The Best Ergonomic Mouse for Home & Office

“Ergonomic” is a word that manufacturers throw around fast and loose when marketing computer peripherals. In a market that can largely be defined by concrete and numerical specs, ergonomic occupies an ambiguous space. There’s no certification required to identify your mouse as ergonomic. Any fly by night company can plaster the word on their gear and improve its perceived value.

That means that finding the best ergonomic mice can be tough. Unless you go into the store and try it out for yourself, you won’t know how it really feels, and the market is flooded with mice that have the designation tacked on. That’s why we’ve compiled these 12 objective ergonomic mouse reviews and created a guide to helping you find the best ergonomic mouse for your lifestyle.

The 10 Best Ergonomic Mice

Design	Mice	Retailer
	Logitech MX Master 2S	Check Price
	Logitech MX Ergo Wireless Trackball Mouse	Check Price
	Anker AK-UBA Vertical Ergonomic Mouse	Check Price
	Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse	Check Price
	Perixx PERIMICE-713L Left Handed Mouse	Check Price
	Logitech MX Vertical Wireless Mouse	Check Price
	Razer DeathAdder Esports Mouse	Check Price
	Apple Magic Mouse 2	Check Price
	Evoluent VMCR Vertical Mouse	Check Price
	J-Tech Wireless Ergonomic Mouse	Check Price

Best Ergonomic Mouses Buyer’s Guide

Whether you’re an avid gamer or someone simply looking for a more comfortable experience when working at your office desk, an ergonomic mouse can mean a world of difference. We’ve already outlined some of the best ergonomic mice around, but we’ll get into the details below so you can understand the sort of features and specs to look for when undergoing the shopping experience.

The Value of an Ergonomic Gaming Mouse

Do you need an ergonomic gaming mouse? If you’re a serious gamer, absolutely. The huge number of buttons and diverse features that these models offer can really increase your skill in competitive gaming, and an ergonomic design is critical for your health if you’re putting in long hours in front of the screen. RTS gamers are particularly prone to carpal tunnel syndrome due to the frenetic clicking and scrolling involved, but a regular mouse can have its toll in everything from shooters to loot-driven RPGs.

But even if you aren’t a gamer, gaming mice offer a lot of bang for their buck. While the garish designs may make them stand out like a sore thumb in the typical office, the rich feature sets can’t be argued. Gaming mice typically offer an incredible amount of control over DPI, so you can set up a responsiveness that suits the needs of your job, and the ability to reprogram keys means that you can get highly personalized with your setup.

If you’re concerned about the sometimes flamboyant designs of gaming mice, there’s no need to be too worried. Most sport a normal black finish, and the RGB lighting can be adjusted to something a little more subdued. Lighting can even be turned off in most cases if that’s more to your liking.

What About a Vertical Mouse?

Vertical mice may look supremely odd to people who’ve never seen them before, but they’re becoming increasingly more popular in the office, and the users who have been converted to the vertical lifestyle swear by it. The advantage of vertical mice is predicated entirely on physiology. The natural resting position of the human wrist is with the thumb pointing upward, so making use of a traditional mouse means twisting your wrists 90 degrees away from where they should be. This isn’t an issue for the most part. After all, the rotational design of the wrists is designed to accommodate that. But keeping your wrists in that position for extended periods of time and placing strain on your fingers can cause severe and chronic pain.

There are issues with how we manipulate traditional mice as well. Given the way most mice are designed, our natural inclination is to guide it with our wrist alone. While the pressure may not seem like much in the moment, doing this over and over again can place severe stress on your wrist over time. The soft tissue that cushions the bones of your wrist aren’t compressed in the same way with a vertical mouse, and the fact that your wrist is held in a resting position means that there’s less strain placed on your wrist muscles as well. Instead, your muscle’s forearms expend the most effort with a vertical mouse.

When testing out a vertical mouse or getting used to the new positioning once you’ve added one to your office, you want to look for the sensation of a firm handshake. Your thumb should sit comfortably in the thumb support rest rather than the air to reduce strain on the tendons, and the rest of your fingers should rest firmly but not too tightly on the opposite side. Moving the mouse should be directed by your elbow rather than your wrist, but that will feel natural if you’re holding the mouse correctly. A vertical mouse takes some getting used to, and it might not be the right choice for everyone, but the science behind it is sound. It should be an option that you at least consider.

What Advantages Do Ergonomic Trackball Mice Offer?

The trackball design tends to be a little more recognizable to the average person than a vertical mouse. Despite being first introduced in 1952, you don’t see a lot of them around, at least in comparison to their more popular brethren. But it may be time that you reconsidered their use in your home or office.

