About a month ago, I met up with some cool GeekHackers at the
Indianapolis Meetup. We played
with a lot of cool keyboards and ate some good food. Since prdlm2009 was there, there was quite a few ergonomic goodies there including a Kensington Slimblade that I got to try out. I think the last time I used a trackball was when I was in elementary school. I remember I loved to roll the ball as hard as I could but that’s about all I remember. So obviously this time around, I put the trackball through its proper paces.
AestheticsThe whole trackball is plastic. It’s got a grey body and the ball itself is a maroon; both the body and ball have some metallic-flake in it to make it look a bit shiny or reflective. It’s a nice color scheme but I would have liked to seen the red swapped out for a neutral color. Because of it being shiny and plastic, it picks up a lot of fingerprints easily. It sort of reminds me of the finish on the Razer Blackwidow or Das Keyboard Ultimate. It has a black braided USB cable that is about six feet long.
I did a quickie test and it takes up about two times the footprint of a CoolerMaster Storm Spawn or Logitech G9x. The actual dimensions, which I measured with a ruler but eyeballed a little, are as follows:
- Length from top to bottom: 6 inches
- Width from bottom left corner to right corner: 5 ¼ inches
- Width from top left to right corner: 4 ¼ inches
- Height of just the grey plastic body: 1 ¼ inches
- Height from bottom of the unit to the top of the ball: 2 inches
I didn’t find the unit too big though, especially since you don’t have to move the whole unit around.
Build Quality and FeelThe entire unit and ball are shockingly light. If it wasn’t sitting on my mousepad, I might actually be worried it could slide around. I also don’t like the drop in ball. There’s nothing holding the ball in other than the cup design. This makes for easy cleaning of the unit but it made the trackball feel cheap. Between the weight of the unit, the feeling of the switches themselves, and the drop in ball, I’d say the build quality is a six out of ten points. It’s certainly fine but I found the build quality to be lacking for what the price is. I would compare the feeling of the unit to the stock Pure or Poker case. It will get the job done but it leaves a little….something to be desired.
Another complaint I have is that the ball seemed to attract grime very easily. When the ball was dirty, it would squeak and squeal. I tried rolling it real hard to one corner to try and clean it but it still doesn’t help the noise. I found I had to clean both the ball and the cup/bearing area every two or three days. I had to clean the trackball far more often than any mice I’ve used, which was a little off putting. So apparently I’m very dirty
.
However, my complaints aside, it was extremely enjoyable to roll that ball around. It’s very visceral and just fun to play with. I found myself rolling it around for no reason at all. And maybe just a little, it reminded me of when I was a kid and I would just roll every trackball in the computer room when I thought no one was looking. Switching between a mouse and trackball is a nice change. The switch between the two felt great and my hands really appreciated the change in pointing device. Maybe it’s the same reason I find myself switching keyboards often.
One thing that I really can’t compromise on is the issue that the unit is “low profile”, as marketed by Kensington. This sounds great but the distance between the top of the ball and the button is too far in my opinion. It makes the operation a little awkward, especially since I have small hands.
Control
Hand position on the SlimbladeI used the trackball as my primary pointing device for about two weeks. I found that for surfing the internet, writing reviews, and spamming Geekhack, the trackball was very comfortable to use. It wasn’t too fatiguing and I enjoyed the experience. However, I ran into issues when I tried gaming with it. Because of the placement of the ball to the buttons, I felt like I gave up precise control and I found playing games like Diablo 3 were not comfortable. During the game, it felt as if I was playing guitar where my hands were going all over the frets. When I’m playing video games that require some coordination, I don’t want to roll the ball then have to navigate the distance to the buttons. I’m used to having all the control literally at my fingertips with a mouse and the scroll wheel. I could see playing an FPS or perhaps a slower game like Civ5 with a trackball though. I don’t think it would be very efficient to play StarCraft 2 and I already stated using the trackball with Diablo 3.
The buttons are sort of L shaped and spaced in 4 quadrants around the body of the ball. When I first started using the mouse, I didn’t realize that the buttons actually actuated at the center of the body where the two seams meet. I would press the buttons at a lower spot and thought that it was weird that button wasn’t that responsive. It is not intuitive to press the button in the EXACT location if the design has this huge shaped button with seams. It makes much more sense to me to have an actual button to press such as the Logitech Trackman, CST LTrac, or most mice.
What I absolutely loved was the twist motion to scroll up and down. I found this to be very intuitive and comfortable. It would be very nice to have this feature on a CST. But now that I’ve thought about it a little, maybe the scroll only works because the ball is so high up out of the body of the Slimblade unit.
Final ThoughtsI really enjoyed the trackball when using it to write reviews, post on Geekhack, and for general internet surfing. I wasn’t so convinced on using the trackball to play games with. This experience leaves me very conflicted because I don’t really have the desk tray space to hold a mouse and a trackball. So I’m not sure it would be worth it to me to buy a trackball since I’d have to unplug and plug it in a lot. Plus I still haven’t tried any of the CST products or other trackballs. I think for now I’ll just say the Slimblade had some issues for me but it was a pleasant experience overall. I’ll have to do more testing with trackballs before deciding on buying one.
I forgot to mention this earlier but thank you to prdlm2009 for lending me this Slimblade!
