Customer Reviews

Kensington 72414 PilotMouse Bluetooth Mini Mouse (PC/Mac)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

After I noticed my thumbs developing slight pain from using the cramped touchpad on my laptop, I looked around for a cordless mouse. I opted for the Kensington Pilot Mini for the following reasons, in order of importance:
1) Bluetooth technology (no infrared receiver to deal with)
2) Priced lower than other models such as the MSFT mouse
3) Compact size because I travel every couple of months

I'll cut to the chase and list my pros and cons.

Cons:
- First mouse arrived and within a few days, the rubber pad peeled away from the chassis. I firmly pressed it down so that the adhesive made contact again but it would only stay down for a few days. I returned the mouse for a replacement.
- About half the time, when I stop moving the mouse, the cursor drifted right to left. It's unclear whether this is due to the mouse or my Bluetooth card but the replacement does not seem to have this problem.
- The scroll wheel makes an annoying rattling sound when scrolling. Not a problem at home but this could get annoying if I'm in a meeting. Replacement mouse also has this problem.
- I bought this for $52.99 but I now see the price is $69.99. At $52.99, it was pricier than most IR mice but I thought I'd invest in the Bluetooth technology and use the mouse for a number of years. In retrospect, I find the quality shoddy for a product priced at this premium. Certainly at $69.99, the mouse is overpriced in my opinion. I recognize I'm paying the early adopter price for Bluetooth but if you can get by with an IR mouse, do that or wait until this device drops to $30 in a year.

Pros:
- Setup is incredibly easy (I'm using XP pro with the Kensington Bluetooth card).
- Not specific to this mouse, but the comfort of a cordless mouse is fantastic. I plan on keeping the replacement mouse, scroll wheel rattle and all.
- Mouse seems to work on a variety of surfaces.
- Priced lower than other Bluetooth mice. Kensington marketing did their homework; this mouse is priced lower than mose Bluetooth mice but still higher than IR mice so it captures a profit. However, at $69.99, I'm not sure this is still true.

All in all, I'm keeping the mouse but disappointed with the quality given the price. As a side note, I've shopped Amazon since they started business 10 years ago and this is the first return I've had to make. The make the process EXTREMELY painfree. They had a Returns web site that sends out a replacement immediately with no cost to me. Since the product is a defect, I do not incur shipping charges for sending the old one back.

I've had this mouse for about 10 days now, so my experience is limited. However, I have a pretty good feel for how the device works. Let's consider the following areas:

Size - I like this mouse because it is an in between size. It is smaller than a desktop mouse, but it is bigger than most wireless and other laptop mice. I have bigger hands so something a little bigger was necessary. I have found it very comfortable to use for hours at a time.

Pairing - This is a little odd. You flip the mouse's on/off switch, and then a dedicated pairing button. After doing so, you search for a specific device from your bluetooth icon in the sytem tray. Select the device from the list and then click the mouse to confirm. However, the device doesn't show up in "My Bluetooth Places" or as a paired device. This is confusing because I thought that I would have to pair the device every time I shutdown/restarted my PC. To my surprise, after Windows boots, all you have to do is click the mouse one time, and it connects. It would still be nice for it to behave like other bluetooth devices.

Usage - I do not play games so I have not had the problems that others have described. For use with Microsoft Office and surfing, I have found nothing negative about it. Right and left clicks and scrollwheel work as expected.

Battery Life - I am still on the batteries that came with the device. However, I would have liked to have seen a rechargable device with a USB plug-in for charging purposes. Depending on how often the batteries run out, this might not be that big of an issue. Still, I would have liked to have seen more consideration given to this area. The dedicated on/off switch as well as standby mode should maximize battery life.

Range - I have not used it at a distance from my laptop so I can't really comment. I use a laptray for my laptop, and I have the mouse on the other side from my USB bluetooth adaptor with no issue. I don't really have a need for much more range than that.

Overall, it's a pretty good device. I prefer bluetooth over the wireless options because it is one less adaptor to have taking up a USB port. Perhaps a future edition will be rechargable.

There is not much to say about this mouse, and it's a good thing: it just works. This is an ordinary 2 button/1 scroll wheel optical mouse, slightly smaller than the average desktop mouse but larger than the micro travel mice; that makes it just about right so that it's small enough to take along on trips and large enough to be comfortable to use even if you have large hands.
Pairing is quick, reliable and painless on OSX and Windows.
Unlike the tiny micro bluetooth mice I previously owned, this one uses a pair of AA batteries, not AAA. This explains the excellent battery life; good quality NiMH batteries will last weeks in there before you need to recharge them.
The bottom features a pairing button and a sliding power switch. If you forget to switch the mouse off, no problem: it goes into power save mode after a period of inactivity. To wake it up, you just click on a button.

