Ultimate Guide to the Best Vertical Mouse |
Posted: April 24, 2020 |
As many as eight million Americans are affected by carpal tunnel syndrome every year. Nearly half 1,000,000 of these affected will suffer badly enough to hunt relief from surgery. Most of these injuries originate with people working an office job, lurched over their computers for hours on end. The price of enduring carpal tunnel is weeks of rest, a wrist that may never fully recover, and the possibility of significant surgery. But this can all be avoided. In a resting state, the forearm is in a thumbs up position, but an ordinary mouse pushes your wrist into a palm-down position. As a result, forearm bones tighten around the joint space. Vertical mice solve this problem because a vertical mouse keeps you in an anatomically rested position, and don’t lead to compression of the wrist. The result is neutral state that won’t lead to tension, damage, or lead to carpal tunnel. Regular Mice Can Injure the Body Using a standard mouse for hours on end will damage your body, and that’s reflected in the huge portions of people who suffer from carpal tunnel every year. Ergonomic designed mice are better than their non-ergonomic counterparts, but most still have a fundamental flaw by suspending your wrist in a non-neutral position against a flat surface. But the wrist isn’t the only place that suffers. Strained mouse positions also engage your shoulders. Take a moment to rest your elbows at your sides, with your forearms wrist-side up, as though you were trying to strike a traditional meditative pose. Entering this pose, you should immediately feel a difference in pressure on your shoulders and wrists. This is a restful position for your both types of joint, and long-term violations of this position can lead to pain. Alternatively, pretend there’s a steering wheel in front of you and grab it. Pay attention to how your shoulders are positioned when your hands are placed at 10-and-2 on the wheel. After holding this position for a moment, glide your hands around to the bottom of the wheel, and you’ll feel the pressure from the rotation inside your shoulder as the joint internally rotates. That rotation feels uncomfortable, but holding the quality mouse position is even worse. Carpal tunnel syndrome and similar injuries are the result of these minor agitations being applied to your joint day after day, forming a pattern of repetitive abuse. Choosing the Right Mouse Just because your mouse is the right shape doesn’t mean it’s the right mouse for you. At the end of the day, vertical mouse or not, you still want your mouse to do all the things you expect it to do. That may mean having extra buttons you'll program, DPI configuration buttons, and even the standard of the build employed by the device itself. In other words, every vertical mouse should help you avoid hurting your wrist, but not every vertical mouse will have everything you want. The vertical mice market is still fairly empty, and that lack of competition has led to a plethora of unremarkable mice being offered from many manufacturers. For example, most people are right handed, and most mice are manufacture red for right-handed people. But if you look hard enough, you'll also find strong ambidextrous mice out there, even for vertical mice. Wired vs Wireless Another thing to consider is whether or not you want or need a cord. Early generations of wireless mice were significantly worse in terms of responsiveness, but modern wireless mice are almost indistinguishable from wired mice now. Many people will prefer a wireless mouse for the convenience of one less wire in their lives and on their desks. But wired isn’t without merits, they tend to be less expensive, never need to recharge, and are still marginally more responsive than wireless mice because they’re directly wired in. Optical Sensors vs. Laser Sensors Most people won’t notice a difference between laser sensors and optical sensors. Each differs slightly in terms of how they track motion. Optical mice use LEDs to illuminate your desk’s surface for reading, while lasers use a laser beam to see what’s below the mouse in great detail. Lasers tend to read more dots per inch (DPI), which means they’re capable of being more sensitive. But these sensitivity differences will generally only be observed or appreciated by people working in pixel-perfect precision, like graphic artists or gamers. Another difference that mostly concerns artists and gamers is acceleration. Laser mice view deep into a surface, which can result in jittery movement when you’re going at very slow speeds. Optical mice work well on surfaces that aren’t glossy, while laser mice work just about anywhere. If you’ve got a glossy desk or you’re going to be using your mice on several different surfaces, you might want to go out of your way for a laser mouse. But if you don’t specifically need a laser, you’ll be perfectly happy with optical sensors, which tend to be less expensive.
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