When you’re buying a travel or netbook mouse, the most important feature is clearly its size. You want it to be smaller than your average-sized mouse, but it can’t be so small that it’s uncomfortable to use for moderate periods of time. Make no mistake: The Genius Traveler 900 Mouse is small and slim, but after using it for a short period of time, you will probably forget its diminutive size (and it would also work well as a kid’s mouse). It does, however, seem to have an issue with some surfaces.
At a Glance
The Good: Comfortable, pico receiver, receiver placeholder
The Bad: Difficulty using on some surfaces, no programmable buttons
Receiver
You've probably heard of a nano receiver. Genius takes this one step further with what it calls a pico receiver, which is just a hair smaller than a nano receiver. If you're the kind of person who likes to leave the receiver in while toting your notebook or netbook around, this is a plus.
If you're like me -- who insists on removing all receivers while packing away the computer -- it helps to have a receiver placeholder in the mouse. Thankfully, the Traveler 900 does, and in a pretty clever spot. The top face of the mouse rises to input the batteries, and there is a dedicated slot inside for the receiver. Snap the top of the mouse closed, and your receiver is safe and sound.
Not Your Average 5-Button
The Traveler 900 is a five-button mouse: left click, right click, scroll wheel what it calls a "Magic Roller" button (up and down). The Magic Roller button lets you zoom to the top or bottom of the page. One click brings you about 15 Excel cells (about the same as one roll of the scroll wheel); holding it down has a similar effect as
Logitech's Hyper-fast scrolling . Although it's not nearly as fast or as elegant as Hyper-fast scrolling, frequent Excel devotees will probably appreciate the feature.
The Traveler 900 does lack any programmable buttons, and this will come down to a personal preference for any user. If this is going to be a spare mouse for you -- one strictly reserved for your out-of-town bag, that probably won't be a problem. If you're a road warrior, however, or someone who can't live without his Internet back button mouse button, you'll be disappointed.
Performance
This mouse makes use of 2.4GHz wireless technology. Although it features a "Connect" button on its underside, the Traveler 900 immediately paired upon plugging in the receiver and turning the mouse on. A mouse on/off button is always a nice touch, provided you remember to use it.
The mouse glided and scrolled smoothly and evenly, and it proved to be a very sensitive and accurate device. The Traveler 900 is a 1600 dpi optical mouse -- this is on the upper dpi range for optical mice, although most people never really notice the difference. Too much dpi can sometimes mean too much sensitivity for the average user, but this isn't a problem for the Traveler 900.
Issues
After using the mouse for about two days, I noticed that it would lag and stall in its response time. Upon the advice of Genius, I switched the batteries, which initially rectified the problem but then continued to happen. Genius sent me another review unit and once again these problems cropped up. I finally realized that it wasn't a battery issue at all, but that the surface of my desk was triggering the stalling (specifically, the keyboard tray on my desk). When I moved the mouse to a different, slightly more textured part of my desk, the problems disappeared. So it looks like despite the Traveler's high listed dpi, it still can face challenges from overly smooth surfaces.
Bottom Line
At $24.99, the Traveler 900 is a good price for a wireless mouse. While its small size may take users with larger hands some getting used to, you're going to run into that issue with any travel-sized mouse on the market (which is one reason that travel mice make good children's mice). If you have an extremely smooth surface for a desk, you may want to look elsewhere or at least break out that old mousepad.
Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our
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