Is your laptop bluetooth capable? Don't waste your money on a competing bluetooth mouse. This one does as good a job at half the price.

I have a wired Pilot Mouse on another computer and love it, but wanted to go wireless. I purchased the Pilot Mouse Mini rather than the Pilot Mouse because the former has an on/off switch, which I thought would address the complaints about the Pilot Mouse's power usage. So far I have not used it long enough to give a battery life estimate.

Configuration with a Mac Mini was quick & painless. In terms of tracking & response, it's great for video/music editing but I haven't tried it with games. I have found if I don't do anything for a few minutes the first time I move the mouse there is a small lag but after that response is instant. The mouse does go to sleep if you don't use it for an extended period of time and it doesn't seem to automatically connect when you power-on, but holding down any button (I use the scroll wheel) for a few seconds will re-establish contact.

So far - no complaints.

This is an excellent mouse. The best feature is the on/off switch which is a huge saver on battery life - I've owned this for two months and have yet to replace the original batteries. This may not be a good mouse for serious gamers or graphic artists as it is a little on the small side, but it is excellent for general use and travel. I have a Mac and I love having a wireless mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel. It powers up immediately and my laptop recognizes it within 5 seconds. I would highly recommend.

After owning this Kensington 72414 Pilotmouse Bluetooth Mini for over a year, here's why:

1. Battery Life. This mouse takes two AA batteries, enough juice to last about a month with heavy use. For those keeping score, this is equal battery life to Apple's bluetooth mouse. Rechargeables are sill nice to have, but I'll cheerfully replace them once a month. (As opposed to once a week... but that's another mouse, and another review..)

2. Drivers. Kensington FINALLY updated the MouseWorks drivers to support this mouse. While MouseWorks has been around for years, the software that supports this mouse is currently in beta... but it works very well on my PowerBook. The programmable options with this mouse are nearly limitless. Here's an idea of what you can do with this mouse:


a) Left click (but customizable to whatever you'd like)

b) Right click (but customizable to whatever you'd like)

c) Scroll vertically, click the scrollwheel once and scroll horizontally. I can't get over how cool (and useful!) this feature is. Kensington even cleverly designed their icon that shows up in the menu bar to give visual feedback as to which direction the wheel will scroll. But just in case this doesn't thrill you the way it thrills me, you can also turn this feature off and set the scrollwheel click to anything else you'd like to.

d) Chord (click right and left buttons at the same time) You can program this function to just about anything you want. The drivers support keystrokes; you can even write a script to be launched when you chord. I like closing a window by chording; others enjoy chording instead of pressing the enter key. The possibilities really are nearly endless.

e) Application level control, if you want it. You can literally set up different profiles and have the mouse behave differently depending on which application you're using. If that sounds complicated, don't worry. The Default profile affects all applications globally. Power users will love the flexibility here, though.


3. Size. I've used average-sized desktop mice and I've used tiny travel mice. This one fits smack in the middle. It's large enough to be ergonomic and easy to use, while still small enough to pack easily for travel.

4. Competitors? The only competitor this mouse *might* have is Apple's (currently fictitious) Bluetooth Mighty Mouse. We shall see...

In summary? If you're a power user with a laptop with built-in bluetooth, this is the mouse for you. In case you were wondering, it's the only Kensington bluetooth mouse with a power switch -- a huge feature if you're planning on keeping this mouse in your laptop bag. Even if you're not a power user, you'll probably still love this mouse.

Disclaimers: Bluetooth mice are not for gamers. Your mileage may vary under Windows. If you like gigantic, oddly-shaped asymmetric mice, you'll hate this one.

This is an absolutely excellent mouse. However, it's performance seems to be very sensitive to your specific system and use. I bought this for my new Dell Inspiron 1521, which has a duel-core processor and came Bluetooth enabled. I wanted something small, completely cordless and plug free just to avoid using the touchpad. For my purposes it's perfect, as there is enough processor power for it and I'm not running any processor intensive media editing programs or what have you.

