Logitech VX Revolution Ergonomic Design Cordless 2.4 GHz Wireless Laser Mouse for Notebooks/Laptops/PCs with Hyper-Fast Scrolling
by Logitech
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Our Price: $159.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $29.91 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Logitech VX Revolution Ergonomic Design Cordless 2.4 GHz Wireless Laser Mouse for Notebooks/Laptops/PCs with Hyper-Fast Scrolling
Customer Review: Great mouse, new gimmicks, useful features
Summary: 5 Stars
The Logitech VX Revolution is a fine example of just how far computer mice have come over the last few years. Although it is a feature-laden mouse, it still maintains a sleek, ergonomic design that feels comfortable in your hand. The features include some that you would expect of all high-end mice including a laser based tracking system instead of the old rolling ball based system. If you've ever been frustrated by jerky or strange movements of a mouse with a dirty ball you quickly come to appreciate the laser-based tracking device that simply works the way you expect every time.
Of course it also has a scroll wheel to move through pages of long documents quickly and easily as well as the ability to scroll right or left by tilting the scroll wheel in the desired direction. However, there is one difference in this scroll wheel and others. With the flip of a switch on the bottom of the mouse you can change from the more common click-style wheel to one that absolutely flies through pages and pages much more quickly while still allowing the user to stop instantly where they want to. According to the Logitech website this feature is supposed to switch automatically based on the way you are working but I was unable to get it to work that way. Still it is just a small switch flip to change between the two modes and once you get used to the ultra fast smooth wheel method it is unlikely that you will want to switch back to the other more common method. This is a great improvement on the scroll wheel.
On the side of the mouse are two buttons that allow you to move forward and back in your web browser with a simply click from your thumb. They are placed very well on the mouse so that you don't hit one accidentally but it is still easy to click on purpose with a minimum of movement.
One of the unique features that some will find indispensable and others will find to be unused fluff there is a zoom in and zoom out feature. I thought this was a great idea for people that work a lot with pictures but unlikely to be of value to me, but I was wrong. Not only does it zoom in and out on pictures in your favorite picture viewing application but it will also zoom in quickly on a spreadsheet or word processing document and in other applications. I found it particularly useful on large spreadsheets where I could zoom out to get a picture of the whole spreadsheet, click on an area of interest and then zoom in to that location to make changes. Of course this does not work in all applications or in all situations. For example, it works in my web browser (Firefox) on search pages but does not work in the web browser when it was used to view a picture on the local drive. It also did not zoom in on pictures on a web site if you zoomed in on the web site. The text enlarged but the pictures stay the same size. Keep this in mind also for users who have failing eyesight. They will love this mouse just for this feature alone.
Another unique feature is a small button below the scroll wheel that allows the user to do a quick Internet search for a term or phrase by simply highlighting the word(s) and clicking the button. It will only search Yahoo or Google and you have a choice between them for your default search engine but it is still a nice feature at times. It works well although I don't personally see a lot of value to the feature. Those who often make basic searches of terms they find in documents or web pages will probably love the feature. My searches generally have multiple terms and sometimes other parameters and so it does not function the way I do.
All in all this is a great mouse and is far superior to trying to use the trackpad on my laptop. The mouse can be a few feet away and does not have to be pointed toward the computer which makes it real useful for the way I work and my office is set up. The final very nice feature for a mouse designed for the laptop like this one is the way the USB receiver is stored in the mouse. These things are very small and very easy to lose and when you lose it the mouse will no longer work. To resolve this problem there is a place in the back of the mouse where the receiver can be pushed into the mouse and it clicks into place. In addition to keeping the receiver safe from loss this action turns off the mouse and saves battery power automatically. To get the receiver back out just press a button and it pops out.
A final feature that many users will probably not realize even exists is the ability to switch between open applications easily. If you press down on the scroll wheel a window pops up with all of your open applications listed. From there you just click on the one you want to go to and the display switches to it. This is very useful when copying information between applications.
