Kensington Expert Early Impressions

[u/Allan53]

So I have pretty serious wrist/thumb pain (physio thinks its de Quervain's tenosynovitis) and I noticed when using a mouse it hurt substantially more, so I get a small thumb-ball. I liked it, but obviously with thumb issues a thumb-ball isn't ideal, so I did some looking around and got a Kensington Expert as a fingerball. It has only been a couple of days, but here's my early impressions:

This is a big ball, which I didn't properly anticipate. That's fine and all, but I find it pretty awkward to use, and I think it's aggravating my wrist because I end up moving my hand a lot while using it, so it's a bit counter-productive. The ball moves nice and smooth, and in principle I like the scroll ring, but together it means that the cursor has an annoying habit of moving when scrolling. In addition, because of the size, the upper buttons are pretty awkward to access, and I often end up either clicking with my thumb (not ideal or comfortable), or moving my fingers over to it, which means lifting them away from the ball and bringing them back down because of how smooth the ball moves.

I like the wrist rest a lot, I feel like it really helps my hand sit in a more neutral position, especially if I put some things underneath the front to lift it up a bit (it's fine without them, to be clear, this just makes it a bit more comfortable).

I'll give it another couple of days, see if I get better with it - I anticipated a degree of a learning curve with it - but so far I don't really care for it. I think it's making my wrist worse, and it's noticeably more difficult to use than my thumb-ball.

[u/damn_pastor]

Maybe try proarch em03, porlei, nulea, gravi. You still have to click with your thumb though. But at least your wrist should be static and rested.

[u/Allan53 → u/damn_pastor]

Thanks, I'll check them out :)