GameBall Thumb - Limited Edition (Preorder)

Pros - It has a scroll wheel you can flick, it comfortably fits your hand.
Cons - There is less buttons to map game actions to when compared to the ambidextrous game ball. There should be more buttons that you can press with your ring and pinky finger.

I had a Logitech MX Ergo that failed - some weird problem where it somehow interacted with the window behind the one that was in the foreground, and it behaved similarly on Windows 11 as it did on Linux Mint. I decided to see what other options were out there, and happened to find the GameBall Thumb. It has a similar fit to the Ergo, but is a little lighter in weight, and has more precision modes. Despite being lighter, and the tilt-plate being made of hard plastic instead of metal, it seems very durable. And the tilt plate is actually fixed to it rather than held in place with magnets like the Ergo, so the plate doesn't randomly fall off while you're trying to pick it up all the time. The top shell has a grooved texture that seems to keep your hand from sliding off of it, and the whole device is shaped so that it's easy to pick up and move (unlike the older Logitech M570s).

As a Linux Mint user, I wanted to program a bunch of buttons onto the thing. So I made the forward and back buttons modifier buttons - I can click Forward+Middle click to enter full screen mode or Forward+Left Click to send a left arrow (rewind 10 seconds on Rumble video), for example. Lookup xbindkeys, guile (language), and xte if you want to do that yourself. There may be similar ways to do this for Windows OS and Mac OS.

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with it. The minor gripes I have with it are that the battery charge seems to last less than a week - admittedly I do use it a lot. When the battery light comes on, it blinks a lot. Mildly annoying. It'd be nice if there was a separate battery-low LED that just stayed lit. The light effects around the thumb ball are nice, I wish it had purple to match the rest of the theme I have going on my OS.

.. And am regretting it!
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TLDR:
1) Battery is Garbage. 24 hours per full charge (if even that much) and cannot disable pointless leds to conserve the tiny battery.
2) Badly designed bearings have gunked up in less then 3 weeks to the point the trackball is unusable for most applications despite daily cleaning with microfiber cloth weekly with 95% pure alcohol.
3) The charging cable is badly designed to be "flexible" like a piece of yarn, I'm not kidding!
Six moths of daily use will turn that into a possible fire hazard due to metal fatigue. There is a REASON wires that carry electrical current are NOT supposed to be flexed to less then 90 degree's on a gradient curve. These cables will flop 360 degree's with just gravity and do it in less then a 1 inch (2.54 cm) diameter circle!
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Full review:

Initial shipping started on 8/27/2024 but due to cheap shipping company they did not arrive until almost 3 weeks later due to spending 2 weeks bouncing from one POST OFFICE to another in my city without any actual attempt to deliver being made.
Initially I was very happy with the way the hardware smoothly functioned and worked wonderfully both in my space sims and my FPS games.
The built in battery on the other hand is garbage. Initial charge lasted less then 72 hours (20 year old thumballs on a single AA battery last more then a month) By the third charge it has settled down at total drain occurring in approximately 24 hours...

Not to worry because this is why I bought 2 of them! so I could turn one off and charge it while using the second one...
Except there are 2 major issues with this.

The first issue is the second trackball refuses to connect to the same computer... at all! Works fine on my 20+ year old laptop that I dragged out to test with but not on my actual computer.
The second issue is YOU CAN NOT TURN IT OFF!!!! The on/off switch is apparently a decoration as long as it is plugged into a power source. It works ONLY when the mouse is NOT connected to the cable...WTF?

Lets talk about the charging cable now.
It appear to be a proprietary plug design as no other USB cable will plug into it the mouse. There is also no "top" or "bottom" on the male end of the plug. meaning I frequently have to unplug and replug the other way around in order for it to start charging!
Whoever designed the cable itself is either a genius at scamming people or a moron at designing electrical current carrying wires. They apparently have no comprehension of things like "METAL FATIGUE" and "ELECTRICAL SHORT" hazards. meaning that the cable will likely need to be replaced in less then a year of use unless you glue it to a straight hard surface and never move it. In other word you would need to build a custom dock for charging the
mouse.

Moving on...

Now some of you might be wondering why I waited this long to click on the review link in the email that was sent to me.

I have been using trackballs for more then 30 years. The biggest issue with early trackballs was the "sticky" syndrome. This is what happens if you buy a cheaply made /poorly designed trackball. After a certain amount of use DESPITE daily cleaning they will completely lose any semblance of precision movement (or in some cases small movements as well) because the bearings/rollers gather "gunk" and CAN NOT BE CLEANED because there was no thought given to the fact that Gravity+ dust+oils found on human fingertips will JAM the rollers/bearings in place causing the trackball to DRAG across them instead of roll. This does NOT happen on properly designed bearing sockets due to the bearing being less than 20% exposed leaving very little surface area to "build up" gunk.

So as of today the only functional mouse of the 2 I purchased is no longer usable even for web browsing since it takes 6-7 attempts in order to move it less then and inch onscreen because it is skipping off the bearings rather then rolling on them.

I've been using this thumbball as my daily driver for almost a month and I'm pretty happy with it.
The high quality bearings and sensor make it nice and smooth with minimal sticktion, so it's useful for FPS games and other precision stuff. Nice and easy to configure the DPI and RGB as well.
The switches under the mouse buttons click with minimal force, which is great, and the ergonomics of the protoarc shell work nicely for me. I really like the snappy riser plate under the unit, that's a smart way to get a bit of a vertical angle on your grip.
If I were to make a complaint it would be that the scrollwheel takes a fair bit of pressure to click with, and it can cause some finger pain if used alot.
I would also have appreciated another button under my ring finger, as that was something my old elecom ex-g pro had, and I found myself using it a lot.
Anyway, this will likely be my main pointing device going forward, great product.

I decided to try gameball after the replacement buttons in my MX ergo started going again. I’ve been using it a couple weeks now and I’m in love! Only thing I sometimes miss is horizontal scrolling, everything else is top notch though.