What kind of sorcery is this? Kidding aside, no, this not a ball mouse from 1998 turned onto its side, this is how it’s supposed to be. Although yes, you can pull this big marble-like ball out and clean it as we used it those mice, and whilst you’ll find small barrings that make it turn, they’re not for moving the cursor, for that we have an optical sensor that reads the surface of the ball, which is probably, so it can be pick-up more easily. Fun fact, these type of trackball mice were actually quite popular back then.
Right of the bat, since I always get this question, yes the Logitech M575, as it is, supports both Mac’s and Windows platform, being it over the wireless USB dongle or Bluetooth. It also comes in black, sorry graphite as Logitech calls it, and white color and the support for these platforms is not color bound as some of their other newer mice are known to be (looking at you MX Anywhere 3).
Logitech M575 – the ball goes round and round
And no, the M575 not the successor of the MX Ergo, but rather the 10-year old Ergo M570. Putting that aside, why would one use this type of mouse at all? First and foremost it’s aimed towards users who have repetitive strain injuries, or they want to prevent it, and of course for anyone who has a problem using a regular mouse. It’s also used by users who have a tight working space, particularly in professional video and audio productions, some just find just more practical, and I can see why is that with my use of it in Premiere Pro.
It can be really fast and precise when you need it, I would say even delicate when it comes to really small increments. The only problem is of course that you don’t get to control it with the movement of your arm, so you can stop on a dime when moving fast with an accurate notion of where will that end up, which is crucial in gaming, basically an action-reaction type of thing. And that’s pretty much it about its performance in general, nothing really to go too in-depth with. As I mentioned, this one uses Logitech’s advanced optical tracking sensor, and that’s an improvement from the M570 which used a laser-based sensor. This new one ranges from 400 to 2000 DPI, and I found it to be plenty enough for day-to-day operations, no matter what the task. Of course, you’re not going to play any FPS with it, but nothing prevents you from trying it. It will for sure be a fun couple of minutes followed up with “OK, I’m done with this”.
The design is pretty standard for this type of mouse, the whole top part is tilted to the right so it makes a more natural slope for the hand to grab onto. With this being the case, it’s obvious that this mouse is for right-hand use only. It suit my medium to large size hand pretty OK, I feel like it’s more aimed toward uses with larger hands, it’s a really long mouse after all, but it looks to be more streamlined this time. The build quality, well, it feels kinda plasticy to the touch, it’s definitely not premium, like for example the Master series, but then again this is a 50$ mouse. It’s nice to hear that the graphite version uses 50% and the white version 21% of recycled material in their construction, which also probably slightly affects the perceived build quality. The packaging looks to be one of those recycled ones too.
As for the connection options, as I said at the beginning, you can either use the Unifying 2,4 GHz wireless USB dongle or the Bluetooth, and yes, if you have two different devices you can switch between them with a press of a button below the mouse, but there’s no option of multiple different profiles like on their MX Master series.
Better battery life for M575
The M575 battery life is rated at 24 months with the connection over the USB dongle, or 20 months if using the Bluetooth connection, but it actually depends on the battery you use, because this one doesn’t have an integrated battery, but rather a regular single AA battery, which comes with the mouse under this plastic cover, here you can store the USB dongle too, so you can, for example, put something like a high capacity rechargeable Eneloop Pro AA battery and get even more out of it. This longer Battery life is also one of the main differences compared to the older model, although, truth to be told, at this point it doesn’t matter that much, with anything above 6 months of battery life, it’s not like it’s going to really make a difference for your day to day use. As for the weight of the mouse in that case… Oh well, that doesn’t matter that much, in its case, does it? Since you’re not going to move to mouse around, and it’s actually preferably for it to be a bit heavier so it stays planned, and with sitting at around 150 grams should be good enough, especially since they’ve put few rubber fees that bring the friction up by quite a bit.
Moving back to the top, the left mouse click seems to have a bit more empty travel before actually activating the trigger, while the right click is more direct. I wish they made the surface of the right mouse click a bit wider because I feel like I could use three fingers, one finger for each mouse click, plus the middle one for the scroll, so in that case, I wouldn’t have to move fingers around, but this why the right finger overhangs the right click too much. The scroll wheel is completely rubberized, something they tend to do on their office-oriented mice models, with pretty distinct steps, while there’s no left and right scroll options, but we do have a very muffled middle click. Last but not the last, we have two additional buttons right next on the left mouse click, they feel natural being placed there, it’s really easy to reach for them, although Logitech this time completely flatten them out, as before the forward one was sort of like 3D shaped so it was easy to feel it out, but here’s you can do that by feeling the brake line between them. Here is how all of these sounds. Yeah, the left and right clicks are really loud, while those two added buttons are soft, as well as the middle click and scrolling.
THE budget ergonomic mouse?
Last but, not least, software control in Logitech Options utility is pretty modest with this one, you can remap the buttons of course, and change the pointer speed, as well as set button profiles for different applications, check battery level, still not state in percentage, c’mon Logitech, so all the usual things with some features cut-down as it’s not a regular mouse that you throw around the mouse pad.
So, all in all, you’ll receive slight improvements with the new M575, nothing too extravagant, but improvements nonetheless, which, well, I can gladly welcome considering the same price rag.
That’s it for this time, thanks for checking out my Logitech M575 review, if you have any question feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
