First came the Elecom Deft Pro, and its driver software turned out to be junk. Then came the Sanwa Gravi, and not only did its driver software turn out to be junk but the build quality was lousy.
Now I’ve spent about a month with the GameBall, and I’m… mostly happy with it.
On the upside, the build quality is pretty solid and there’s no actual fussy driver software to fight against. Also, all of the setting changes are conveyed through tapping or long-pressing various parts of the touch-sensitive area on the device. (We’ll get to that in a moment.) This means no fighting with fiddly, misbehaving driver software just to get basic functions working.
I won’t say “on the downside” because I don’t have major complaints with the device, merely mild annoyances. Such as:
- It’s an ambidextrous design, which is an overall positive design choice since southpaws need love too. But this means it’s not quite as comfortable a device to use long-term as the previous two contenders. Minor quibble though.
- I had to put a mouse pad under it because of its tendency to rock back a bit on its rubber pads when resting my hand on it. Weird, but not an actual problem once I gave it a cushion to sit on.
- The ball does “jump” a bit, especially when spinning it “upward.” It’s not much of a jump, but it happens.
- The scroll function is… genuinely weird. Instead of a standard scroll-wheel combo button or, as Kensington does it, a wheel ring around the ball itself, there’s a trackpad-like touch-sensitive area to each side of the ball. The left side does horizontal scrolling, the right handles vertical. By default they’re set to “continuous” scroll mode, so you swipe your finger a bit and leave it there to keep scrolling as long as you want. This is… not great when you’re trying to do gear swapping in a video game. Which, given the name of the device, would make you think they’d have considered their defaults a bit better. Alas. It’s an easy fix, but I’ll probably never be fully “used to” this mode of scrolling. (I tend to over-scroll when changing gear in Satisfactory, and it’s been a month.)
Customization, which I needed because I didn’t like the default right-button selection, comes in the form of a third-party utility. On Windows PCs, that’s the X-Mouse Button Control software, a sort of universal button-remap program. I worried about having to rely on this but remembered that the actual, official software for the previous two devices were both terrible, so I shrugged and installed yet another software package anyway. So far? So good. (I have my double-click where I want it, and right-click is above the left-click on the thumb side.) I simply… try not to think about relying on a hobby project that hasn’t been updated in nearly three years.
The folks behind the GameBall are apparently working on different designs for the future and I’m curious to see how that goes, but for now? This’ll do… until it doesn’t.
