Gyration Rechargeable Wireless Air Mouse Elite (GYM5600NA)

by SMK-Link

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 1.7 x 2 x 5 inches ; 1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 5.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B002O0L0GC
• Item model number: GYM5600NA
• Batteries: 1 Nonstandard Battery batteries required.
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 14, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Comfortable to use in the air or on your desktop

Elegant, ambidextrous design with three programmable buttons allows for custom control

Maintain full control of your presentation as you walk around the room

Included MotionTools software for a customized experience. View larger

The Gyration Air Mouse Elite works at your desktop or anywhere in a room. MotionTools software recognizes your gestures and uses your hand movements to control applications and activate tools for interacting with your content and energize presentations. Use MotionTools to customize your Air Mouse experience and program simple gestures for activating commands, launching applications and much more. The simple, intuitive interface lets you take complete control of your content and applications from the comfort of your desk or across the room. Long-range RF technology works at a range of up to 100 feet, without line-of-sight limitations. The elegant, ambidextrous design with three programmable buttons allows for customized control of application commands.

Engage Your Audience And Close Your Deal

With natural and intuitive hand movements, the Air Mouse Elite will allow you to maintain full control of your presentation as you walk around the room driving home your USPs. Turn the mouse cursor into a highlighter, laser pointer or pen, or gently swipe it in-air to activate embedded media and other special effects.

MotionTools for More Interactive Presentations

The MotionTools software that comes with any Gyration product provides a suite of visual effects and tools that users can activate and control with the flick of a wrist. A presenter can turn the mouse cursor into a highlighter, a zoom, a laser pointer or a pen, or activate embedded media and other special effects to captivate audiences with interactive presentations. Standard gesture shortcuts include volume control, zoom, hide/reveal, next slide, play embedded video, and more.

Increase Student Engagement And Retention

The Air Mouse Elite, makes it easy to engage your students with an interactive multimedia lessons. And, since multiple Air Mouse Elites can connect to one computer, you can distribute them to the class and allow students to better interact with you, each other, and the subject matter.

Open Your Living Room To The World Wide Web

Search, browse, and navigate the Web or play your digital media content on your TV. The Air Mouse Elite lets you control and enjoy your PC or Mac connected digital entertainment with simple hand gestures from the comfort of your couch.

Which Gyration Air Mouse is Right for You?

	Air Mouse Go Plus	Air Mouse Go Plus with Wireless Keyboard	Air Mouse Elite	Air Mouse Elite with Wireless Keyboard
Model Number	GYM1100NA	GYM1100CKNA	GYM5600NA	GYM5600LKNA
Included Keyboard		Wireless Compact		Wireless Low Profile
Range of up to 100'
Included MotionTools Software

Product Description

Wireless, In-Air control mouse for presentations and PC connected home theater.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great functioning, poor design, November 5, 2009

By 

Patrick Oden (San Dimas, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gyration Rechargeable Wireless Air Mouse Elite (GYM5600NA) (Personal Computers)

(What's this?)

A couple of years ago I received a Logitech MX Air Rechargeable Cordless Air Mouse which I really liked. I've since suggested it to teacher friends, one of whom has put it to marvelous use in his juvenile hall classroom, helping to get students involved in multimedia instruction. He says it has been an amazing, transforming tool. I gave it five stars because of how it worked, how it felt, even though there were a few things I would have liked in addition.

So, I've long kept my eyes and ears open for another air mouse that would have both the functioning of the logitech mouse while adding a greater amount of flexibility.

This Gyration air mouse certainly seemed to have the potential of meeting this hope, and for the most part it did, albeit with its own frustrations.

First off, the mouse works great as an air mouse. I admittedly have not used it a great deal as a standard mouse, given my primary computer is a laptop. I played with it to get to know it for a little while, then put it to the test when I guest-lectured for two graduate level classes last week. Had a powerpoint presentation, and was curious to see how much I could walk around while still being able to control not only the slide progression but all aspects of the computer.

