What Is It? The Air Mouse Elite from Gyration is a wireless mouse that provides intuitive in-air motion controls that allow you to control you computer’s cursor with natural hand movements from up to 30m away. It’s ideal for anyone who regularly delivers presentations or uses a computer hooked up to their television as part of a home theatre.
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Air Mouse Elite also features 3 programmable buttons that enable you to customize the device to suit you, providing quick and easy access to your most commonly used actions and commands at the click of a button. These customizations can also be set to do different things under different contexts, for example; whilst your media player is open they can be used to pause or skip tracks, or control the volume; but when you switch to your web browser, you can use them to navigate back and forth between webpages, or for quick access to your homepage.
To look at, the Air Mouse Elite is very much like the standard mouse, and while you’re at your desk, it can be used on a mousepad in the traditional way. It connects to your computer using a 2.4GHz USB transceiver, and is powered by a built-in lithium-ion battery, which you can charge on the neat little USB dock that’s included.
Why It’s Good: The ‘MotionSense’ technology used in the Air Mouse Elite to enable in-air control is really impressive. I was slightly pessimistic at first, and had the idea that, although it may work, it would be uncontrollable, imprecise, and therefore just frustrating. However, it’s quite the opposite: in-air control with the Air Mouse is really quite easy to get used to, and you only need to use slight wrist movements to navigate your cursor around your screen. A trigger button at the device’s base is pressed with your index finger to activate mid-air controls, and then it’s as simple as pointing the mouse up & down or left & right to move your cursor in the desired direction. Cursor movement is incredibly smooth and accurate, and you’ll find pointing at small objects on your screen is a breeze.
The opportunity to use mid-air controls with MotionSense technology will be incredibly effective to those who are often required to deliver presentations: not only can you go back and forth between slides at the click of a button, but you can also point at objects with your cursor, highlight text, zoom in and out, and access loads of other functions from the other end of the room. The feature’s also great if you use a computer as part of your home media centre: no longer do you need to balance a standard mouse on your thigh to navigate through your media – mid-air control effortlessly gives you full control of your computer without the need to move from your couch. Check out the video below to see the Air Mouse in action.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En1WfW_v55s
The 3 programmable buttons on the top of Air Mouse are really handy. With the free MotionTools software installed on your computer, you can customize the buttons to do what you want, providing quick access to your most commonly used actions and commands. The buttons can also be programmed to do different things depending on which software you’re using, and if you forget what each button is assigned to do, holding down the centre button displays on screen what each button has been told to do.
With its black gloss finish and silver trim, Air Mouse Elite boasts an elegant, professional appearance, and even its charging cradle is small, sleek, and good-looking. It also feels great; it’s incredibly lightweight and comfortable to use, no matter how you use.
What’s Not So Hot: Air Mouse Elite offers some really great functionality, and everything it does, it does well. My only two gripes with this device are with regards to the customizable buttons and the price.
Firstly, although the customizable buttons can be really handy, they can also become quite confusing. With 3 customizable buttons, each with specific actions dependent on context, I often forgot what I’d asked the device to do under specific software, and found myself having to display which actions I’d set. I probably would have just found it quicker and easier to navigate to these functions with the cursor, so I’m not sure how much use these would be in the long-run.
My only other grumble is about the Air Mouse’s price. At the time of writing this review, the best prices I could find on Amazon were around $75 (U.S.) or around £90 (U.K.). The functionality of the Air Mouse really is fantastic, and to the right person, it will save a lot of time and effort, however, I’m just not sure that warrants the price tag. Especially considering that iPhone & iPad owners can now pick up remote and mouse applications from the App Store with similar functionality for under $5.
Wrap Up: If you need a device like Air Mouse Elite in your life, go get it! The functionality it provides is excellent, and it does everything really, really well. I was very impressed by this product, and although I wouldn’t normally need a device like this, I found it really effective when I was playing around with slideshows and my little home theatre. It’s also great fun to use.
[xrr rating=80%]
