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- Verified Buyer
This has been a godsend for work. I've been in pain with the mouse provided. I swapped with this one and I've had a noticable decrease in pain.I've had this mouse for about a year now and decided it was time I submitted a product review. After all, I've had a year to evaluate the product and determine if it really does what it claims. For this, let's look at the technical details and product description.I'll start off by saying why I purchased this mouse. I'm not knowledgeable about hand muscles, but my thumb muscle ached on my palm side. I couldn't think of any reason why it would hurt, except that I was ALWAYS on the computer...at work 40 hrs/wk, then I would come home and dork it out for hours on video games. Even when I stopped the video games and just would use a mouse 40 hours a week at work, it would make the same muscle hurt. Voicing my displeasure to my friends, I was first introduced to this mouse by a friend who uses the computer just as much as she is a graphics designer. With her recommendation and reading the reviews, it was a little easier for me to spend $90 on a mouse, in hopes that it would solve my issue. So, let's get to the good stuff! Did it work for me?Technical DetailsThe shape is thoughtfully sculpted for uncompromised comfort and easy-to-reach programmable buttons. No finger contortions are needed to operate the buttons This is very accurate. Nothing to expand on here.An extra wide lip along the bottom edge prevents the last finger from rubbing the desk. Yep, pinky does not stick out like I'm going to have a cup of tea to avoid rubbing the mouse pad.Pointer speed controls on the side allow convenient adjustment without even releasing your grip from the mouse. - Yep, but it does take a little getting used to. It's convenient once you know exactly where to put your fingers to change to pointer speed.Top mounted LEDs show through the chrome thumb rest to indicate selected pointer speed Oooh. Ahhh. Okay, well, it's not that impressive, but nice to have.The Evoluent VerticalMouse 4 Small is for hands less than about 7 inches or 178 mm long from the tip of the middle finger to the wrist crease. Yes! Finally a mouse to fit my small hands. This mouse is perfect for me. I did measure my hand prior to ordering this mouse to ensure I didn't need the standard one.Product Description:Avoids forearm twisting for comfort and good health The patented shape supports your hand in an upright neutral posture that generally avoids forearm twisting. Many users, including medical doctors, ergonomists and physical therapists, said the Evoluent VerticalMouse provides superior comfort and even relieved their wrist pain. So this is what it comes down to, right? While I did not have wrist pain, I did have palm pain. Did it work? YES!!!! YES!!!!! and if I could type in bigger caps, YYYYYEEEESSSS!. The pain in my palm disappeared in about a week after using this mouse. It's amazing what ergonomics can do for your body. I was able to convince my job to allow my to bring this to work (we never had a permanent desk). Although I did have to tote the mouse back and forth from home, it was worth it. The pain in my palm has not come back since using this mouse. The mouse is still going strong and not having any issues. I did not have a learning curve when I began using this mouse, but I could see some people having to get used to the position of the buttons. You still swipe it side to side to move the mouse, like a regular mouse (I just thought I'd mention this because my coworkers would all ask me how do I move the mouse). I hope this conveniences people who are on the fence about buying $90 mouse that it'll be worth it if it solves your arm, wrist, palm pains. I will buy another one in the future if this one ever dies.My I am 56, and work in full-time administrative role requiring me to use a computer all day. I had been using a normal mouse for years, with no problems. However, I started getting stiffness in the middle joints in my fingers a few months ago. I went to the doctor, had a blood test to rule our rheumatoid arthritis (which it did) and the only conclusion was that I had RSI. I was advised by my colleague to book an appointment with the health person in HR at work. I did this, and my IT department provided me with an Evoluent mouse. To say I hated it at first is an understatement. I was thinking "No way will I ever get used to this!" However, somebody else at work who had been provided with the same mouse said that I needed to persevere, so I did. I had to admit, it caused no pain in my hand as the regular mouse had done, but I found it very hard to use accurately. I decided to initially keep both the Evoluent mouse and the regular mouse so I had a choice. I was slow with the Evoluent mouse so made a point of using it for just a part of each day. I did this for about two weeks, and gradually I found I was using the Evoluent mouse more and more, until one day I realised I hadn't used the regular mouse for a whole day. At that point, I gave the regular mouse back to IT. I have now fully adjusted and find the Evoluent mouse as easy to use as the regular mouse, but now I'm comfortable so it's finally become a win-win situation. My fingers no longer click or give me pain, and in the end, I actually found that when I was using my computer at home, I found I was missing my work Evoluent mouse. I only use my home laptop for personal use, so obviously I couldn't ask work for another Evoluent mouse for home. I therefore decided that to have the same comfort at home for £80 was well worth it, and I have therefore purchased the same mouse for myself to use at home, and I am very happy that I have done so. Please note this is a completely unbiased review, I'd never even heard of 'Evoluent' before getting the mouse at work.I bought this in June 2014, it is very comfortable relieves traditional mouse based forearm pains I was getting, but the pinching action does cause other aches for a while until you adapt to the new 'pinching' posture, which is what happens when he primary mouse