Orbit with Scroll Ring

Solved my problem. New laptop, touchpad was interfering with typing. I bought an optical mouse at Microcenter. Made the mistake of buying a cheap mouse. I went there specifically thinking trackball but came back with a cheap optical mouse. Decided to go with this device because it's well rated. Ordered it. Received within a few days with standard shipping. Plugged it in using Ubuntu 15.04 no problem. I did not anticipate the adjustment required for drag and drop. I'm left handed. After switching the buttons I can click and hold my primary mouse button, drag and drop, no prob. I did spend some time looking for an app to provide click to drag because system mouse settings do not provide it. I found that switching the mouse buttons makes it easy to hold down the primary button and drag back and forth, up and down to my heart's content then release the button when I get to where I want to be. I actually like drag and drop with the trackball more than the mouse now that I've used it a bit because with a mouse you're still holding the mouse when you release the button which can incur additional unintended movement. With the trackball, once you lift your finger off the ball the cursor stays put. The scrollring is awesome. With a 13" laptop there are concessions with the keyboard that required a function key to scroll with the keyboard. The cheap optical mouse had a scrollwheel which was tedious to use. The scrollring on the trackball is precise, zippy and easy to use. I was thinking I might be missing something with two buttons instead of three but a third button to paste doesn't matter. With my setup I can select text with the trackball, release my primary button, click again and drag to a new location while holding the button, release to paste text at the cursor location. Most likely drag and drop 101 but I'm very pleased. I decided on the wired trackball because any device, wireless or not, will occupy a usb port. My conclusion is, can't beat it for the money. Great value. Does everything I need it to straight out of the box. I hope my review saves someone else who may be moving over to a trackball some of the time I put into looking for click lock to drag solutions. You don't need 'em. Just configure the device so you can comfortably hold your primary button while articulating the ball. 9/7/2015 Update. I bought my trackball used. After using it for awhile I noticed that it would sometimes catch inside its cradle causing the cursor to jump. The ball had a small scratch in the plastic. Using a fingernail emery board I smoothed it out then polished with metal polish. Now it's perfect.

I’ve been using the Kensington Orbit Trackball Mouse with Scroll Ring since 2018, and it’s been a journey. I liked it from the start, but after a while one got a little gunked up and the scroll ring wasn’t smooth, so I switched to a vertical mouse for a bit. That worked fine until Windows 11 came along. After that, the vertical mice didn’t respond as well, especially across different PCs. I pulled my trackballs back out and installed KensingtonWorks, and that changed everything. I instantly had full control of the pointer again, with a near-perfect balance between speed and accuracy (thanks to the software's adjustibility and options). On my main PC, I run six monitors using very precise software, and the trackball handles it beautifully. The software also let me assign a middle-click button, something the unit doesn’t have natively, which made my old vertical mice completely obsolete. While it worked great with one PC, I still had the second trackball that was gunked up. I took it apart, cleaned the sticky scroll ring with a little alcohol, and it works like new again. Now I’m officially converted. I’ve got Kensington trackball mice on all three of my desktop PCs, plus a smaller travel version for my laptop. Even without a dedicated back button, the comfort and customization have completely won me over. I’m especially glad mine is the wired model. I really think the direct connection gives the best signal and response. No lag, no hiccups, just smooth, precise scrolling 10-14 hours a day. Trackballs are here to stay for me.

