While at CES I try to avoid getting bogged down by dozens of random gadgets, and this time I mostly succeeded — but the mouse reviewer in me was intrigued by Lexip’s new gaming mouse that’s also a sort of floating joystick. It’s a strange but cool idea, and although the learning curve is high, I can see some hardcore gamers and productivity fiends getting a lot of use out of it.
Lexip is running a Kickstarter[1] right now to fund the mouse, and has already tripled its modest goal, but the company was kind enough to send a pre-production version of the device to me for an early look.
The basic idea is very simple: what if you took a perfectly good gaming mouse and sort of mounted it on top of a very flat joystick? Theoretically, you would get the best of both worlds: the absolute x-y movement of the mouse, plus the relative, analog movement of a joystick.
And that’s more or less what the Lexip does. But as you might expect, it takes a big of getting used to.
The mouse portion is quite good; I’m very picky when it comes to mouse shapes (I use a Logitech G500s… since you asked) and found the Lexip perfectly comfortable, if slightly small. There’s an analog stick on the side, a nice touch for space sims, and three configurable buttons in addition to the usual left, right, and scroll button. The sensor seemed solid, no jitters or problems with my mousing surface.
There’s no thumb shelf, and I would have preferred the button paddles reached further towards the front of the mouse, but neither is really possible because of the joystick portion of things.
To that...