button is used.Click is very light action which I though was great... But there is a reliability trade-off, part longevity is very poor; thirteen months later and the primary mouse button double clicks every other click, I tried pushing the double click speed to the fastest setting, which reduced the number of double clicks to about every 5th or 6th click. I then uninstalled the v5.5 driver using Revo uninstaller and the Evoluent supplied uninstallation tool so only the native windows driver was left to see if it was a driver issue; still did it. So, I tried to clean it using an air duster (compressed air) still no fix…I tried to contact the seller but there is no way to do this via Amazon.co.uk, in fact it says to contact the manufacturer (even though that contravenes the UK Sales of Goods Act 2003 which states that the contract is with the seller and not the manufacturer). Any way I looked at the Evoluent website; they do not to offer any returns at all: to quote their Warranty section of their website "4. Refund is not available for products purchased through a reseller (not through our online store)." Which echoes what the Sales of Goods Act 2003 states (are you listening Amazon.co.uk?).So in summary this VERY expensive mouse will likely start to play up after ~1 year and there is no comeback on Amazon.co.uk...I recommend if you want to buy this check the refund policy of the reseller very carefully. I consider this is relatively low reliability device as I have a 2011 vintage MS Natural Laser Mouse 6000 that still works fine except for the battery cover broke (which was my fault) and that costed about a third of what this mouse did.So I have since bought an Anker 2.4G vertical mouse, much better as it is not so vertical so the hand is at ~60° rather than the rather extreme ~80° with the Evoluent product and it only costs £13!, it has the same number of buttons and the same three stage mouse speed/sensitivity settings and is wireless and the same easy grip finish and feels well made. (note that the wireless Evoluent is even more expensive than this one!). Also, the Anker mouse has slightly stiffer action buttons, more like those on the MS Natural Laser 6000 in action, but that is no bad thing as1) It is not so stiff that I cannot get used to it2) They are likely to last longer as are a more robust design3) I can buy three Anker mice for the price on one of these Evoluent ones and if I want cheaper, the wired one is £10...Also, I have experience of Anker warranties as I had a battery from them that had problems and they replaced them no quibble (18month warranty) did not even want me return it!Update 2017-08-05: Anker mouse replacement still going strong as are its buttons. Note can use X-Mouse Button Control to redefine button actions.Well, overall, I really quite like this. I was a little worried it would take some getting used to, but it’s been fine - this could be due to transitioning to a more ergonomic but hugely cheaper mouse already; though that wasn’t angled as much as this one. The one I had was ok, but I didn’t like that I needed to grip it quite a lot with my thumb as that’s where I have a lot of pain. Still it was better than the regular mouse. This mouse is very nice. My thumb has a little resting shelf and isn’t agitated. I like the angle my hand sits at and find it very comfortable. I did a lot of research on this and it’s really important to choose the right size of this mouse. My hands are small and the small size is just right for me. I always pick wired mice as I need them to be responsive, and this really is so. In fact it’s more so than my previous mouse and took a little getting used to! I do believe you can make adjustments to it but I’m ok with it as is. Apart from the price (which is a lot!) the only thing I’m not so keen on is the ‘right click’ part of the mouse as there’s a middle paddle and my ring finger naturally goes for that but you need to stretch a little further. Again, I’m sure you can program the middle one if you wanted. Hopefully this will be robust and last long as it’s a bit of an investment at the price.I was suggested this mouse several years ago when hurt my shoulder and my work desk setup had to be adjusted to support this. I had issues extending my shoulder to the right so I was encouraged to work with a wireless keyboard with a floating number pad, and the Evoluent mouse. It worked very well for many years and I was very happy with it.Since the COVID lock down, I have been working from home and purchased the small version of this mouse. It took me a few days to get re-acquainted with the feel and usage but once back into it - it has been really comfortable.My glove size is 7.5 so I border small/normal size according to the guidance. I prefer the smaller one as it fits my calm comfortably and I am a bit more nimble with it. The thumb rest has a smooth feel to it as well which I prefer. I went back to the normal size one and whilst it is fine, I prefer the smaller size where possible. The purple colour was also really nice - I know it has not impact on the usage but i love seeing it!The programable buttons are also very handy and easy to setup. We have this on our iMac installed the accompanying software to ensure additional buttons can be programmed.Brilliant vertical mouse, helped enormously in getting rid of my RSI. I started with a cheap (fifteen quid) vertical model, which I liked but which did not have many programmable buttons - and this Evoluent one does. I use it every day and enjoy using it every day - it simplifies my work, has improved my RSI no end - what could be better?I'll tell you what could be better = the Mac software. Since I upgraded to High Sierra (OS X 10.13) the mouse refuses to wake up when the computer wakes from sleep. The only solution is unplugging it and replugging it, which is a bore. Many people suffer from the same, Evoluent announced that they are working on a fix - as from September 2017... No fix yet four months later.High quality mouse, ft for purpose, but let down by software support for Mac users - one would expect better from an expensive quality product.