The greatest advantage of the trackball is also its greatest weakness: the fact that it remains stationary. Rather than having to twist your wrist around to guide your cursor across your screen, all the work is accomplished through your palm or finger. And while this means that your wrist is going to remain in a rotated position, it also means that you aren’t putting pressure on the cartilage by having to thrust it back and forth. But the giant ball that serves as the guiding force behind your cursor is also significantly less precise. As a result, a trackball tends to be a bad choice for gamers and professions like graphic design where precision is imperative.

But if you’re using your mouse for more general purpose demands, a trackball is something you should seriously consider. A number of studies have shown that it can seriously reduce the risk of repetitive strain injuries when used over an extended period of time. It’s also great if you find yourself regularly working in cramped spaces and don’t have the range of movement that’s often necessary for a more traditional mouse.

If you’re already suffering from a condition like carpal tunnel or you find yourself regularly fatigued while manipulating your mouse, you’re a prime candidate for the sort of advantages a trackball offers. While trackballs aren’t prominently positioned on our list, the Logitech MX Ergo is a phenomenal choice that incorporates a number of great modern features.

Do You Even Need an Ergonomic Mouse?

It can be easy to lose track of how much time you sit in front of your computer. If you work in a traditional office cubicle, chances are that you spend something approaching eight hours in front of your office machine, and then you may go home and sit down at your own computer for a few hours more, especially if you’re a gamer. The biggest risk of using a mouse regularly isn’t an issue that comes overnight. Repetitive stress injuries slowly develop after day in and day out of using a computer, and the damage you do to the cartilage in your wrist can be difficult to recover from.

That’s why you shouldn’t wait before investing in an ergonomic mouse. Just because you haven’t started feeling pain yet doesn’t mean that you aren’t causing damage to your wrist, and it may be too late to completely reverse the damage by the time it starts having a notable impact on your daily life. Even if you have an older ergonomic mouse, it may be time to make an upgrade. Designs change as our understanding of physiology does, and as ergonomic mice become more popular, their structures become more sophisticated. A modern ergonomic mouse don’t just come packed with new features. They also provide innovations in terms of their basic form.

Are All Mice Compatible With Every Operating System?

If you run your computer off of any version of Windows or any of the various distributions of Linux, 9 out of the 10 mice on our list will suit you just fine without having to make any adjustments to your setup. The wired mice make use of USB ports to connect, and that’s a format that’s universally recognized in almost every machine. All you have to do is plug in your device with a wired mouse or pair the Bluetooth on a wireless mouse, and you should be ready to go.

Things become just a bit more complicated with some of the newer Macs. Since the Magic Mouse 2 utilizes a Thunderbolt port for charging, it’s not going to be compatible with Windows or Linux machines. You could potentially jump through some hoops with adapters, but it won’t be worth your time given how many great ergonomic mice are available. All versions of Macs also support Bluetooth, so you shouldn’t have any issues connecting wireless mice to your Mac computer.

The problem is that some newer Macs support only the newest version of USB known as USB-C. Since it’s not compatible with older USB devices, that could be an issue. Check your specific Apple computer to make sure that the version of USB on the mouse and in the computer are compatible. Otherwise, you may need to invest in an adapter to make use of your wired ergonomic mouse.

Are Wireless Mice Slower Than Wired Mice?

It’s commonly recognized in the gaming community that even the best wireless mice have some degree of input lag. It’s true. Physical connections naturally transmit information more quickly than wireless connections, and a little bit of lag can spell the difference between a win and loss in a highly contested online multiplayer match. But almost all of the mice on our list are wireless. Part of that has to do with the audience. The mice on our list are focused not just on gamers but on office workers and casual computer owners as well, and the idea of lag is a non-issue in practically any non-gaming situation.

But the disadvantage of lag is sometimes overstated in the gaming community as well. Consider the actual numbers. The difference in lag between a standard quality wireless gaming mouse and its wired counterpart is a mere 1 millisecond. Could that have an impact on your gaming experience? Certainly. But in the vast majority of situations it won’t.

There are countless other factors to consider when playing, and one of the most important is the refresh rate of your monitor. With 60 Hz or 144 Hz being the standards for most monitors (compared to the 500 Hz of a standard gamer-focused mouse), your display is far more likely to be the culprit of lag than your mouse.

If you do choose a wired mouse over a wireless one, we recommend getting yourself a mouse bungee too.

