Gyration Air Mouse user reviews

4.0 stars

"Nice portable air-mouse, with standard AAA batteries" on December 8, 2010 by pmarshall

Pros: The AAA batteries (you can use NiMH) make it independant of a charging base. The scroll button and special feature buttons are nice.

Cons: The ergonomics are imperfect. Even if you have small hands the trigger button makes for an akwardly small grip. Pushing the trigger requires slightly more force than should be necessary (on release it's hard not to have the cursor jump).

Summary: Overall, this is a good wireless mouse that can use standard or rechargeable AAA batteries. This is a very nice feature for travelling, since you can carry spare batteries and don't have to haul around a charging base. The ergonomics are acceptable, but the air motion trigger button is still not placed correctly. In their first (wired) iteration, Gyration got it right then has never hit the mark again. They continually place the trigger on the BOTTOM of the mouse. On the original it was on the sides. There were two modes, as a regular desktop mouse, then holding it SIDEWAYS (left side upwards), it was an air mouse. Think about how you pick up an air mouse, you would naturally grab it with the flat top against your palm (thumb on top, forefinger on the bottom. All the newer Gyration air mice are designed to be held with the forefinger on the motion trigger and the the thumb pressing either the left or right mouse buttons. The grip you have to use is neither a comfortable "joystick" grip, or a "gun" grip, but a rather narrow, pinching hand position. Ergonomically, this is not optimal as an air mouse. As a desk mouse it is exactly like every other mouse, but who cares since it should not primarily be used this way. I'd prefer to omit the regular optical mouse altogether and have the best possible design as an exclusively air mouse design. If you're using this on a laptop, you already have trackpad as an alternative. If you are using an air mouse you probably don't have a flat surface, so what is the optical mouse for?