Physically, the mouse is of good quality. It feels comfortable in the hand and is not flimsy. I love the design as well. Perhaps the only downside is that it doesn't come with a USB recharger. As for battery life, I have only owned it for about 2 weeks so it's difficult to tell. (It hasn't died yet, so that's a good sign).

Update, Sept 2008: using rechargeable Energizers, battery life is acceptable. I haven't timed it or anything but I'd say a few weeks of regular/heavy use.

Performance-wise:
-The tracking is precise, random mouse drifting occurs occasionally but not significantly more than with the plug in ball tracker mouses. I love that I don't have to move the mouse a lot to get the cursor from one side of the screen to another. It's much better than those traditional ones that you'd have to pull all the way off your mousepad before it got you where you wanted it to go. Is that what the DPI indicates? Others expressed their concerns about gaming, but I don't see anything inhibiting about this mouse. It's fast and accurate.

-pairing was very easy. At first I didn't know how to make the mouse recognizable after waking it up and I was frustrated at having to pair it every time I wanted to use it, or wait 15 minutes for it to suddenly become recognized. But after reading some reviews I learned all I had to do was click it and it woke up again, instantly recognized by the PC. It seems that the method varies between computers, however.

The other aspect I love is being able to use it on any surface. Sometimes I like to use it on my knee or in a bowl of spaghetti, which is just great!

Final thoughts: I've now had this for a year, and overall it's a satisfactory product. Not ideal in it's functionality but I haven't yet met a technology that was. I highly recommend this to those with newer and more powerful systems and
looking for something simple and convenient of good quality. And the current prices listed here are great; it's an amazing deal.

I've had this product for a couple of weeks and it is by far one of my favorite gadgets. It was simple to set up, the response time is excellent. In addition, it feels great in your hand.

While it doesn't provide a lot of extra buttons, that's just fine with me as I'm trying to keep it simple. I haven't fully tested the range yet, but it definitely works at 10ft.

Great product.

I purchased this mouse because it was relatively inexpensive for a bluetooth mouse. Feature-wise it is quite lacking...only two buttons and a scrool wheel. But I figured it was okay because it doesn't cost much, right?

Well this mouse has other problems too. Most notably, it tracks very poorly. Even on a good mouse pad I get very jumpy action from the mouse. I've tested it out on three laptops: an HP 6400 laptop, an IBM thinkpad (t43), and a MacBook. On all computers the performance is about the same. The mouse is jittery and doesn't move smoothly across the screen.

Also, the mouse has severe pairing issues. It takes a long time to pair initially, perhaps 15-20 seconds. (Compare to my Apple Pro Keyboard, which pairs in less than 2 seconds.) Of course, this isn't such a bad thing if pairing is a one time operation... But this mouse forgets that it is paired all the time! Every few weeks I have to pair it again.

The last thing that bugs me about this mouse is the turn on time. When the mouse has gone to sleep (after a period of inactivity), it takes considerable work to turn it on again. Sometimes I just have to click one of the buttons and wait about 5 seconds. But sometimes that doesn't do anything. Sometimes I click several buttons, toggle the on/off switch, or push the connect button. When I need to use the computer, I don't want to have to spend the first 30 seconds troubleshooting the mouse. I want to sit down and have it turn on instantly.

I don't know if this is an issue with bluetooth, but I also have a $20 logitech wireless mouse that uses a propietary RF protocol (NOT bluetooth), and it suffers from absolutely NONE of the problems mentioned above. I have switched back to using that in the meantime, but the one drawback of that mouse is it requires an external dongle to operate. I'd like to switch to bluetooth so that nothing hangs off the outside of the computer.

Also, as mentioned above, my Apple Pro Keyboard turns on instantly and works flawlessly all the time. So I think the bluetooth technology itself is not to blame here.

I'm going to try buying a better bluetooth mouse because I suspect this is just a cheap POC. I would not recommend this mouse, and I will probably stay clear of Kensington products for ever. (Also had a problem with a Kensington power supply. I suspect that they have a very poor design department.)

I bought this mouse for my Macbook a couple of months ago, and I am pretty satisfied with it. I wish I would have bought the mac mighty mouse that I have recently heard about, but I really like this mouse because you don't have to have a receiver. If you pick the mouse up, it will freeze on you for a couple seconds so just keep it on the surface, but it isn't a really big deal. If I were you, I would definitely buy this mouse because it is cheap works very well.

pros: cheap, compact, good grip, on/off switch, long battery life, looks cool
cons: will freeze for a couple seconds if lifted off surface briefly