My first trackball: Elecom Deft Pro

Have you ever been interested in trackball but could not find one that suit your needs, or you did not really see why it would be useful, or you did not want to lose your current mouse ergonomic position? I was in the same situation because I did not want to go with a thumb trackball and I did not invest enough time at first and stick to the flagships offered by logitech and kensigton. Recently though, I realized that 1) fingers trackball was a thing, 2) configurable buttons were an option, 3) I can preserve the hand position I currently have with my vertical mouse. So today, I’ll be sharing my few days experience with the Elecom Deft Pro trackball.
Note that I am not using the device for gaming purposes, my impressions are limited to its performance for work-related tasks

╭── Nice build quality and feeling

Let’s start with what you see at first. This trackball combines a black mat plastic body with a dark red ball and some brown/goldish accents around the wheel.
The buttons have a crisp click with a nice (not loud) sound and the textured plastic provides a comfortable grip.

Its size (W 3.6" [91.4mm] x L 5.3" [133.4mm] x H 2.3" [57.3mm]) should fit most hand size from medium to large (i.e. from 5.9" [15cm] to over 7.9" [20cm]).

╭── Ergonomic design

The overall shape is very curved allowing your hand to cradle the trackball and be less pronated. You should have no issues with palm-grip or a relaxed trackball grip.

When it comes to ergonomic - apart from the regular mouse - you can go with a trackball to limit your arm/shoulder movements or a vertical mouse to limit the stress on your arm/wrist. This is a very rough generalization. The issue is that I was used to use a vertical mouse and wanted to try a trackball to limit my arm/shoulder movements (even though they were already very low due to my mouse spped/dpi configuration) but I didn’t want to lose the very comfortable hand position. I realized that you could actually tilt your trackball with a tilted support sold by Elecom. If the price of the trackball is reasonable, I found the price of this support quite high ($20) but I am lucky to have a 3D printer and I ended up printing my own tilted support .

With that I now have a 20-degree tilted trackball that allows for a comfortable hand position and perfectly fit into my setup where I also have a corne split keyboard which is also tilted at 20 degree. This design helps to reduce fatigue and strain on my hand and wrist, making it perfect for long hours of use.

╭── Battery life

If you can use the Deft Pro with no batteries if connected to a USB port, it requires one AA battery to be wirelessly connected to your machine. Based on online comments the battery life for a normal use of 8 hours per day goes from 3-4 weeks to a year. It’s a huge range that may be imputable to wrong trackball units or poor batteries quality in the case of short battery life. With that in mind, in worst case scenario there is already one good news: if the battery runs out you can still use the trackball while it is connected via USB. And to be on the safe side, I went with rechargeable batteries so I’m sure to never runs out of power and don’t have to spend money on batteries. I personally opted for 2800mAh batteries to maximize the use time per battery. So that’s solves this potential pitfall.

Also, note that the trackball will automatically go to sleep after short period of inactivity to increase the battery life. When waking up,it only takes around one second for the trackball to reconnect to my machine.

[1] Based on my estimates, the battery life of this touchpad should be around 900 hours (i.e. 3.75 months with a 8 hours/day use)
[2] After 4 months of use, the battery is still 60% full so I would revisit the estimated battery life to 10 months

╭── Accuracy

The Elecom Deft Pro Trackball is designed for precision and accuracy, making it ideal for tasks that require precise movements, such as 3D modeling and graphic design. Again, some online comments report that the bearings are not ceramic ones and can be sticky. So far everything works well for me, even when doing some 3D design on freecad.

The ball feels very smooth to me but in case I notice some decrease in performance at some point, I know you can change the bearings. You can get good ceramic ZrO2 G10 (or even better G5) ones for only $6. I’m not afraid to disassemble the trackball if necessary so this is not an issue for me (should it become one) and for the price it worth the hassle - in my point of view - compared to what this trackball has to offer, compared to its competitors. Note that I get this trackball with a $20 sale on the $70 MSRP but this statement will still stand for the MSRP price.

╭── Configurable buttons

On paper, the Elecom Deft Pro Trackball features ten programmable buttons. In reality, I doubt anyone would like to remap the left button, back/forward buttons, scroll wheel, wheel tilts, and probably not the right click either. So I would say that you are left with 3 programmable buttons. This allows you to tailor the mouse to your specific needs and preferences. Using it as a working mouse, this level of configuration is almost too much but appreciable and I’m already afraid of the day where I will have to go back to something more simple, because we all know that most of the time your preferred devices are not available anymore when you have to replace them.

╭── 3 Devices connection

The Deft Pro can connect to three devices via a 2.4GHz dongle, Bluetooth 4.0, or USB. Working on two different machines at the same time, this was a mandatory spec for me. The bummer with most trackballs is that they don’t support two devices wirelessly or the switch button is located at the bottom, which is a killer for me. I don’t want to turn the trackball upside down every time I switch computers. People who developed this trackball were smart enough to place the switch button on the side which allows you to easily switch between devices.

╭── Linux configuration

Using this trackball under Linux, it runs like a charm and that is confirmed by other Linux users. Software, speed, accuracy issues seems to affect only other OS users. Here is a very brief overview of my setup:

• Mouse speed is managed with xinput and the command:

  xinput set-prop <device> <Accel_Speed_property_number> <speed>
  

• Buttons are remapped using sxhkd because I use it for my keybindings as well. Here are command examples:

  button10
      xdotool key control+c # simulate a copy
  
  button11
      xdotool key control+v # simulate a paste
  
  button12
      xdotool key q # simulate a "q" press
  
  # buttons numbers can be found using xev
  

  There are other alternatives to sxhkd and xdotool to achieve the same thing. This is just what I use on my machine.

• Scroll speed is managed with imwheel . Here is my .imwheel file as an example:

  ".*"
  None,      Up,      Button4, 3
  None,      Down,    Button5, 3
  None,      Right,   Button6, 8
  None,      Left,    Button7, 8
  
  # buttons numbers can be found using xev
  

  Note that in my case I add to launch imwheel with imwheel -b "4567" to avoid messing up the back and forth buttons (8 and 9). This is a know issue with imwheel with some devices.

╭── Nothing is perfect

Here are few things that do not bother me but may for others:

1. Let’s start with the deal breaker: the Deft Pro is only right-handed
2. There is some scroll wheel rattling. This is not a build quality issue but actually a feature aiming at providing a tactile feedback that helps you to navigate through long documents or web pages with ease
3. The middle click is designed to be hard, which helps to prevent accidental clicks. I don’t use it but I think it could have been softer because it really requires quite some force

╭── Overall

While this is my first trackball and it has 3 more buttons than my vertical mouse, I get used to it immediately. The Deft Pro feels very natural to me whether I use it at my desk with the tilted support or laying flat on the couch. This is actually something I didn’t mention earlier but using is on my couch is way more comfortable than having to squeeze my arms toward my chest like a T-Rex.
I use my thumb for left click, scroll, and navigation buttons and middle finger for right click. Index and ring finger are used for special buttons. To roll the trackball, I use my index and middle fingers. I can see some people using their ring finger as well to add some accuracy for extremely detailed tasks.

This device is certainly a high-quality wireless fingers trackball that is portable and offers comfort. Remember that a trackball is a very personal device and experience may vary with your usage, hand shape, and health status. That is why there are so many options out there.