Many mice have passed through my hands. I belong to the generation that used the legendary mice with a ball inside, though my childhood belonged to the joystick and the now cult Amiga. And games came on cassettes. The good old days.
Over all these years I've changed mice for a prosaic reason: a new mouse was meant to bring modern solutions and make time at the computer more enjoyable. And as I divide my time at the computer between games and work, I look eagerly at new designs and ideas from gaming mouse makers, knowing that these designs also work well in everyday use.
My latest rodent, which I've been using for 11 months, is the Volcano Shinobi 3360 mouse with holes. I chose it for its much-praised lightness and less sweaty palms. Plus a great PixArt 3360 sensor, nice lighting (if it can light up, let it, especially as your hand covers most of the light anyway) and good glide feet: all of it meets my needs. And although I'm a traditionalist when choosing mice, after 11 months I can say something more about this (to me) innovative design. But let's start at the beginning.
Those holes aren't so scary.
The mouse falls into the "ultralight" category at 72 grams, which was made possible by this "perforated" design. A simple mechanism is at work: less material, so less weight. These openings are also on the underside of the mouse. The whole thing looks a bit like a building site: at first glance, a sort of honeycomb mouse skeleton, but it all fits together brilliantly and you can't feel the reduced material in any way. More proof that nature can inspire great things.
Less sweat, more comfort.
The biggest plus I've noticed, however, is that the mouse really does get less sweaty. You can forget any mythical airflow or the like: nothing is blowing onto the inside of your hand. But... since your palm touches a perforated skeleton across most of the surface, sweating practically doesn't happen. It's a completely new experience compared with other mice, where after long gaming sessions a thin, damp, unpleasant layer of sweat appears on the surface. That doesn't happen with the Volcano Shinobi, at least not for me. Your palm is largely uncovered and touches a much smaller surface, so it doesn't sweat. It's a completely different experience: what was a kind of discomfort with other mice simply doesn't occur here. So a big plus for this kind of solution; it didn't let me down.
Does it get dirty?
But with these holes came my biggest worry: mouse hygiene. After all, through the skeleton you can see all the mouse's "innards", and a mouse (like a keyboard) can get dirty quite quickly and unpleasantly. To my surprise, and contrary to my earlier experience with computer rodents, this mouse doesn't get terribly dirty at all. Personally, I see two reasons why. The first is the pandemic and more frequent hand hygiene, including regular use of antibacterial hand gel. The second is this particular design, which reduces sweating.
So why doesn't it get as dirty as you might expect? I don't know, and in the end it doesn't matter, because what matters is that everything is as it should be: clean. It's worth mentioning that I've been using the mouse for almost a year and haven't cleaned this "honeycomb" once. So after this time spent with the Volcano Shinobi mouse, I can confirm it has been a successful and enjoyable adventure together.