All in all I really like this mouse. I work with a lot of long documents and spreadsheets and the fast scrolling is extremely useful to me. The ability to zoom in and out of spreadsheets is also a great feature that I find myself using every day. Personally the forward and back buttons and the Internet search button are primarily useless fluff. I would much rather see the forward and back buttons replaced with a Control and Shift button so I can select multiple files, pictures, etc. without going to the keyboard. Still the improvements in scrolling and the zoom feature as well as the way they are implemented make this mouse a favorite of mine until someone comes out with one with a Control and Shift button.
Customer Review: Great Portable Wireless Mouse, BUT Be Careful
Summary: 4 Stars
I've used the Apple 1 button mouse (the ones that come with desktops, the clear ones) forever! Forever is a long time. And I've stood by those mice for a long time and thought, I can do everything with just 1 button. True. Yes True. With a simple stroke of a keyboard key (modifier key) and a mouse click I was opening web pages in other tabs, saving to desktop, deleting, etc. (aka. "right clicking") and I was fine. Enter the VX Revolution, wait... enter the Iomega Bluetooth travel mouse. This was the first 2 button mouse with scroll wheel I'd owned. It was lets just say, subpar. Not only did I find it to be a bit too small, its bluetooth capabilities didn't really play-well with my macmini. When Logitech introduced the VX and MX Revolution mice, I was very interested and eager to see one in person and try it. I opted for the VX as it was more compact and simpler. I didn't need all the extra buttons. I didn't really have to contemplate anything, I purchased one from Fry's. Upon plugging in the RF dongle, I was like, "Damn! It works!" It was up and running and without installing any drivers. Right click was active, scrolling up/down and left/right too! But to get the full effect I needed to install drivers. The packaging states that I need to download drivers for Mac OSX from the Logitech website. So I did, but this was only after I had been using the mouse for 1 week. I was so wanting to use the mouse that I did and neglected to download the drivers. It worked fine without it. But alas I realized that much more features could be 'unlocked' if proper drivers were installed, like setting up the buttons for each application that I used often(FCP, Photoshop, Preview, Safari). Doing so I was able to be more efficient in each of these applications.
So It has been 3 weeks since I've purchased the VX Revolution, still using the battery that came with the unit, all is well and loving the mouse. Finally the power seemed to be dwindling and so I fired up the rechargeable batteries. Removing the old battery was made easy via a little plastic tab that sticks out. Here's where things get a little questionable as far build quality goes. I place a freshly charged battery into the VX and replace the compartment cover, power on the mouse, and nothing. I thought, maybe my rechargeables are old or maybe I placed it in the wrong way. I flipped it around. Still no power. I tried a different battery, this time a regular fresh Duracel. Still nothing. Flipped it over, Nothing. No Power! I removed the battery and inspected the battery compartment and noticed that the red (positive) wire had become unsoldered from the terminal. I thought, "How chintzy!" It seems that when I placed the new battery into the compartment it somehow pushed the wired down and disconnected it. I thought about trying to solder it back on but it was such a narrow space and the wire is so so so tiny, I would risk scorching the plastic body. I decided to return it and get a replacement. I've still yet to do this.
Well aside from a broken battery wire connection, the build of the mouse is really nice. It fits well in my small asian hands. I love all the buttons and options of programming each one (although I wish the side to side scrolling speed could be changed - timelines in FCP can get very long.) The size for travel is just right. It is fast and accurate. Battery life is very long, though I don't have much experience with other battery powered mice, 3 weeks seems like a long time to me. I LOVE that when you store the RF dongle into the body that it shuts the power off and vice versa when ejecting the dongle. When waking the computer (in my case a MacBook) the mouse instantly works unlike the Iomega bluetooth mouse that was used before. Oh and did I mention it is very comfortable? All in all, a very well made mouse just be careful when replacing batteries.
Customer Review: Best Laptop Mouse Available
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been a long time fan of Logitech products. They are often the first to innovate something neat or improve on another companies breakthrough in computer peripherials.
In my opinion, Logitech was the first company to impliment the laser mouse properly. The G7 was the perfect answer to age old problems with cordless optical/laser mice. First problem, to get better DPI resolution (sensitivity and accuracy of movement), the mouse had to burn lots of power. Using standard AA batteries, you'd burn up a set of 2 within 3 days. Using rechargeables you'd get 60% of that for a life and you'd often be stuck with dead batteries when you least expected it. The G7 adopted hot swappable battery packs, one charged while one was in use.. great idea!