Mechanically, Kensington hit the nail on the head with this design. Overall the feel of the unit is solid and smooth. Others complain about the extension piece slippoing off... I attached it with the ridges interlocking and it stays on fairly well for me (though I would have preferred it to be more solid, or even a one-piece design). I could not find any other decent trackball in this price range with a scroll feature that also had the ball at the top tracking with your fingers and not with your thumb. I prefer this orientation in general, but I'm also a lefty. Like others, I do wish that the scroll ring was detented ("click-feel"), like a scroll wheel is on a typical mouse. The feel of the scroll ring is kind of "cheesy", like a plastic-on-plastic bearing, quite out of place on this otherwise-solid unit. The TrackballWorx software for it is "OK", but I could not find acceleration settings that gave me the right combination of pointing accuracy when moving slow, but also cursor movements large enough to traverse all the way across my dual-screen setup without multiple swipes of the ball. I may try to see if I can default back to the Win7 mouse driver [edit: see my update below]. Also, since I am a lefty, I prefer to have the buttons reversed. Unfortunately, the button reversal sometimes doesn't work for lower-level "Yes/No/Cancel" types of dialog boxes, which can be a little aggravating at times. Edit: An update... The unit works great for me now with just the mouse driver built into Windows! I can adjust the pointer speed perfectly to my liking: go into the Control Panel, Mouse applet, Pointer Options tab and adjust the Pointer Speed. The Wheel tab adjusts the scrolling speed. For you lefties like me, the Buttons tab lets you switch the buttons, AND IT JUST WORKS for all windows, all the time! If you want to reverse the direction of the scrolling, then regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Enum > HID > VID_047D&PID_2048 > ...(some weird code)... > DeviceParameters, then change the data field for FlipFlopWheel from 0 (the default) to 1. [Note: Only edit the registry if you know what you are doing, and be sure to make a registry backup first!] So, the builtin funtionality in Windows lets me do everything that I needed TrackballWorx for, only better. I have now very happily uninstalled TrackballWorx from my system. (BTW, if you do the registry edit, you will want to do that uninstall first, to avoid possible confusion with the registry entries.) So now, other than the basic hardware-related gripes, I am very happy with this trackball.

I have been using this model of mouse for over 9 years now (Edit: 15 years? Who's counting). I first got one of these in high school as a present from my dad, who uses this himself. It's gotten me through undergrad, master's, and a couple years of working. I love it so much. I've bought multiple ones to use at home, office, and a spare in case they ever discontinue it. Not one has failed so far. I have attached photos of how I position my hand on it: thumb on left button, index finger on ball, middle finger on wheel, and ring finger on right button. My pinky sits off to the side and doesn't operate the mouse at all. This is just how I use it, YMMV depending on your hand size and whatever you find most comfortable. I find that my pinky just isn't strong enough to do a lot of clicking without getting tired after a while. My index finger is the most dextrous finger, so it's good for precise operation of the track ball. I tried some of the other hand positions described in other reviews, and I found them uncomfortable and awkward, so it's a very personal thing. Play around with it to find what works best for you. I don't use the included wrist rest. I think it's more comfortable to rest my wrist directly on the desk, based on the slope angle of the mouse (probably because my hands are small). Again, YMMV. Pros (why I love this mouse): - Very comfortable and ergonomic for extended use (for me at least). My hand and wrist rest on it in a neutral position. - Track ball allows fast and precise movements. A traditional mouse depends on moving the entire forearm/wrist, which is slower and less precise. - Left-clicking with my thumb is easier than a standard mouse because it's a stronger finger than my index finger and doesn't get tired as easily. - Large scroll wheel is easy to operate. I can either scroll a tiny bit or fling it to scroll a lot, and I don't have to bend my finger as much as a traditional mouse scroll wheel requires. There's another model of Kensington track ball mouse that has a scroll wheel like this (the one with 4 buttons) but I find that one awkward to position my hand on. Cons (only minor annoyances for me): - Coworkers have no idea how to use it when they come to my computer to show me something. - Larger than a traditional mouse, doesn't fit in a standard laptop case. - The area under the ball gets gross pretty quickly and is hard to clean because it has a lot of nooks and crannies. I usually just clean off the three supports to make the ball move more freely, about every other week. - No software support for Linux or Chromebook, so you can't customize buttons with those operating systems. - No middle-click, but this may be emulated by your OS as simultaneously clicking left+right buttons. - Probably hard to game with this. I don't game, so this is not an issue for me. Edit (2026): Yup, I still use this mouse! I've acquired one of the newer wireless ones with the red ball (which otherwise works the same as this item) and that one works great too. Still have my original wired ones too. One of them had some issues a few years ago but I opened it up and cleaned out some gunk with alcohol and that fixed it. I will probably keep using these until I die, or until AI makes computer input devices obsolete. :)

The scroll ring is the best feature, I think. It took a little time to get used to the cursor ball on the top. I previously had a Logitech that had the ball on the left side so you used your thumb to control the cursor. I did buy two more of the Kensington Orbit Trackball mice but they are both wireless.

