Oh yes, they are great for people who are developing wrist issues, but get the biggest trackball you can find (the pool ball sized one). I also recently picked up a small Wacom Pro drawing tablet in a sale, and you can use it in pen mode or as a resizable touchpad. I haven't used a mouse for around 10 years and I certainly don't miss them.

 

After carpal tunnel surgery in 2004 I asked numerous comp techs what I should use.
A mouse or trackball made my hand cramp because of the hump.
I now have 2 Logitech Touchpad keyboards and one Logitech Touchpad standalone.
No cramps with no humps

 

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/mice/mx-ergo-wireless-trackball-mouse.html

In my opinion this is the best trackball/mouse on the market. I had all the Kensington models...they were good too. What stands out about the Logitech is the extra features their software provides for the buttons. I use this with the MX Keyboard (Unison dongle, not Bolt) between a Mac and Windows PC side by site. The logitech flow feature allows me to move mouse cursor between both screens as if they are one computer, and the keyboard follows. It can also pair via bluetooth if you don't want to use a usb port. I can easily go a month on single charge.

 

A touchpad and trackball work great together, especially the big one. You can zip around the screen and you also have excellent accuracy to dial in your plugins. Using two hands to navigate and edit is the best of both worlds, and once you get used to it you can't go back.

 

Last edited: Oct 13, 2024

Been using a trackball for 25+ years. Kensingtons pretty much exclusively since there are really no others that are ergonomic enough to not turn your hand into a pretzel. Mice turned my hands into pretzels, and so do those junk so called trackball "things" that work with just a thumb. I use the pointing device with the left hand and most all mice suck since they are designed for right hands in mind to begin with. The using of a bunch of desktop real estate to move a conventional mouse around is debilitating for me and I prefer the stationary 4x5 inch space that the trackball sits in as opposed to sledding a mouse all over the desk. The kensingtons have a "pool ball" sitting inside them that are nice and large to get a hand around and allow for granular screen cursor moves with much more ease. Plus the scroll wheel on a kensington manifests itself as a ring around the large trackball and is much more intuitive and easy to use. The Kensington trackballs used to have DIP switches to assign things like handedness, baud rate (serial version), bits (serial version), which was great when the driver didn't support left or right hand operation. The new ones dont have DIP switches anymore but most every OS has a generic mouse driver that has soft tweaks for the right or left hand built in. The only downside to Kensington trackballs is their software. It sucks. It's slow and quirky and causes glitchy problems in the way it works with the windows OS. NO idea how it works with apple. You really do not need their "mouseworks" junk anyway since the generic mouse driver in every windows version since XP works seamlessly with the trackball.

 

i had a dream years ago about a trackball that was an actual ball you can hold in your hand about it was about 2" across that had a system of sensitive weights and magnets inside a slightly squishy rubber skin with programmable pressure points you can squeeze instead of buttons this dream also involved a juggling game that could be played with three of the balls im sure there is a good reason this doesn't exist
this one is pretty close

 

After getting more and more issues with a regular mouse using my right arm, I first forced myself to learn use the mouse with my left arm. And that went OK for a few years. But eventually I also developed issues with my left arm and shoulder as well.

So I started trying a Logitech TrackMan Marble mouse and used that for about 6 or 7 years without any issues. Later I switched to the Marble mouse M570/M575 Ergo and also used this for years. Currently I'm using the Marble MX Ergo.

So for me the 'trackball' was and is a lifesaver!

This doesn't necessarily mean it's perfect for you? But if you're having physical issues with using a normal mouse you might consider this?

The only downside for me is the ball and it's bearings. It can collect a lot of dust and dirt and become almost unusable if not cleaned on a regular basis. So in my case I need to take out the ball and wipe this and remove the dust from it's bearings at least one a week to keep it in good working condition.

 

I use a trackball. It was a bit strange at first. It took me about two days to become comfortable with it. The only two downsides in my opinion are, some jobs are a little slower, and the pot that the ball sits in fills with dirt, dust, skin oils, etc. To clean it, I simply remove the ball and use a toothbrush to remove any build-up of gunk. Other than those two things, I prefer it compared to a conventional mouse.

 

I use trackballs because I am using my MIDI keyboard as the desktop so yeah, not much surface here to move a mouse
I am using 2 trackballs actually for both hands, in my right hand I am using an old Logitech Marble Trackball, apparently it's one of the best models ever built when it comes to Trackballs, the downside is that it doesn't have a scrollwheel (but you can use one of the extra buttons to activate it); in my left hand I have a Kensington model with the blue ball, is not as ergonomic as the Logitech one, but at least it has a scrollwheel (also there is a weird thing in this one where it has more input lag), but yeah, if I get tired of using one hand then I just switch to the other trackball