This notebook mouse uses a single AA battery. Battery life seems pretty decent, its only consumed 1 of 3 bars after 3 weeks of use. The USB dongle (the little thing that plugs in to the computer) also appears to shut power off on the mouse when its docked into its handy storage compartment in the mouse body. This function is more of the standard on portable mice like this. Microsoft has been doing it for years as well as other makers. The mouse and transmitter seem to have a good deal of range on a new battery I was using this one at 20ft from the USB dongle receiver without a problem! One note, since this is a cordless device, other things that transmit in the frequency range might interfere with the mouse and cause functionality to drop. This happens with every cordless device though due to FCC rules in regards to conflicting frequency devices. So the closer the reciever is to the mouse, the better.
The real reasons to upgrade to this mouse
1. Portable Mouse with laser optics - Laser is important for portable applications for laptops/notebooks because laser mice have a far wider range of mousing surfaces they can read from. The only time i've really seen an issue is on untextured glass type surfaces. I'm sure if they switched to a narrower wavelength laser, it would perform a little better. In any case, laser is way more useful than standard LED optical type systems. Comes in handy if you're portable in various locations, you dont have to worry as much about bringing a mousepad as you do with LED type mice.
2. Scroll Wheel - I'll tell ya, if i had to go back in time 10 years i'd really miss the scroll wheel. But this new variant of it with the flywheel-like weighted scrolling control is just sheer genius. Give it a little flick and you're gliding right through multipage PDF docs or long Web Pages. With lightest touch of a finger to the wheel, it stops. Much more efficent and useful than all other mice out there. The clutch setting on it on the lightest level lets it spin freely, its really sensitive so you have to watch out if your using applications that the scroll whell control like power DVD, because by default the scroller causes it to Fast Forward or Rewind video. The easy remedy though is to turn up the clutch a little bit, it takes just a second to do. You can still tilt it right and left to make it do horizontal scroll, but it doesnt zing like the vertical. Maybe they should look at doing it with a little ball, course we end up back where we started with rollerball mice that accumulate dirt on the sensors and quit working.
So in summary.. its: cordless, laser, portable and it scrolls better than anything else out there. Its funny how transparent scrolling was until now. Its like having a 40 minute commute to work every day and then waking up one morning and theres a 200mph MagLev train that stops at your front door.
Customer Review: What a solid piece of mouse!!
Summary: 4 Stars
Mod - I realize that not many people complain about connectivity issue. Maybe I had a bad draw or they fixed the issue. Now only if I can find it at the price I bought 3 years ago..
You know this is priced at $63. Surely people complain about the price. It is overpriced.
But was I lucky to find 1 at local Wal-Mart at less than $30.
At the time, I didn't know about this mouse, pros and cons, I haven't even heard of this mouse before.
I took it home and realized there had been a serious connectivity issue with this mouse.
It skipped and skipped and skipped and.... you guessed it, it skipped.
Even my wife, casual internet surfer, was too annoyed, so she brought back out the old wired Microsoft mouse, that I put it in the stash. I tried to play a game, but it was a disaster, I literally threw it hard at the carpeted floor, knowing its solid and fabulous construction would hold this mouse, yeah it's really well-contructed.
It was shame that Logitech had not field-tested this mouse at all. If they ever did it, they would know about this flaw. Its connectivity gets interrupted whenever there is a wireless signal is being transferred, mostly from a wireless router and cell phone. I wanted to return it for this reason. The reason I didn't return it was because I liked the feel when I hold it. Yeah, that is the only reason I didn't return it. I liked the feel of the grip. It is that well constructed.
I wanted it to work, so I tried to tweak the router setting by changing the channel. It got improved, but not entirely though. For cell phone, I just tried to not leave it near the mouse. It got improved, but not entirely as well. So I bought a USB extention and tried to keep the receiver right above the mouse pad, giving the distance about 2-3 inches between the mouse and receiver. It is much proved.
About battery life, it is fantastic. It gives more than 2 months from a Kirkland's AA. Try Coppertop and you will get more than 3 months. Receiver also fits inside of the mouse, which makes it easy to carry around if you are travelling. It flies on Steel Series mouse pad due to the smoothness of plastic mouse supports. They do not attract any dirt like others do. I have never seen anything like them before.
