Logitech Marathon Mouse M705

The M705 has four key strengths to win you over:

• a record battery life of three years
• an attractive silhouette
• a scrollwheel that you can either turn freely or click around
• a compact form that's a hybrid between compact mice and traditional mice.

The first three of these speak for themselves.  It is an attractive mouse; you can change the batteries; it does have an intelligent scrollwheel.  Once you've tried the M705, it's very hard to go back.

By default, the scrollwheel turns normally, with very wide notches that are a little too big for our liking.  They also make turning it rather loud.  A single press on the button behind allows the wheel to turn freely.  Give it a push and away it goes until it runs out of steam.  And it turns very, very well.  Getting straight to the bottom of a long page is very easy.  Of course, some people will prefer one mode over the other, which is why having the choice is such a big advantage when several people use the same computer--in a family, for instance.  Everybody can choose to use it how they prefer.


For Occasional Use Only

The shape of the M705, though, left us unconvinced.  It's pretty tall and, at 11 cm, it's noticeably longer than a mouse designed for use with a laptop (usually around 9 cm) and ends up taking up almost as much space as a normal mouse.  It's still smaller than a traditional mouse like the Ikari Laser shown on the right, which measures 13.5 cm, which means it's very difficult to get hold of.  The underside of your wrist rests on the table, and only the mouse moves.  It feels natural, but it's bad for your wrist, and quickly becomes painful.

We don't advise you use this mouse for extended periods.  To see what it was like, we tried it out on a workstation that's in use eight hours a day, and it really wasn't good enough.  Even though we knew we shouldn't, it's difficult not to use the mouse that way.  At first, we were careful to lift up our whole hand, but we quickly got distracted and let our wrist rest on the desk, a decision we'd paid for at the end of the day.

A quick word about the sensor: it's a very standard 125 Hz laser model, so you don't need a mouse mat.  That said, plenty of hoer mice will be able to handle the needs of expert gamers or precision graphic designers.  The G500, for instance ...