Laser vs. Optical Sensors

Are you unsure about the difference between an optical and a laser mouse? It’s not as confusing as it may seem. Optical mice use a sensor that’s quite similar to one found in a modern camera. These low resolution sensors rapidly take pictures of the surface they sit on and use data from those pictures to determine where they are in relation to the surface and subsequently where the cursor should be in relation to your screen. An infrared LED light bounces off of the surface and refracts into the lens to produce these results. The larger the sensor, the more accurate it is.

Laser mice function in essentially the same way, and that technically makes them optical mice as well. What distinguishes them from what’s traditionally identified as an “optical mouse” is the fact that they use a laser that’s invisible to the human eye rather than a noticeably red LED light. The highly responsive nature of these mice meant they were once regarded as universally better than optical mice, but the gap between them has closed in the intervening years.

The difference comes down largely to one of accuracy vs. responsiveness. Laser mice by and large move faster than their optical counterparts, but they’re sometimes prone to jitters. It’s an unfortunate consequence of their precision, as any imperfection in a surface gets noticed by the sensor and calculated into the output. LED based mice are generally preferred by gamers and graphic designers because there’s less room for error with the cursor jumping on the screen. For more general use, laser is probably going to work out. They may jitter a bit, but they work far more effectively on non-traditional surfaces.

The Importance of DPI

DPI is one of the most frequently tossed around specs with mice, but how much it’s going to matter to you is going to depend on your needs. Standing for “dots per inch”, it’s a measurement of resolution that tells you how sensitive the mouse is to movement. The higher the DPI is, the more precise the mouse is going to be. But it’s important to remember that higher precision isn’t always better. The faster a mouse is, the better hand-eye coordination you’ll need to keep from losing track of it. That means that most users will want to prioritize the range of the DPI and the ability to tightly customize their settings more than what the maximum setting is.

The difference between DPI shows more the higher the resolution of your monitor, but keep in mind that the DPI setting is a hardware issue and distinct from the sensitivity settings. If you want accuracy and a smooth transition without losing sight of the cursor, you can turn up the DPI settings on your mouse and turn down the sensitivity of your computer. But for most mouse users, the difference is going to be negligible. DPI is usually a consideration for gamers and sometimes graphic designers, but it’s hardly going to be an issue for the casual computer owner working out of their office or living room.

Most mice tend to offer a max DPI of about 1000. That should be more than enough for conventional use. If you’re a gamer and you take your craft seriously, you’ll want something with significant more punch. Most gaming mice offer at least 6000 as their maximum DPI.

Creating an All-Around Ergonomic-Focused Workspace

You may have found the most ergonomic mouse for your needs, but that’s just the start of office proofing your computer space. Every gamer or professional can benefit from a more ergonomic desk, and you can improve your overall health by complementing your mouse with other accessories. We’ll briefly outline the options below.

Ergonomic Mouse Pads

An ergonomic mouse pad can be used alone, but you really get the benefit of one when paired with an existing ergonomic mouse. That’s because while they’re both designed to reduce the risk of conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome, they both achieve this through different means. The advantage here is pretty simple. An ergonomic mouse pad offers a soft and comfortable elevated surface where you can periodically rest your wrist. Just keep in mind that it’s intended for breaks, and you shouldn’t use the rest while actively working.

Ergonomic Keyboards

While graphical interfaces have greatly reduced our need to rely entirely on typing, most users still split a lot of time between the mouse and the keyboard. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind the ergonomics of both. Ergonomic keyboards come in many forms but utilize unique key spacing to reduce the strain on your fingers and wrist. If you’re looking for an ergonomic mouse and keyboard that are designed to work together, seriously consider the Microsoft Sculpt. It comes paired with a keyboard that employs the same look and design sensibilities.

Ergonomic Desks

Standing desks are all the rage these days, as they allow users to employ healthier habits and improve productivity at the same time. Whether it’s a standalone desk or a riser that sits on your existing desk, they can all transition smoothly between sitting and standing position without disturbing your setup. If you’re curious, be sure to check out our guide to the best standing desks.

Office Chairs

Many of the mice on our list are designed not just to relieve stress on your wrist but to also improve your posture. That doesn’t mean much if you don’t have a good chair to sit in. A number of ergonomic options are available, but many professionals have actually started relying on gaming chairs because they enforce a more rigid sitting position than more traditional office chairs. You can find out more at our guide to the best gaming chairs.

Final Thoughts

If you’re still using a traditional mouse, it’s time to try something new. All of the ergonomic mice on our list offer great value, and even the more expensive ones clock in at under a hundred bucks. That’s nothing when you consider the pain and suffering that carpal tunnel could cause you in the long run. We hope you’ve found everything you need to make a wise purchase and understand the options available.

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