The MX 1000 Laser Cordless Mouse from Logitech is another entry in the wireless mouse category with a twist: this is a laser mouse, not an optical mouse. The MX 1000 features laser tracking, 8 buttons, and many different comfort & support features.
Laser Tracking
Billed as “the world’s first laser mouse”, the MX 1000 features laser tracking as opposed to the optical sensors that have previously been used in mice that do not feature a tracking ball to monitor your movements. Logitech claims that their laser tracking system features a 20x improvement over optical mice. If you frequently play computer games then laser tracking may be the difference between victory and death, but the casual computer user is not going to notice, nor benefit from such an improvement. The difference in smoothness and precision between ball mice and optical mice can be like night and day, but someone who’s checking e-mail and browsing the web won’t get that same performance boost by upgrading from optical to laser tracking.
Plenty of buttons
The Logitech MX 1000 is no two-button mouse; it features eight buttons with a variety of features:
- Left mouse button
- Right mouse button
- Scroll wheel
- Cruise up
- Cruise down
- Back
- Forward
- Switch application
The left & right mouse buttons are your typical mouse buttons. If you’ve ever used a mouse before, then you don’t need any explanation for these.
The scroll wheel is also very similar to your typical scroll wheel — spin the scroll wheel backwards and forwards to vertically scroll whatever window the mouse pointer is resting over. This scroll wheel does have an extra feature though — you can tilt the scroll wheel left and right to scroll horizontally.
The cruise up & down buttons are meant for quickly scrolling pages with a lot of content, without the need to continuously spin the scroll wheel. Press cruise up/down, and you’ll quickly scroll in that direction. Efficiently scrolling through large amounts of content is a worthwhile feature, but we felt that the MX 1000’s cruise up/down buttons weren’t necessarily the best way to implement it. Being that these buttons are positioned above and below the scroll wheel, it’s a bit of a stretch reach either of them with our index finger.
The MX 1000’s back and forward act as universal page forward and back buttons, sitting near your thumb, on either side of the switch application button. We felt these two buttons were also a bit of a stretch to reach.
The switch application button receives nothing but praise from us. Say you’re working with several applications at once, and want to switch back and forth between them. Instead of moving the mouse down to the Windows taskbar and clicking on the appropriate application’s button, hit the MX 1000’s switch application button. A small window will appear underneath your mouse pointer and list all of the open applications. Click on the application you want, and off you go.
Ergonomic comfort
Ergonomics are one of the MX 1000’s strong points – our hands feel right at home on this mouse. Even though this mouse is quite large, it rests comfortably in the palm of our hand. On the side of the MX 1000 is a thumb rest that feels like it was built just for us. There’s nothing bad we can say about this mouse’s contours. The only comfort complaint that we can muster is the previously mentioned difficulty in reaching some of the extra buttons, but perhaps we just have short fingers.
Rechargeable battery
Most wireless mice require batteries, but not this one. The Logitech MX 1000’s receiver doubles as a docking cradle that recharges the mouse while it’s not in use. On the mouse itself, near your thumb, is an LED light meter that shows you how much juice is left.
The MX 1000 does a great job of holding a charge. We’ve used it for 1 – 2 weeks straight without having to recharge. If you simply sit the MX 1000 in its cradle each night, you’ll have nothing to worry about.
A rechargeable mouse really gets points in our book, since we absolutely hate fumbling around with batteries.
Final thoughts
The Logitech MX 1000 Laser Cordless Mouse is a solid buy, even more-so if you play games or do any other sort of activity where mouse sensitivity is a requirement. It has just the right amount of extra buttons, and they work well despite the fact that we found some of them a little difficult to reach. The MX 1000 is a comfortable mouse to use day-in and day-out, and it will never leave you searching for spare batteries — just remember to recharge it!
Purchase the Logitech MX 1000 Laser Cordless Mouse at Amazon.com
