City Ergonomic Vertical DXT Mouse 2

City Economics DXT 2 Wireless Mouse

Imagine your hand in extreme pain. Imagine you are in so much pain you have the inability to move your fingers or wrist without feeling pain shooting throughout your arm. Imagine having poor eye-hand coordination to the point where you can't do any thing without help. It's a disorder known as Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI), and everyone who uses a computer is at high risk. City Ergonomics tasked themselves to find a solution to this exponentially growing issue. They developed the DXT Ergonomic Mouse. The DXT is meant to be held like a joystick (or a pencil if you are left-handed). This design encouraged movement of the wrist, substantially decreasing the user's risk of getting RSI and other related disorders. Other manufacturers have also developed their own ergonomic mice, which sparked a need to see if these mice were actually helping reduce the risk of RSI in users. A study soon came out, which concluded that City Ergonomic had created the most ergonomic mouse. The study reported that users of their mouse said that the mouse felt more natural to them and they has less of the symptoms experienced by people diagnosed with RSI. With City Ergonomics on the top of the heap, the world was watching to see what they would do next. So they made the DXT Ergonomic Mouse 2 Wireless. This model sports many improvements over the old model. One of the most obvious is that now it uses a wireless connection instead of a wired USB cable. It uses an incredibly small USB connector that utilizes the generic HID driver that is already packaged with most modern operating systems (in English: you don't need to stick in some sketchy CD that you found in the box and get a bunch of malware popping up on your computer). The new version also sports a 2000 DPI camera on the bottom of the mouse. DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. DPI is very similar to the term Megapixels used when comparing digital cameras. The more DPI/Megapixels, the better looking the picture will be. Now you may be wondering why you would need such a high quality camera in a mouse. Computer mice take hundreds of pictures a second of the surface they are on and they compare it to the previous picture to see if it has moved. The higher DPI the mouse has, the smaller movements it can detect. This means that the mouse can be used in environments where the slightest loss in accuracy is unacceptable. Examples include CAD production and CNC control rooms. But this mouse isn't just built for industrial use, it features many options for people who just want to use their computer for basic tasks. The DXT 2 has an amazing battery. For one, it can last 2 weeks under heavy usage. That's impressive. To put things into perspective, iPads typically only last about 9-10 hours on a full charge* (varies depending on the model). MacBook Airs only last 9-12 hours on one charge**. Many high-end smartphones only last about 10 hours on one charge***. When you compare the competition, that's impressive. In addition to having a long battery life, it also supports a quickcharge mode. If you plug in the mouse for 30 seconds on a completely discharged battery, it will last you about two hours. When you need to charge it, it can be charged with any micro-USB cable. If you already own a smartphone or tablet (that's not from Apple), chances are you have one laying around (don't worry, there's one in the box too). The mouse can be charged by plugging it into a computer or a wall outlet. It's not recommended to plug high current devices (devices that are trying to charge) into a laptop running off of battery. Laptops running solely on battery power have poor grounding, which in turn can damage your device and your laptop if try to charge too many things off of your laptops battery. Make sure you have your mouse charged up at home before you take it somewhere.
To finish off the review, it costs around $100 dollars depending on where you live and weather or not your country charges VAT. The $100 dollar pricing puts it up to par with high end specialty mice (mice that are developed for one purpose, like CAD or gaming mice). But just think about how much it will save you down the road when all your friends wrists start wearing down, and your still chugging away at the computer. That's a winner in my book.

To summarize:
City Ergonomics DXT Ergonomic Mouse 2 Wireless
Pro's:
-Design prevents RSI and other wrist diseases
-Came out on top in a US study on wrist disease risk and ergonomic mice
-wireless
-two week battery
-sturdy design
-high quality optical tracker (higher precision)
Con's:
-You have to charge it every once in a while (guess we need to start looking beyond batteries if we want to make better mobile devices).
-It costs $100 (what, did you think it was free?)
*-http://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/
**-http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/
***-http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/samsung-galaxy-s4-1137602/review/13