It also has switch that can give you option to use free wheeling, no clicking of scroll. This is extremely convenient when you are doing extensive work in excel(50,000 lines anyone?), as I do. Some people complained that when stopped after free-wheeling, it bounces back up, never happend to me.
This mouse is small. I am 6'2" and have long fingers, and when I grab this mouse, there is a big empty space on my palm. If you want your palm to sit on the backside of mouse, this mouse is not for you. When I let my palm sit on the mouse, it restricts and slows down my movement. It may be just me.
I have been using it for 3 years, but no sign of wear or anything, in functional or exterior-wise. It is extremely well constructed and joy to hold. I recently bought G500 in hopes to improve my gaming, and guess what, it did. I have been winning more games. But the thing is that it does not feel as sturdy and comfortable as VX Revo. Maybe it is because of the laser tracking. G500 has the top technology same as G9X and G700, or so I heard. However, compared to the feel of VX Revo, G500 feels cheaply made. VX Revo is really a great piece of work, the best mouse ever, if not for the connectivity issue.
Customer Review: Was my favorite mouse until newer Logitechs came out
Summary: 3 Stars
I love this mouse. It's the perfect size for a notebook mouse - not too small and not too big. The weight is perfect also, not too light that it feels like a toy and not too heavy that it's a chore to lug around. It looks great, and the best feature is that it's ergonomically perfect (sorry left handed ppl). All the buttons and grooves are perfectly placed. The left and right clicks have just the right amount of resistance and feel solid but not too loose or hard to click. The small dongle is housed completely inside the mouse when not in use. A VX Nano sized dongle would have made it better but it's still rather small. I've not installed the Logitech driver so the only buttons that really work out of the box are back button, which is fine for me. But there are plenty of other programmable buttons all within reach of your fingertips should you decide to install the driver. The scroll wheel is large compared to other notebook mouses so that saves me from having to overly spin the wheel. You can set the scroll wheel to click or spin freely, which is another awesome feature. The clicks in the wheel feel just right with the perfect distance and feedback between each click. But if you want to scroll fast, you can also spin the wheel fast even in the click mode and does accelerated scrolling.
I used Microsoft's wireless optical 3000 and laser optical 6000 mouses for work prior and VX Revo just blows them out of the water. It's quick and the tracking accuracy is unbelievable compared to the 2 afforementioned ones. In terms of durability, I've dropped it on too many occasions to remember, both carpeted and hard floors. The worst thing that has happened was that the scroll wheel seems to get out of alignment, get lodged in place and stops from spinning freely. A strong tug at the wheel usually "pops" it back in place. So far so good with mine and working flawlessly. Had mine for over 2 years. I just can't say enough good things about this mouse.
It seems like this mouse has been discontinued. Why? It's such a great mouse. I'd definitely buy another one if they still sold it.
Update Feb 2010: Logitech has released a replacement mouse, which is M705. It uses 2AA batteries for extended battery life but can also operate on one. Also it loses the zoom button which is not a big deal since I never used it on the VX Revo (who uses zoom anyway?). However, it does have the newer micro-dongle you leave in. Now thinking back, if I could change two things about VX Revo, it would be to get longer battery life and a micro dongle. Looks like M705 is the answer.
Update Sept 2010: I've reduced this mouse to 3 stars (from 5) to reflect the sign of times. What I've found is that VX Revo is limited in what surface it can operate on. It works well on my dull kitchen table. But you cannot use it with precise tracking on slightly textured veneer or glossy tables. Forget granite or glass tops but I don't think any optical/laser mouse from 3 years ago was capable so no penalty there. But the biggest offense is that it fails to track well on a mouse pad!!!! That's right. So I'm at a table where the mouse doesn't track well, so I place it on a mouse pad and it still doesn't track well... what to do? I had to resort to using it on a small plastic chopping board (seriously). Ergonomically, this mouse is perfect but the limitations on where you can use this mouse is definitely the weak point. I just bought Logitech's new MX Anywhere mouse and it is excellent. True to its name, you can use this mouse anywhere, including glass and granite.