A little over a year ago, I was trying to figure out the right finger-operated trackball mouse for me. I had a favorite thumb-operated trackball for excellent ergonomics in the Elecom EX-G Pro. To this day, if I feel even the slightest twinge of pain in my right wrist, I switch to it for a few hours and it’s all fixed up. I tried a large finger trackball in the Kenington Slimblade Pro and quickly fell in love with the form factor. I had heard a number of sources claim the Ploopy Adept would wow me in ways I wasn’t expecting. I had to see what I was missing out on. I bought the Ploopy Adept, and since receiving it, I’ve barely used any other trackball. In fact, for this review, I had to break out my Slimblade and re-read my old reviews because I had forgotten what it was like to use anything else. I quickly came back to the Adept.
I fell in love with this trackball, and have primarily used it over the past year, despite my impressive collection of fantastic trackballs. Here’s what makes it so special.
In This Article:
Specs
- Ball size: 44mm/45mm
- Buttons: 6
- Dimensions (all hand-measured and approximate)
- Height: 115mm
- Width: 100mm
- Depth (rear): 42mm
- Depth (front): 23mm
- Connection Type: USB-C
- Switches: Omron’s D2LS-21, Clicky
- Sensor: PMW-3360 (1,000Hz and 12,000 Max DPI)
- Firmware: QMK, Via-Compatible
Hardware
It’s impossible not to notice what the Ploopy Adept is made from. It’s plastic, like anything else, but its texture is unmistakable. The Ploopy Adept, like all of Ploopy’s products, is 3D printed. The designs are open-sourced, and you can play with it as you’d like, but if you’re not someone with a 3D printer or the skills to use one, that’s not very much help.
The Ploopy has a handmade feel to it. Between the 3D printed plastic, the wooden logo, even the bearings, which are not static bearings, everything gives off that old school hacker vibe. If they had 3D printers in the 70’s, this is the trackball mouse they’d make. The print is not quite perfect, there are loose filaments in areas, it’s a bit messy. Sometimes it feels like something you may have put together with your friend who has a 3D printer. But it works, it feels good, and that raw nature of it gives it a bit of charm.
Don’t let the hacker qualities of this turn you away. The trackball still has a fantastic sensor, the PMW-3360, with up to 12,000 max DPI for accurate tracking, and clicky switches from Omron. Under the hand, the Ploopy stops feeling quite like a science project, and quickly feels like something perfectly crafted for use with a computer. It might have hacker vibes, but people put a lot of time and care into designing it.
The most polarizing part will be the bearings. Three MR63ZZ roller bearings, like tiny skateboard wheel bearings, make up the anti-friction mount for the trackball. This means you can’t really twist the ball, providing any lateral motion to the sides of the ball won’t do anything, a habit I had to forget from my time with the Kensington Slimblade. It also means they’ll be a bit noisy. You can feel more friction in the ball, but the ball’s movement itself is smooth. Kind of like the ball is floating on fine sand. These bearings have nearly no stiction, that first bit of friction when moving the ball from rest that can get in the way of accuracy. However, you’ll have to keep those bearings clean. It’s like any other trackball, you’ll have to clean the bearings on occasion, it’s just a bit more involved with these. You can, however, more easily replace them. I already swapped out one of my problematic bearings with a new one, for much better results.
There is no wireless option for this. Someone could make a wireless module and likely a custom case. And a few people have made what appear to be successful attempts to do so. I find I don’t need my trackball to be wireless though. It sits on my desk just fine. The only time I regret it not being wireless is when I lean back in my chair reading something online and can’t put it on my arm rest to scroll.
Comfort
I added a very slightly rightward tilt with a bit of foam under the left side of the base of my Adept. This is because I frequently use this ball as a thumb ball, when scrolling and reading, for example. It’s nice to be able to use the mouse from a tilted angle that more naturally matches the slight tilt of my wrist during regular use as well.
The Adept is a bit taller than I’d like, and I did feel the need to angle it slightly, but besides that, it’s quite comfortable. I rarely have wrist issues that require I switch it out for something else. Perhaps once in the past year, and I can’t even fully blame the Adept for that. I put a small amount of foam under my desk mat under the wrist area for some added padding against my desk when my wrist is resting on it, but, besides that, I didn’t feel the need for elevation. It’s comfortable to rest my hand on it or to the side of it. It’s perhaps not the most ergonomic trackball ever designed, but it is very good. And once you get used to it, it’s comfortable and hard to abandon. Though I’d love a slightly slimmer version.