Pros and cons of this trackball mouse. Pros: Scroll ring 10 stars. This is the first mouse I've had with a scroll ring and it's excellent. I haven't found other brands with the ring, they typically have a scroll wheel, which I don't care for, so this scroll ring is great. Trackball 5 stars. It's located at the top/center, which is where I like so it can be easily moved with your 3 center fingers while holding the sides of the mouse with thumb and pinkie. I don't like the ones where the ball is in the thumb position, so this one with it top/center is in an ideal position for me. The ball moves smoothly and the reaction on screen has zero delay. Cons: Housing/body 3 stars. It's too wide and flat, so you have to hold a finger/thumb on the opposite side to the button you want to click so you can get some grip. The silicone pieces on the bottom do not grip the surface, so it slides around. The length is both too long and too short for comfort. It's too long to rest your hand on the desk and use the ball with your finger tips because you have to grip the sides when using the buttons so you have to slide your hand forward to do that. It's too short because if you rest your hand over the top where you can use the buttons easier, then the ball is under your palm. It comes with a triangle shaped extension piece, which is needed to make it better for resting your hand at the bottom end, but it does not attach to the mouse body at all, so it moves around independently. The surface is too smooth/slick, so your hand just slides down it. It would be nice if the surface had some texture or even silicone patches, so your hand wouldn't slide so easily. Buttons left 5 stars, right zero stars. The #1 con/negative, the right-mouse button has failed after just 8 months of daily use. When I click it either it does nothing or it pops up a submenu for a second and goes away, or if I push it firmly at the very top corner and hold it, then the submenu eventually may come up, but it takes several clicks/tries to happen. The right button used to work fine and only needed a soft tap, but over the last week it started not reacting and I'd have to click it numerous times to try to get it to work right, and today, it's pretty much not working at all. So, with all that said, solely due to the scroll ring feature, I'm buying another one of these to replace it, but I think it's a newer model. If it weren't for the scroll ring and how much I love that feature, I would not buy another one. For almost 20 years I would get only the Logitech trackball mouse (center ball), but it's become harder to find and insanely expensive, which is why I had to find a new mouse. If this Kensington orbit was a better quality (shouldn't fail so quickly), it would be my new go-to. But, until I find another brand with the scroll ring and center track ball, I'll stick with this one, even with all of the negative aspects.

No other style provides me the speed of navigation, browsing and cross-combo mousing moves as this thing with the scroll ring. Looks like an alien, but functions like a dream and entirely mitigated all hand/wrist strain from every other model of mouse I'd tried over the years. No mouse is as fast as this mouse - because for one, you're not chasing it all over the desk, and two, the scroll ring allows you to 'multi-task' operations. The scroll ring allows you to scroll pages 'from anywhere" without having to mouse to the app scroll bar controls, and that feature combined with keyboard shortcuts for in-app options/controls like zoom or tool selection, it massively sped up design work and research or working with data in spreadsheets. Nothing is as fast for me as this one! I use my ring-finger on the stroll, pointer+middle on the track ball. No repetitive motion injury or strain after years of using this style of!!! Depending on working environment if I'm remote vs on site or working from a lap pad, I sometimes use the wrist rest that came with it and clicks onto the rear of the mouse to extend the hand/wrist support. Kensington - you need to improve this design by adding a thin cloth-covered gel surface because its very hard and makes my wrist ache if I use it for too long. It's handy to reposition/re-angle my wrist at times and for specific conditions/environments but otherwise it's tossed aside because I can't use it for very long without pressure point pain because it's hard. As I write this, I've now purchased now my 4th of this mouse to replace the 2nd one I bought and it's identical to the first. this time, the button was going out same as the first, but the gripper strips on the bottom let go and are necessary when working on various surfaces or while traveling to hold the mouse still. TIP: the track ball works best/fastest if it's not perfectly clean. I remove the ball and clean the mouse and ball with germ-killer cloths regularly, but the ball moves slower afterward as all the oils are stripped off the surface. So I've learned to rub it around in my hands for a min or so to pick up some oils before I pop it back in and that's all it takes to reduce the friction and move at lightening speed!

