Every once in a while, a new computer bit comes along…something you maybe weren’t expecting, and it makes your computing life so much easier that that going back is painful and frustrating. The Logitech MX Revolution is like that.
I’m a skeptical person, and I had my doubts about a $130 mouse. But after having used it, I can see how that $130 is, if not totally justifed, at least not out-of-this-world crazy.
This is a laser mouse (using a laser to track movement instead of that red light that so many use now). It’s wireless, using an internal lithium-ion battery; the battery meter is indicated with a set of little green lights that light up when you move it around.. It has 6 buttons, one wheel, and a lever for your thumb. The receiver is a small USB dongle-looking thing about the size of a thumbdrive.
The Good
There is a lot to say about this mouse that falls under the “good” category.
The feel of it is pretty nice…the sides have a rubbery coating that is strangely soft to the touch. The buttons are all easy to use, providing good feedback. The shape is very sports-car-esque, and the thumb support wing is actually pretty nice.
It is very lightweight for a cordless mouse because it uses an internal lithium-ion battery. This, together with the super-smooth glide pads make it very easy to move around. The battery life is indicated by a meter on the side of the mouse, and in the system preferences panel it shows how long the battery is expect to last, in days (mine tanked after 13 days).
Just like the MX 620, it has two modes for the scroll wheel, so I’ll just quote what I wrote there because it applies here too:
The most interesting thing about this mouse is how the scroll wheel works. It has two modes: “gear” mode is when the wheel “clicks” as you roll it…chunk-chunk-chunk. Very good precision, and it doesn’t get knocked accidentally. In software you can adjust how far to scroll with each “click.”
The second mode I call “free-wheelin’” mode: the wheel spins without any “gear” feel to it…but beyond that, it’s also very low friction, so if you spin it quickly, it keeps spinning…and spinning…and spinning. This is very handy for getting to the end of some huge web forum post or long document or something…just spin the wheel, and watch stuff fly by. To stop, just touch the wheel…it stops spinning, and the page stops scrolling. The scroll wheel is metal, so when you spin it it just keeps going.
It does take some getting used to, but once you are used to it…wow, it this feature ever useful! I never paid attention to how much scrolling I was doing until I went back to my old PC and a mouse that uses a gear wheel. I have to say that it was annoying to now have the free wheelin mouse wheel.
But what if you want both the precision of gear mode, with the user-friendliness of free-wheelin’ mode? Enter mode three, which Logitech calls “SmartShift.” In this mode, the wheel starts in gear mode, but if you spin it quickly, it slips into free-wheelin’ mode. You get the best of both worlds! Very nice!
Each of the buttons can be programmed to do various things…and in fact there is a dedicated “search” button that you can use to either search your computer or search the web.
The software lets you create application-specific configurations, which can be really handy if you want to assign a mouse button to do one thing in Lightroom, and another thing in PhotoMechanic, and those two things don’t use the same keyboard shortcuts.
The Bad
It’s not all roses…I have found three things about this mouse that I don’t like. The first is an inconvenice, the second and third are a bigger deal for me.
First, the battery. Because it’s internal, if you let it drain completely you’ll need another mouse to use as it charges up (it comes with a charging stand). If you remember to keep it charged, this is a non-issue though.
As for the second issue…remember I said earlier that the buttons were all easy to use? Well, that’s not quite true: the wheel button is actually one of the worst buttons on any mouse I’ve tested. It takes much more pressure to activate than the others and the feedback is quite mushy. In free-wheelin’ mode, it can be difficult to press the button and not move the wheel. And I use the middle mouse button a lot, especially in Photomechinic, where I have is set to tag images. I suppose I could configure one of the other buttons to do that as a work around though.
The third issue in fact a potential deal-killer for me. Remember I said that I use PhotoMechanic? It’s a great piece of software, and one of the great features is that you can scroll through the images using the mouse wheel. In free wheelin’ mode, this is almost useless as it’s very difficult to move only one photo at a time. This, together with the fact that when the wheel button is used to flag images, using the hard-to-press middle button to flag it without accidentally moving the scroll wheel and switching images is nearly impossible.
So the SmartShift solution seems to be ideal right? It would be, but there is a large catch: the gear motion is not even. What this means is that, about every 4th or 5th movement of the wheel translates into two movements…so about every 5th image is skipped. Worse, after scrolling through about 10 images, the scroll wheel just stopped working in PM. I could not find a way around this one in software.
Conclusion
This mouse is lightweight, extremely configurable, and the SmartShift wheel mode has to be tried to be appreciated. Outside of PhotoMechanic it is the best mouse I have ever used…but it does have some big-time conflicts with how I use PhotoMechanic, one of my critical workflow apps. So will *I* keep it? You’ll have to wait to find out 
…Mike