What I liked:
* It does work and is responsive. Like the Logitech learning to adapt to the distinct differences between a handheld mouse or touchpad takes a bit of time. I wasn't particularly finely tuned myself at this task during the class sessions, however, as time went on I definitely got a bit better. Another wee problem I had was I couldn't get the cursor to move at all in the air at first. Took a bit of looking at the manual (only provided on the cd) to realize I had to hold down the trigger button at the same time. This latter extra bit might become more of a negative over time, as it adds extra hassle to what should be an automatic function of a mouse.

* What really helps the Gyration stand out is that it has programmable buttons. Three buttons in the middle of the mouse can be programmed for different functioning not only in a single set way, but programmed so as to have different reactions in different kinds of software. Very nice. And this works as well.

* Not only can these buttons be used for standard operations, but the included software gives the mouse wonderful additional functionality beyond what the computer already has. This includes, but is not limited to, a simulated "laser" pointer (a roundish, flexibly sized dot on the screen), a "highlighter" that can highlight anything on the screen. The list can go on and on so is worth checking out.

* There are also, by using the provided software, gestures that can be programmed to do different tasks. For instance, I programmed the mouse to start the slide presentation with an upstroke and close it with a downstroke. Like with the mouse movement in general, getting these gestures to work easy takes a bit of time. The mouse is pretty sensitive and it's really easy to feel like I'm doing a gesture right, while the mouse just gets confused what a slightly diagonally upswing is supposed to indicate.

A slight caveat with this latter. The software feels a bit slow at times rather than working smoothly. It is loaded in the back ground and tends to want to pop up over the other software. Rather than being seamless, it's a bit intrusive. But, this may be me continuing to need to improve my own skills with this mouse.

What I don't like:

* the design of the mouse itself. It looks and feels like a regular mouse. With a trigger button on the bottom, and three buttons surrounding a small round button in the top middle. There's the two standard click buttons with a scroll wheel in between. That sounds all well and good. However, to use this as an air mouse requires a different way of holding it. The trigger button (which I've already complained about) requires the mouse being held on the side, with the click buttons, and other buttons on top, being manipulated with the thumb rather than the forefinger. However, with a standard mouse design, this mouse feels rather uncomfortable and awkward being held in this way. This is the one place the Logitech mouse really stands out. They designed it to work with both hand positions in a comfortable way. The buttons on the middle top are especially awkward to use with the thumb, as they become really close to the hand. And, of course, these buttons are just about impossible to use easily holding the mouse in the standard way.

* The charger. It is a USB charger. I hate tapping even more of my laptop battery or taking up one of my few usb ports to slowly charge up this mouse. I understand it is convenient in some ways, but having an adapter which could be charged USB or in the wall would have been immensely more welcomed. The battery does seem to hold a charge pretty well, though I've not put it through long enough paces to see if this is another problem. The logitech air mouse has an amazing battery life that is hard to beat. Added to this, there doesn't seem to be a way of turning the mouse off. It's always blinking blue at me. Which makes me think that it loses more power than it should because I can't shut it down.

* The charger design. It's terrible. The mouse sits loosely and uncomfortably on the cradle, with some fiddling to make sure the mouse is connected and charging. The mouse can be easily--like with a small breeze--knocked off the charger, resulting in a charging session that ends up not providing any charge.

Over all, I feel like there's a lot of great hardware and software pluses with this mouse, but they really skimped on the design process. It feels they put a lot of great stuff into a really not thought out package. I'm not someone who usually is attentive to design issues, however, this mouse kept bringing them to my attention.

And yet, if I was asked to recommend this or the Logitech as a useful air mouse in an educational setting, I would almost certainly recommend this one, because of its flexible programmable buttons and helpful software. Though as I do it I would feel a tinge of sadness as the Logitech just is so much a better fit in the hand and overall look.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars very disappointed after trying it out with my home-theatre PC system, November 19, 2009

By 

almosthappy (San Diego, CA, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Gyration Rechargeable Wireless Air Mouse Elite (GYM5600NA) (Personal Computers)

(What's this?)