TL;DR: Good if you like it, but buttons fail after 3-4 years, and don't throw out your old ball if replacing one (might need it in the new unit to prevent cursor "hang" at high speed). I've been using these for years now (Amazon says my first was Oct 2014, on my 3rd one now, more about that in a second). Overall I've been happy with them, as they have good ergonomics, fit my hand well, and are easy to click and scroll without disturbing the trackball position. I even find them suitable for light gaming, and overall accuracy has never been a serious issue. They do have a problem with wear on the mouse buttons (primary/left-click in particular, eventually something starts to fail and stops registering clicks consistently), and this led to my first replacement after 3 years (Oct 2017). (The little rubber stabilizer pads also tend to come off after a while, which can become annoying.) About 4 years after that (Nov 2021) I had to replace that one (same reason), and after trying something else temporarily (which I was less happy with) I ordered another one of these. Unfortunately, I noticed almost immediately after starting to use it that something was off. After fiddling around with speed and acceleration settings, and installing the KensingtonWorks software (that I'd never needed before), I finally realized the problem was that when I'd "fling" the ball (to rapidly move it across my 4K monitor) it would apparently lose tracking and the cursor would sort of "hang" in one spot while the trackball was moving quickly. I still had my old one (from 2017), so I plugged it in to confirm, and sure enough, it worked fine (cursor kept moving even at high speed). I started chatting with Amazon customer service, expecting I'd need to get it replaced, when on a lark I tried putting the old unit's ball in the new unit. That fixed it. The balls don't appear substantially different, but the old one seems to be a slightly darker shade of blue (see left side of image), and maybe a bit less "sparkly." Somehow that's enough for it to track properly while the new one (that came with the new unit) does not. Quality control issues? Or some kind of weird overly-sensitive sensor? Either way, it works again for now, hopefully for another 3-4 years or until someone finally makes a decent Microsoft Trackball Explorer replacement.

Review of Kensington Orbit Trackball Mouse (silver) with Scroll ring. Wired version. Mac OS Mojave (also compatible with Windows). I've never used a Trackball before but was getting fed up with hand cramp on the standard mouse. This trackball comes with a wrist rest which is how I use it. It works straight out of the box. Because the Trackball doesn't move on the desk I didn't see much need for a wireless version. Also, you know a wired version works as soon as you plug it in. The rubber pads keep it quite firmly on my desk. Intuitive to learn. Clicking with the left mouse and dragging with the ball was easy. Nice smooth action. I chose the version with the mechanical scroll ring as I wanted to be able to skim quickly through documents, and I'm glad I did as it works easily. More functionality can be added with 'Trackballworks' which is now called 'Kensingtonworks'. I didn't really need it, but decided to download the software anyway. This required two installations and several restarts before the software recognised the trackball: you have to ensure via 'Security and Privacy' in System Preferences that the OS doesn't stop elements of Kensingtonworks from operating. Once the software was operating successfully I was able to increase the speed of the scroll ring, but that was all I bothered with. I should have bought a trackball years ago. Delivery from Amazon was staggeringly quick.

Superb product and worth of money. I would like thanks Kensington for this trackball.it’s amazing,attractive,precise.ergonomic and very soothing to my finger. Now I can take full control of my laptop with finger controls. Before this I was suffering wrist fatigue vague pain and discomfort from using Logitech mouse.Thank to this Kensington trackball now my wrist worries is gone. Bye Bye mouse.

They say these things have a learning curve, but that's nonsense. It's instantly a massive improvement over using the mouse. Much more comfortable, much more accurate.

Es el primer trackball que tengo y es muy cómodo y fundamental la rueda de scroll para una buena experiencia, con una mano muy pequeña quizá sea un poco grande, pero la mía para ser hombre es pequeña y me va bien.

Great to use for both hands. Very useful wheel to scroll The removable Little wrist extension ramp means there is no need to use extra padding and supports the wrist