Someone at Kensington went into a meeting somewhere and said, “Damn, if only I had a trackball-type device I could use instead of this wireless mouse to run this presentation with, then I’d be happy.” Thusly, the Kensington SlimBlade Trackball Mouse, or Mouthful as I like to call it, was born. The idea is simple. Integrate a laser mouse with a little trackball instead of a scrollwheel. Next, make the center click button into a mode switch button so you can change from Mouse to Trackball mode. Finally, stick in a Bluetooth radio so you don’t have to fiddle with wires or RF dongles. Voila! The Mouthful is born.

I’ve been using the Mouthful for about four weeks now and, at first, it wasn’t easy to see the Trackball functionality. Once, however, I realized that it was meant to be held in the air instead of on a desk, it made sense. There’s even a little slide cover which protects the laser eye port on the bottom when you’re using it for presentations or to operate your PC or Mac on your TV. I also thought the shape of the otherwise sleek mouse was a bit odd until I figured out that the curved bottom edges make it fit better in your hand. I’m giving you the impression that I’m not that swift, aren’t I?

Despite my observational sluggishness, I find the SlimBlade Trackball Mouse to be somewhat imperfect. Sure, it has great battery life, a smooth finish, good tactile feel on the buttons, non-slip grip sides, excellent range, and a DPI which is good enough for gaming, but it also has its downsides. Its made of plastic, for one. Its solid, but its plastic, which points out the next downside; the cost. At US$100 I would expect it to be milled from aluminum. It could also stand to be a bit narrower. That’s odd coming from a guy with hands as big as mine. It just feels a touch too large. Even my wife thought so.

All in all, its a mouse, and it works like a good one, probably somewhere around US$60-75. Even the Trackball functionality it pretty decent, despite the small size of the ball (Trackball buying tip #1: The bigger the ball, the better the accuracy. -Ed.). In fact, Kensington themselves have another mouse, dubbed the SlimBlade Media Mouse, which not only has the same features, it adds a media controller pad to the bottom, and its only US$60. If you want to jump to US$80, the Presenter Media Mouse adds more functions and an integrated “Pet Sanity Remover” laser pointer.

Neither of those mice, however, are Bluetooth, and on my USB port starved MacBook Pro where I use a SATA-based external hard drive which requires both ports to work, it works very well. There’s very little lag, unless you’ve been away for 15 minutes or so, and accuracy is top notch. Click feel is also snappy, and mode switching works well. Nicely, it even goes to sleep when my lappy does. Kensington may not have thought this mouse line out well, but the mouse itself is thoughtful. If they can bring it down about $15-25, it would be well worth it.

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