Logitech Touch Mouse T620 product reviews

When it comes to computer mice, Windows-based system have always been seen as needing a minimum of two buttons - a select button, and a menu button. Sometimes a third button is in play for advanced features - it may be a clickable scroll-wheel, a middle button or a thumb button. Sometimes there's far more buttons too - customisable macro buttons for gamers or 3d-stereoscopy functionality. I've seen a 12-button mouse once!

But when I saw this mouse fresh out of the packet, I thought they had sent me an Apple mouse... it has NO visible buttons. Instead, the entire top shell sits on a pivot at one end and a micro-switch at the front. With it's slim profile (about half the height of my regular mouse) and shiny coating, it looked so much like the fancy Mac mice, just dark. However, a bit of thought, a little reading, and a lot of experimenting soon revealed the brilliance of this device.

Being, as it is, one large touch-sensitive surface, you don't really need individual buttons. A single button to register "a click" is enough when you then combine location data from the touch surface. The micro-switch says "I have been clicked" while the touch surface says "there was a finger -here-" - add the two together and you can tell if it was a left-click, right-click or even a middle-click. Of course, when you then add in gestures - swipes, strokes, flicks... one-finger, two-finger or even three-finger gestures... you have a LOT of user-controlled input commands.

One of the best features, for me, was also the one that caused the most annoyance and frustration - the 'skin' sensitivity. Not adjustable (as far as I could tell) you need to have a VERY light touch at times. Trying to do a 2-finger-swipe-left to go back a page in my browser was tricky to master, but even after I did become comfortable with it, there were many times I would generate a -click- by accident. This changed the command and either ended up with nothing happening, or me accidentally triggering an on-page link as the cursor rushed over it. The soft-touch requirement goes one step further, with the ability to relax your hand and rest on the mouse being hampered during click-n-drag operations. Suddenly, unless you are paying very careful attention to the pressure your hand is placing on the mouse surface, your mouse is reluctant to 'let go' of the thing you are dragging. Frustrating at the best of times, it can be a productivity-killer in apps such as InDesign and Photoshop when you don't really want to be fiddling around repositioning something you THOUGHT you had placed already.

I have scored Durability down a little, mainly because now you have a single micro-switch taking on the workload of both left and right mouse buttons, and any middle-button usage you may have in your usage preferences. Of the few negatives I found with this mouse, this is probably the one that will be the hardest to rectify - the other can come down to just retraining your mouse hand to be more careful and delicate.

This is quite possibly the COOLEST mouse I have come across yet. Very well suited for Windows 8's touch-oriented interface, this is a great way to give your non-touch-capable laptop or desktop some of the Win8 functionality back. It does have a fairly steep learning curve if you want to go 'all the way' with Win8 and really dive into the Logitech SetPoint software's advanced features and functionality... but it's worth it. After all, if you were after a basic mouse, this is hardly the best option for you, though at $100 it's not that much dearer than a good quality cordless mouse anyway, so the extra $15-$30 would be a good investment for when you DO find yourself in need. With it being integrated with the Unifying hardware system, you can easily move it from device to device with only minor reconnection issues on some platforms.

Overall, only one small cautionary note - despite this mouse working well on Win7 systems too (complete with a set of pre-defined gestures too!) the SetPoint software can be a bit tricky to find. You'll eventually discover it as a new tab in the "mouse" control panel widget. Other than that, I think I love this mouse! (Even if my first reaction was "ARGH! It looks like a giant beetle!")