It makes sense, on the face of it. Who’s known for long, unbroken stretches of time spent in front of the computer? Gamers. Not just the casual sort, but the kind who buy specialty peripherals for their hobby.
So it stands to reason that their niche computer mice would be shaped to reduce the pain that normally accompanies long periods of mouse use. I don’t play games anymore, but I do spend most of my day behind a computer screen.
And it wasn’t long into my job many years ago that I began to finish out each day clutching my wrists from burgeoning carpal tunnel syndrome. Aside from the very few mice marketed as “ergonomic mice,” the kind I remember they used to sell at Circuit City (yeah, that’s how long ago I’m talking), there just wasn’t much out there these days.
Seemingly everyone uses a laptop for day-to-day tasks and work, so the general-use mouse market dried up. The one area that had plenty of choice? Gaming mice. They were shaped right and priced right, and so when I took one home and used it for such exciting things as word processors and research through my web browser, I was over the moon at how my wrist pain cleared up.
why it helps
My first ergonomic gaming mouse, many years earlier, was the Corsair M45. It was excellent, but after a couple of years I’d managed to kill it with all my clicking. But I was hooked on being able to work all day and write on my computer for fun at night without feeling like I’d spent every day arm wrestling a Chuck E. Cheese’s claw machine.
When the Corsair gave up the ghost, I searched for something cheaper and landed on the Razer DeathAdder, a corded model. That it had fewer buttons than the Corsair made no difference to me. It had a similarly ergonomic and comfortable shape that freed me from carpal tunnel problems, which is all I’d really wanted.
For years when I was doing the digital nomad thing, I bopped around from place to place with a laptop and a Logitech G305 wireless mouse, not because it saved any space compared to the DeathAdder but because I wouldn’t have to carry around a USB-A-to-USB-C adapter to enable a mouse to hog one of my MacBook Air’s two precious USB-C ports.
There’s no reason you can’t use a wireless mouse in any situation—office, home, or traveling. The good ones, such as those incorporating Logitech’s Lightspeed technology, are extremely fast and accurate, certainly fast enough for browsing and working.
The G305 has a 1 millisecond response rate to inputs. Much faster than the wireless mice of the early 2010s and before, which tended to be noticeably laggier than corded models.
Whatever you choose, it’ll be worlds better than your laptop’s trackpad, and even the Apple Magic Mouse, which is plenty slick-looking but has never done anything to ward away wrist pain when I’ve used it.
Give it some thought. Check out a gaming mouse, because being able to finish out each day free of pain at last was worth the extra bucks for me, 10 times over.
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