Customization
Any time someone points out that something can be customized through 3D printing, I am skeptical. I could make an enclosure for the contents of my Kensington Slimblade with a 3D printer, would that make the Slimblade customizable? Oh, sure, the open-sourced files allowing someone to get a good starting point are most definitely helpful, and make the Adept easier to use as a base for a custom trackball, but for the average person, it’s just another trackball. With the lack of stores to buy 3D printed products easily, and the niche nature of trackballs in general, let alone niche subcultures of makers, the likelihood you’ll ever use a Ploopy that isn’t stock or mostly stock is small. You’ll have to do any customizations yourself, you likely won’t be able to order them. If you’re comfortable with that, it’s customizable. However, I’m sure lots of things are if you’re that comfortable with 3D printing.
Screenshot via usevia.app
The firmware of the device is based on QMK though, and it’s Via compatible. That means you can just go to usevia.com, enable your device, and start customizing it. You can add layers and shortcuts, macros and modifiers. I’ve got a setup I like that includes left, right, and middle clicks, a scroll button, a modifier that allows me access macros and Mission Control. Those macros are simple ones, which enable changing spaces in macOS as well as forward and back, and finally a DPI switch. It’s a lot of customization, but it’s what I put in all my trackballs. Every single one of them can do all of that as well thanks to support from Steermouse. The Ploopy Adept firmware actually has a huge drawback. I can’t adjust the scrolling speed, and it’s wildly different for horizontal scrolling than vertical scrolling. Horizontal scrolling is slow and sluggish. I’d have to compile and install custom firmware to change that. It’s ridiculous that I can adjust scrolling speed on every other “less customizable” trackball or mouse that I own, but not my “super customizable” Ploopy. “Did the people who made this even use it,” I found myself wondering. Because to me, the horizontal scroll is nearly useless for finding the end of a line of text, scrolling in a photo, or scrubbing in a video or music editing application. I can do so much with this trackball, but still can’t scroll at the speed I want to. Fortunately, I do have Steermouse, so I was able to speed up the horizontal scrolling specifically for the Ploopy. But I hate needing two apps to customize my trackball.
Comparing to the Kensington Slimblade Pro
I feel like this may be the most obvious comparison for me to make for both the market and what I personally have used. These are similar trackballs in they’re finger-operated with buttons that surround the ball. The Slimblade has a much larger ball and feels smooth, but still has some stiction. It’s slimmer, but those four buttons don’t feel like they’re easy to reach as the six buttons of the Ploopy Adept. I also found myself preferring the scrolling on the Adept, even though I had to customize it more for that. The Kensington required I use third party software instead of their own, so perhaps it’s an acceptable drawback on the Adept. Besides, the Slimblade doesn’t even have horizontal scrolling to begin with.
The Slimblade is wireless, but because of its size, this doesn’t matter one bit. I’m not going to be using that on my armrest. The smaller footprint of the Adept is preferable, as are the number of buttons available. I find myself never using my Slimblade, and I don’t know if I ever really will again. The Adept feels, to me, better than it in every way that matters.
Sorry, Americans, Choose Better Next Time (If You Can)
Currently, Ploopy is not shipping to the U.S. and does not know when they’ll be able to do so. If and when they do, it could come with a 35% tariff the customer will have to pay upon receiving the package. This is due to Donald Trump’s ridiculous tariffs (Luca Ittimani, The Guardian). America made a horrifically bad decision and may be stuck with the consequences of those actions for far longer than Trump will be in office.
Choose better next time, America, if you even get a chance to do so ever again.
Overall 9/10
My perfect trackball might be the Ploopy with a slimmer design, larger trackball, some adjustable angles for left and right, and more customizable scrolling. This trackball, as-is, is very close to what I’d consider the perfect trackball. A few glaring flaws keep it from that, but they’re not enough for me to abandon this platform.
The Ploopy Adept is customizable enough for most users, comfortable to use once you get to know it better, small enough to make space on a desk, and capable enough for all your work. It’s surprisingly smooth and comfortable to use. It quickly became my favorite trackball, and friends who use trackballs and tried it out for themselves agreed, it’s their favorite too. The Ploopy Adept is proof that passion about something can make something great, even if you’re making it out of 3D-printed plastic. Don’t judge a book by the plastic it’s printed on, this is a fantastic trackball that’s worth getting your hands on, if you can.