Logitech M600 Touch Mouse

The Logitech M600 Touch Mouse joins several other touch-enabled computer mice, such as the Apple Magic Mouse ($69.99 direct, 3.5 stars) and Microsoft Touch Mouse ($79.95 list, 4.5 stars), which put a touch-sensitive surface directly on the mouse. Sometimes the results are good, as with the Microsoft Touch Mouse, but other times, it's a failed gimmick, as seen with the Verbatim Wireless Optical Touch Mouse ($29.99 street, 2.5 stars). Thankfully, the Logitech M600 does touch very well, by sticking with what works. The sleek yet comfortable design doesn't hurt, either.

Design and Features
The Logitech M600 Touch Mouse looks very much like a smooth wet stone pulled out of a river. Its dark grey colors and smooth rounded surface reinforce this imagery, but also make for a fairly comfortable mouse. On the front half of the device, where a traditional mouse has left and right buttons, the entire top surface of the mouse is touch-sensitive. This allows you to scroll and swipe right on the surface of the mouse. You also have regular clicking capability, which is smooth and quiet.

The M600 measures 1.1 by 2.52 by 4.41 inches (HWD)?neither too large, as with the HP Wi-Fi Touch Mouse, or too low-profile, as with the Apple Magic Mouse. It's also lightweight, weighing only 3.84 ounces with two AA batteries. In an interesting trick, you can make the mouse lighter by removing one of the included AA cells?it will run on either one or two batteries. With one battery, it weighs only 3.04 ounces, but the estimated battery life drops from nine months to three.

The Logitech M600 Touch Mouse is a wireless optical mouse that connects via 2.4GHz signal through a USB nano-receiver small enough to plug in and leave in for daily use. With a 33-foot range (our anecdotal testing pegs it at something closer to 45 feet) you can use the mouse from across the room, so you could also incorporate it into your home theater PC setup and use it while lounging on the couch.

Plus, thanks to Logitech's Unifying Receiver technology, you can connect up to five additional wireless Logitech products through the one receiver, leaving the rest of your USB ports free. The shape of the mouse allows it to be used with either right or left hands, with the necessary adjustments available in the accompanying SetPoint software utility. Logitech also covers the M600 Touch Mouse with a 3-year limited warranty on the hardware.

Software and Performance
Perhaps the best thing that about the Logitech M600 is what it doesn't try to do. We've seen touch mice that try to provide full multitouch capability, complete with pinch to zoom and rotate, but outside of Apple's Magic Mouse and the Microsoft Touch Mouse, none of those other touch contenders have adequately pulled it off.

In my initial hands-on with the M600, I assumed that the scrolling functionality would be available horizontally as well as vertically, and found I had trouble getting it to work. Upon further investigation, there is no side-to-side scrolling. What the Logitech does instead is give you the freedom to touch anywhere on the front half of the mouse, using that surface to scroll up and down and to swipe horizontally through pictures or Web pages. This simple functionality works, and works every time, while feeling much more free than when your scrolling is constrained to a touch-sensitive strip or when various gestures are misread.

Getting the mouse set up is easy: Put in the batteries and plug in the small USB wireless adapter. The drivers load quickly, and you're good to go. Logitech's SetPoint utility can also be downloaded to provide fine-tuned control over settings and features. With this software, you can adjust the resolution (dpi) of the mouse, or swap it between right- and left-handed settings.

After several days of using the Logitech M600 Touch Mouse, it's clear that Logitech has figured out how to do touch right. By limiting the feature set, the company has removed the frustration that broader gesture controls can bring. Between the simple, reliable functionality and the slick, refined-looking design, there is very little to complain about. The Microsoft Touch Mouse will remain our best in the category with its broader feature set, but the Logitech M600 is a solid runner-up.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Logitech M600 Touch Mouse with several other computer mice side by side.

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