My HTPC setup is very simple: a Win Vista PC connected to a 52" LCD TV via a HDMI cable. The input device I have been using is a Logitech diNovo Mini, which has a less-than stellar touch pad/directional pad combo design in lieu of a mouse. So when I received the Gyration Air Mouse Elite In-Air mouse, I desperately wanted this mouse to work well and fill the missing mouse void left by my Logitech diNovo Mini all-in-one. The setup was relatively simply: install the drivers/configuration app from the included CD, plug in diminutive USB Bluetooth receiver, connect the charger to any standard powered USB port, and you're pretty much ready to go. The mouse does work out of the box. Although with my setup, when using the air-mode, the cursor was moving too slowly at first. So I had to go to the mouse properties and amp up the cursor motion speed. Personally, I find the mouse to be poorly designed. When using the in-air mode, a trigger needs to be depressed all the time while moving in motion. While pressing the trigger, I find it awkward to use the left click/right click/scroll wheel on top without resulting in slight hand jitter and missing the on-screen target. I found it difficult to focus on small on-screen targets and buttons without jitters, and that's a huge deal to me. I tried different settings (like the check box in mouse properties to increase accuracy) and tweak the motion speeds, and none helped much. I asked my wife to tried it, just it make sure it's not the anatomy of my hands. She had the same impression after a few minutes of use. I wanted a motion mouse that's intuitive and natural, almost like an extension of my moving hand in air. This mouse, unfortunately, failed to deliver for me. There are additional buttons that can be configured for different common invoked actions, like minimizing a page. But nothing to write home about and they certainly don't make up for the lukewarm motion control.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Product misses mark, November 7, 2010

By 

Myron Klingensmith "Coffee snob" (Denver, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gyration Rechargeable Wireless Air Mouse Elite (GYM5600NA) (Personal Computers)

I was excited to try this mouse that uses Wii technology. I use a mouse alot every day and my hands and wrists are chronically fatigued. The promise to hold a mouse in the air and navigate web pages and documents seemed too good to be true. It was.

What frustrates me is that it is so close to working as promised. The concept is sound and at times it is a delight to use. My hand can be at a comfortable position in my lap or by my side and a small movement of my hand causes the curser to move effortlessly and with precision across the screen. If I choose to use it on a flat surface it works as well as any other mouse. But here is the problem: the Air Mouse uses a little window on the bottom to detect if it is on a flat surface. If not the curser freezes in place. The user must double click a button to convert the mouse into an air device. There is almost no way to hold the mouse without having a finger cover the little window and the mouse believes it is on a flat surface so the curser freezes. Thus starts a frustrating repetitive loop; double click,finger over the window, cursor freeze, double click, etc. What baffles me is that sometimes it works perfectly for minutes on end. I am in mouse user Nervana. Then inexplicably it goes into the loop sequence and I slip into mouse rage.

Another disappointment is the software. There are four programmable buttons on top of the Air Mouse. A window on your computer screen shows each of the buttons and the user clicks on a button and then selects from a list of actions available to that button. That part is as user friendly for programming as could be asked for, however, there are commonly used commands that are missing.

The most obvious to me is the double click. One of the most difficult tasks for this mouse is to hold the mouse still over a small spot on the screen and not move off it for the duration of a double click. Having one button on top be programmed for a double click would be so nice.

A second software feature missing is page down scrolling. Here is why it is important. When I move my thumb forward to reach the scroll wheel a finger underneath almost always covers that little window discussed previously and the curser freezes and back into the loop sequence. More mouse rage.

Design-wise, this device is so close to being a device users would brag about to friends. As I said, when it works I marvel at the ease of use. I wish the company would invite me to sit with their engineers for a day. I have put thought into modifications and have concrete, simple suggestions. This puppy would hum. My fee; replace my current mouse with a new improved version when it comes out so I could brag to my friends.