now on, I’ll just say “the Kensington” or “this trackball,” and you’re just going to know what I’m talking about, deal? Deal.
This trackball is an interesting one. Set up with a high angle, even for vertical mice, it is designed to reduce strain on your wrist. The vertical orientation can be helpful when experiencing fatigue or carpel tunnel. For a few years now, I’ve had a cheap emergency vertical mouse I’d use when I was having wrist pain from work. I have a split ergo keyboard that I break out sometimes for the same reason. I love having all the shortcuts and macros on my Swiftpoint Tracer mouse, but I’ll be the first to admit, it doesn’t have perfect ergonomics. Unfortunately, neither does the Kensington.
Still, that wasn’t even the worst thing I experienced with this mouse. This was my first trackball mouse, so I wasn’t sure if my issues were just with trackball mice or this one in particular. I didn’t know if other issues were due to a design flaw or a defect. Still, after testing a trackball from another company, I got a good idea of what’s missing from Kensington’s vertical trackball.
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Trackball Mice?
You can even swap out trackballs for color and feel customization.
Trackball mice are a niche, but there are still plenty of great options. It’s basically like flipping an old mouse upside down and moving the trackball with your fingers. The result is a position that some find more accurate and easier on their wrists. It also works great for tight workspaces and presentations. For example, one of the things I found cool while testing was just how much work I could get done sitting back in my chair with my trackball resting on the arm rest or my leg. Unlike a mouse, you move the ball, not the entire mouse body, so you can put these anywhere. I regularly lean back in my chair to read articles, go through code reviews, or just relax while browsing, with my mouse on the arm of my desk chair.
There’s definitely a learning curve, and I feel like I’m still more accurate with a traditional mouse, but I’ve had decades to practice with a regular mouse, and I’ve only been using one of these for a few weeks. Still, I’ve gotten better with it over time, and I’ve come to really like these. As if my collection of tech wasn’t niche enough! At least there aren’t any custom trackball kits so I could get into building these like I did keyboards. Wait… what?
Oh well, for now, I’ve just got two to review, and we’re starting with my first trackball mouse, the Kensington Pro Fit Ergo Vertical Trackball.
General Usage Notes
I haven’t had a mouse that had horizontal scrolling for some time. My Swiftpoint Tracer only had vertical scrolling, but I assigned one of the buttons on it to be the Shift key, so I could scroll horizontally by holding that button and scrolling. The Kensington vertical trackball did have horizontal scrolling, but it was worse than not having it. Because the mouse was already angled a whopping 60º, it was more of an “up and down” rocker than something “side to side.” The button was exceedingly easy to activate while scrolling or attempting to middle click. In fact, I frequently would activate the middle click multiple times because of this. The switches were too light for a button in this position, and the angle was far too high for this kind of scrolling rocker.
The rest of the buttons are tight, in a good way. Responsive and solid-feeling. The main and function buttons had just the right amount of pressure to engage them. The lone exception was the scroll wheel. This was weak on the side buttons, for horizontal scrolling, but strong on the middle mouse button under the scroll wheel. Trying to do a middle click, opening links in new tabs, that sort of thing, often lead to opening duplicates. It was exceedingly frustrating.
But all of that aside, the thing that’s really important is the trackball. A trackball has to be smooth and incredibly accurate, otherwise it’ll be frustrating to use. You’re using a small area to select text and other items, you need precision. Out of the box, this did not have that. The trackball was sticky and frustrating. I found that, cleaning the synthetic rubies used for reducing the friction on the ball, and cleaning the ball frequently with alcohol helped loosen things up. Eventually, everything broke in. The ball felt smooth. Tracking still wasn’t perfect. I even got a third party trackball, but that didn’t fix everything. The third party ball was smoother out of the box though.
Another problem came down to the tracking of movements. If I flicked the ball, expecting some momentum and fast mouse movement, the mouse would actually jump back. It wouldn’t move away from the starting position much at all. This made scrolling across even just a widescreen monitor a pain. Sometimes literally. This isn’t an issue I’ve noticed on my other trackball mouse, so it’s unique to the Kensington sensor.
Customization
I think mice could almost always use more buttons. This is no different. In fact, the bluetooth/wireless switch should have been on the bottom, with the button serving as another button. The trackball mouse I’m currently testing has the same number of buttons, but makes up for it by allowing gesture input. I’ve found it quite useful. Unfortunately, the Kensington trackball lacks an option like that. Still, there are nine buttons here. You can set some up for forward and back in a browser, others for Mission Control, and the rest for your standard mouse functionality. It’s better than most mice, but I would have preferred to see a few more buttons.
Comfort
At first, I thought it felt fantastic. I didn’t even need a wrist rest, it felt like my wrist was in just the right position. However, I started noticing some soreness in my thumb. It would lead to a bad hand cramp on the second day. I had to switch to another mouse to give it a break. What happened? The angle is too high, making movements with your thumb stressful. On top of that, there’s nowhere to rest your thumb comfortably that isn’t on the trackball. Finally, because of how high the angle is, you almost have to squeeze the mouse when pressing the buttons. Simply put, Kensington treated this trackball like any other mouse, and set the angle to 60º, but should have halved that. A more shallow angle would have dramatically reduced fatigue.
Reliability
Scrolling was completely broken on my trackball mouse, and is apparently a common problem. It’s enough of one that a few other reviewers noted it, and Kensington offered to replace it when I asked them about it. When scrolling down, you might get two “notches” down before one or two go up. Whether you tried scrolling fast or slow, every one to three scrolls would go in the wrong direction. It was an issue with the sensor.
Sometime this spring, Kensington will release an updated version of this mouse. I recommend waiting for that, as it appears to fix many of the issues I’ve found, and likely could fix the scrolling issue as well.
As for moving with the trackball itself, it was a bit jumpy and frustrating. I did get a trackball ball from another company to try, and that was smoother. I have found these require a little breaking in before they become fluid, and I didn’t have time to see if a few days or a week or two would break it in. The scrolling issue made the mouse unusable.
Connection
This mouse has a dual bluetooth connection, as well as a wireless dongle. I love that. I was able to use it for both my work computer and my personal computer by just swapping out the bluetooth. Meanwhile, I could also use the dongle on my iPad. The iPhone’s mouse capabilities are far more limited, but it could work there too. The connection didn’t falter either, working on my desk and from my chair without issue. Though I did find my iPad, if between the mouse and computer, could interfere. This seems common with bluetooth accessories though.
Overall
Kensington makes some of the best trackballs on the market… this is definitely not one of them. That’s likely why the redesigned it so much for the next version, which appears to have a lower angle and different scroll wheel. My recommendation is, if you’re looking for a more ergonomic thumb operated trackball, wait. Kensington’s updated model looks to be much closer to what you’d be looking for. If you need something right now? Well, I started testing the Elecom EX-G Pro and I’ve been using it for much longer than I used my Kensington trackball, if that’s any indication.