Logitech has recently introduced its M325 wireless mouse with 72 ratchets so you can scroll through more lines of content with a single flick on the scroll wheel.
Each ratchet corresponds to about one line of content, so fewer ratchets means more choppy onscreen motion when you scroll down a page.
The scroll wheel of most computer mice usually have 18 to 24 ratchets, giving you a scrolling experience that isn’t as smooth when compared to that of a laptop’s touch pad.
Aimed at laptop users, the M325 is small and portable enough to be carried around by telecommuters. The S$39 rodent also offers a firm grip on both sides and will fit snugly into the hands of both left and right handers.
Setting up the M325 is easy – simply plug the Unifying receiver into the computer’s USB port, turn on the mouse and start browsing. The receiver, which can also be used to connect up to six compatible wireless keyboards and mice, can be stored in the battery compartment when not in use.
The M325 can be used with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems out of the box with no additional software or device drivers required. On Windows and Linux systems, you can tilt the scroll wheel to the left or right to move pages back and forth. On Mac OS X, tilt wheel actions can be assigned to Dashboard, Expose and Spaces functions in System Preferences.
The mouse worked like a charm in Windows 7 Ultimate, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Linux 10.10. On all three OSes, the M325 was smooth while scrolling webpages and offered precise control over the mouse pointer. The only tweak I made was to reduce the pointer speed that was previously set for a three-year-old Apple Mighty Mouse.
Logitech claims the single AA-size battery required by the M325 will last for 18 months. I have no idea if that’s really the case right now since I’ve only used it for a week. On the product packaging, however, Logitech says that “battery life may vary based on user and computing conditions”. In any case, the mouse will enter sleep mode after a period of inactivity to conserve battery juice.
I never realized Logitech marketed the mouse as having increased scroll wheel resolution, relative to other mice (at least at the time it was first released). I guess if it was an early example of that feature, that would probably explain the chief issue I have with my M325: It has a hair-trigger scroll wheel.
The scroll wheel on my M325 is so twitchy, it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to click the wheel without also accidentally scrolling. In fact, I even have to be careful where I hold my middle finger when I’m moving the mouse, because it will also cause accidental scroll movements if I so much as brush up against the wheel.
Other than that, it’s a good, bare-bones mouse, especially considering the incredibly low price. Battery life is excellent — with relatively heavy use, I get 4–5 months out of each single AA battery. My previous bluetooth mouse took TWO AA’s, and burned through them in only 6–8 weeks.
None of the advanced features of this mouse will work with OS X. Only basic clicking and vertical scrolling are supported on OS X; the OS X Logitech drivers do *not* recognize this mouse and cannot be used to make horizontal scrolling etc work.
The mouse doesn’t have horizontal scrolling — as the review says (though perhaps not very clearly), the wheel’s tilt actions send the “Back” and “Forward” navigation actions. (As in, web browser history “back” and “forward”.) I’d be surprised if those same functions aren’t recognized out-of-the-box in macOS as well, though I can’t comment on the claim that they can be reconfigured.
I thought I’d miss horizontal scrolling, but after using the mouse for about 6 months I find I use the back/forward tilt functions a lot more than I would horizontal scrolling. At least on Linux, typically you can hover over a horizontal control (slider/scrollbar/etc.) and scroll vertically to move it, so horizontal scrolling isn’t really that vital a feature.