My partner is vindicated - hooray for trackball representation. If only I could get her off the crappiest trackball you've ever seen that she must have gotten in a 20 pack
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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I'd love to see a post about this cheap trackball, tbh.
trackballs, the arguably superior input method.
It's not arguable, because it's true! The mouse mafia are just trying to give everyone Carpal Tunnel Syndrone. We must overthrown the waggly input hegemony and bring peace to desktops everywhere!
Ok, I'll settle down now.
Mouse for gaming and graphics, trackball for everything else. Why choose when you can have both?
Mouse for...graphics
If you're doing freehand drawing
which I rarely do, but obviously many graphic artists care a lot about
a stylus and tablet really beats the pants off a mouse. Try to sign your name with a mouse and a tablet in a graphics program, and it really drives home the difference.
That's before one even gets to graphics programs being able to use tilt- and pressure-sensitive stylus inputs to affect brushstrokes.
Also a 3dConnexion space mouse is handy
trackballs, the arguably superior input method.
As a mouse user, I vehemently contest that unfounded affirmation!
That being said, you have already managed to make me pull out of its drawer my old trackball and put a fresh battery in it. So, who knows? Maybe trackballs are not all worthless plastic gimmicks? Joined! :p
I have every device connected via cable to my PC. I tried wireless peripherals and was disappointed every time.
Same here
A 1ms drop MATTERS when doing 200+ mph / 321+ kmph and you're heading into a curve, or going through a curve. Welp. That race is borked.
I agree that it's definitely noticeable on many gamepads, but as to numbers...the difference is way higher than 1ms (not to mention the fact that retransmits and stuff make the latency variable on wireless).
I just linked, in another discussion, to a database someone built after measuring input latency on a bunch of devices.
The Amazon Luna there, which is one of the worse-performing gamepads...man. Even if you're just taking average latency rather than worst-case, has average wireless latency about 18 milliseconds over the wired latency.
Last time I was playing FPSes much, I couldn't tell you just from feel if there were 1 or 10 milliseconds of network delay (okay, not exactly the same thing as input device delay depending upon how the game does input prediction), but I could notice performance differences over a 10 millisecond difference, how well I played.
I'm definitely more accurate with a mouse than a trackball.
However, there are some neat things that one can do with trackballs that one can't do with mice. I've had a trackball of some sort around for a long time for those cases.
I can lie down on a bed or couch with a trackball, whereas a mouse requires a flat, horizontal, stable, hard surface to work with.
I can squeeze a trackball into a tiny space on a table, where a mouse wouldn't fit.
Depending upon the type of trackball, some permit for flicking the ball and letting it spin freely in a direction with one's fingers up. A lot of software these days, especially on touchscreen-oriented devices, permits "flinging" to scroll and letting virtual inertia let something scroll onscreen to simulate a similar effect, but such trackballs had hardware device-level support for such behavior that worked in any software and worked the same way everywhere.
Not really mice, but relative to trackpads, it used to be that trackpads with physical buttons were widely available. I vastly prefer those to trackpads with "virtual" buttons, but in 2025, there are very few laptop models that provide for physical buttons, especially with a Linux-friendly three physical buttons that don't require chording to get a middle-click. Some Thinkpad models provide Synaptic trackpads that do this, but even those have become a minority of available Thinkpad models. Trackballs, on the other hand, have to provide physical buttons, and are a lot easier to find in 2025 with more than two physical buttons than trackpads.
Also relative to a trackpad, I'm more-accurate with a trackball.
I wouldn't choose a trackball over a mouse for general use at a desk. And the very flat dimensions of a trackpad make it compelling for a lot of built-in laptop use
while a few laptops still are available with internal trackballs, the tight physical constraints force tiny trackballs. If I use a trackball with a laptop, I personally want an external one.
But there are definitely scenarios where a trackball works better for me than either a mouse or trackpad, enough for me to keep them around.
As a trackball user, I am delighted.
That's cool, curious to see what people recommend!
I bet it's trackballs
Touchpads and trackballs are my go to input devices!
Love my marble mice! Flailing your arm around to move a cursor seems so excessive!.