For some time I have wondered how well the Logitech MX Air mouse really works. It claims to let you control your computer simply by holding your mouse in the air, pointing it at your computer, and waving it around. Recently, I have gotten the chance to check it out.

For starters let’s talk about compatibility with Linux:

Compatibility

It works out of the box. Period.

OK. You can’t install Logitech’s Windows-only software (which lets you reconfigure mouse buttons and mouse speeds) and the cursor doesn’t change when you pick up the mouse, but, to be honest, neither of these features are really important to me. I only tested the mouse in Ubuntu 8.04, but I assume results would be similar in other distributions.

Design

The Air is almost all black on the top with a chrome-style underside that looks, well, a tad ugly, and orange lighting that looks great and is, in some cases, quite useful. Luckily, most of us don’t spend our time looking at the bottom side of our mice and the visible bits of chrome are quite nice. Without having used all that many mice, I can’t really judge how well designed the mouse is ergonomically relative to others, but it definitely feels nice in your hand.

It addition to the two long mouse buttons on the top, there is a row of buttons in the middle. The first part is not really a button, but a touch-sensitive scroll area. Instead of having a physical wheel, you just move your finger up or down the strip. (While you scroll, the mouse makes a sort of quiet scrolling, clicking sound, which is a nice addition. Behind the scrolling area there are four buttons. From front to back they are back, select, play/pause, and volume.  The select button, which serves as a second left click (useful in the air), has a small raised bump, allowing you to locate it without looking at the mouse. Again, this is really just for when you use this mouse in the air, which will probably be most of the time. That’s about it to the design. The mouse really appears quite minimalistic, in a good way. “Minimalistic” is a description that fits only the design of this mouse, though.

Set Up

Set up for this mouse, like most, is extremely simple. First, plug in the charging station. All you have to do is plug the power cord in to the wall and and the other end in to the back of the charging station. Next, plug the USB wireless receiver into a USB port. And you’re done.

The charging station is really nice, since you don’t have to worry about replacing the batteries. When you place the mouse in the charger, a battery indicator appears, showing the status of the battery. When you take the mouse out of its stand, the battery indicator lights fade and other lights illuminate the various buttons on the mouse. My only complaint about the charging station is that the mouse doesn’t really ‘click’ in to place, it just sits there. This is not a major problem, but it would be nice to have some physical feedback when you put the mouse in its stand.

In The Air

As soon as you pick this mouse up, the magic begins. You can immediately start pointing at things and clicking on them, making little gestures to control media, and generally having fun controlling your computer from afar. Logitech’s Windows-only tutorial suggest you hold the mouse with all your fingers except your thumb under the mouse and your thumb on the select key (the one with the bump that serves as a left click) while using it in the air. This is a more comfortable position and give you access to the various special keys, but you can’t easily right click with this set up.

One thing you will notice as soon as you start using this mouse is that it quickly gets misaligned. In other words, you sometimes have to point at a different place than you want the cursor to go. This is, luckily, not a big deal, since it happens a lot. All you have to do is hold down the back button (right above the select button) and the cursor will freeze. Then, point the mouse at the cursor and release the button. If you hold down the back button for a couple seconds, it will keep the cursor frozen after you release. This lets you use the other special keys and use gestures to control media without worrying about the cursor flying all over the place.

If you plan to use the Air to control a lot of media, you will want to get used to using gesture. For example, pressing play/pause and making a little forward or backward circle skips to the next item in your playlist or returns you to the beginning of the current item, respectively. Just pressing the volume once mutes or unmutes the sound, but if you hold down and move the mouse to the left or right, you can change the volume. Trust me, its really cool.

Where it is not so cool, though, is when you try to precisely move the mouse. Trying the resize a window, for example, is an absolute pain. Most basic computing tasks work pretty well from the couch, even if you have to do a little typing with an on-screen keyboard. You would not, however, want to do any serious typing. It really only works for typing URLs and short things.

On The Ground

When you are not waving the this mouse around in the air, it also functions as a standard mouse. Just put it down and start using it. Really there is not a lot to it, except that you can do it.

Conclusion

The Air mouse works really well, especially for controlling media, so it really comes down to how well you can take advantage of it’s gyroscopic abilities (all the stuff you do with it in the air). If you spend a lot of time on your computer just watching movies or listening to music, the Air mouse might be a good choice. Where it really shines, though, is when it comes to home theater PCs. The ability to pick up one device and control your computer is amazing. For some time I have used a small wireless keyboard that has a built in mouse, but this is way better. I’ll still pick up the keyboard if I have to type something long, but with a home theater PC, I rarely have to do that.

If you don’t have a home theater PC or watch/listen to a lot of media on your computer, the Air’s special abilities are really little more than a cool feature to play with for a few minutes. If you do spend a lot of time watching/listening to media on your computer or especially if you have a home theater PC, the Logitech MX Air is a great choice with excellent cross-platform compatibility, even if it doesn’t say so on the box.