Hardware Bistro

Product: Orbita Mouse
Manufacturer: Cyber Sport
Supplied by: Cyber Sport
Price: 98.5USD/RM357
Launch Date: NA

 

Are you bored with your transitional mouse? If yes then you may interest with our topic today; Cyber Sport Orbita mouse. Unlike traditional mouse, Orbita mouse has unique design with wireless connectivity and freestyle rotating features. Besides that Orbita mouse works more than a mouse and let us go through together to deep dive this device.

 

Company Profile

Cyber Sport is an Australian owned technology company focused on providing high end consumer entertainment electronics products to the global market.

Having our own manufacturing capabilities in China and combining it with a dynamic team of young engineers and industrial designers based in both Sydney Australia and Hong Kong, we are perfectly positioned to develop and distribute innovative electronic products.

Additionally we love to work on exclusive projects and count among our loyal OEM customers some leading companies and brands in the consumer electronics marketplace.

 

Features

• Revolutionary continuous scrolling
• Ergonomic cylindrical design
• Ball bearing base
• Vertical and horizontal scrolling
• Rechargeable with smart battery management
• All buttons and movements software mappable*
• High performance long range 2.4Ghz Wireless
• Full compatibility with a 3-button scroll mouse
• Windows® Vista Enhanced Wheel Support (Smooth Scroll)
• Can be disassembled for cleaning
*Advanced mapping features are supported for Windows only at this time.

 

Specifications

 

Package & Contents

 

Orbita mouse comes with a cube box but it is not merely a cube box because the box consists of two triangle boxes and Orbita mouse is stored in between them with transparent plastic cover. Such packaging design is not only creative but also good in term of marketing perspective since users can see, touch and feel the product directly.

 

Some of the accessories that come along with Orbita mouse are a pouch, blue feet ring (for expert user), user's manual, driver CD and 2 more additional quick start guides. The user's manual is a very detail manual as it is not only providing step by step guides to setup this mouse but also some picture guidelines for clearer description.

 

As we mentioned previously Orbita mouse is not merely a mouse as it is designed to be used for presentation too so a pouch is good for storing such portable device securely. The pouch is able to store the whole Orbita mouse with base station but if this pouch comes with a lanyard then it will be perfect.

 

Orbita Mouse

 

Orbita mouse is totally unlike any traditional mouse that we have seen before; it is a round shaped mouse which is having freestyle rotating feature and it is purposely designed in such way for easier controlling especially scrolling. Basically Orbita mouse is having two major components; base station and Orbita mouse itself. Orbita mouse is a wireless mouse with 2.4GHz 10m frequency hopping which should serve the user well even for a far distance.

 

The overall design of Orbita mouse looks very similar with Mac product since it only comes with pure white color which looks very elegant but it may get dirty easily. The base station of Orbita mouse is not only work as a charging station but also wireless transmitter; a media between Orbita mouse with the system.

 

Let us explain further on Orbita mouse about how it works. Basically there are total 8 buttons for such small mouse and let us go through one by one. Here are the two obvious buttons of Orbita mouse. The semi white transparent button is the triangle button for calibration and orientation purpose while the silver round button is a horizontal scroll button; press and spin the Orbita will give horizontal scrolling function.

So where are the left & right clicks? Since Orbita mouse is rotating mouse, the left & right problem must be solved and Cyber Sport has created three left (side buttons) & right (top or middle buttons) push and squeeze buttons in total. All these six left & right buttons will able to solve the rotating left & right clicks problem but it will take some time to get familiar with it since all of us have been using the traditional mouse from beginning.

  

Some additional detail information about how it works of Orbita mouse.

Orbita mouse is made by a unique ball bearing base which allows the entire mouse to be rotated 360°. There are plenty of small steel balls of the ball bearing base which allows spinning/scrolling the mouse easily just with light touch which can't be found on any traditional mouse.

Besides the normal mouse functions of Orbita mouse, it also works as multimedia device for controlling volume, next track, play & pause and mute features. All these can be figured through Orbita mouse software that comes along with the driver CD. We will discuss this further in later testing and setup sections where we will show the GUI of this software and its configurations.

 

At the back of Orbita mouse, there is a power button and this button is important for user to power off the mouse during inactive period for power saving purpose. Orbita mouse is an optical mouse which comes with 800DPI optimized optical sensor. Besides that there are two copper connectors at both sides of the optical sensors for charging purpose when it is placed on top on the base station. Hidden reset button allows reset the Orbita mouse to manufacturing default setting. Lithium Polymer inbuilt rechargeable battery is integrated inside the Orbita mouse which reduce the hassle process for removing out the battery for charging like those traditional mouse with AA or AAA batteries.

 

The red ring is called mouse feet ring and the default mouse feet ring is ideal for first time users which ensures non-slip action while spinning and it is an EVA feet for better grip. During the package & contents section, you may notice there is a blue feet ring and basically this blue mouse feet ring is for expert users; PTFE feet for smooth gliding. This mouse feet ring can be replaced easily and the work instruction is provided in user's manual too.

 

Besides Orbita mouse, let us go through a bit about its base station. The charging method of Orbita mouse is well designed (unidirectional) by Cyber Sport R&D team as user just needs to place the Orbita mouse on top the base station and charging process will be started automatically without any manual on/off. There are two LED indicators on the base station; USB power and mouse in range (wireless connectivity).

 

At the back of Orbita mouse's base station, there is a USB cable which is hidden and kept inside the base station but we hope Cyber Sport will improve such USB cable management to retracted cable which is much easier for extracting and keeping the cable. The total length of the USB cable is around 21" and this length should be long enough for most of the desktop and notebook users.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

Most of the computer mouse will not need any driver installation except for those high end mouse which have plenty of buttons so that customization is allowed. Since Orbita mouse is a unique mouse so driver & software is required as well. Above is the software installation screenshot of Orbita mouse; it just takes around few minutes.

 

Orbita mouse requires some calibration before it can be used flawlessly. First of all, press and hold the triangle button for 2 seconds then spin the mouse twice around slowly in clockwise direction. After that press the triangle button again and that is for the calibration process. In between these few process, Orbita mouse will continuous beeping to indicate that the calibration is in the process. Besides the calibration, orientation needs to be set as well by just pointing the triangle button toward "UP" direction and press for 1-2 seconds.

After the software installation is completed, a mouse icon will appear at task bar and double click it will pop up the configuration setup of Orbita mouse. Basically there are two sectons; basic and advanced. For the basic setting, it allows user to change the left & right click setting (swap between them), dimple button (the silver round button), scroll speed (low, med, or high), scroll direction, pointer speed, double click speed and lastly double click test. These settings are important as different user will need different kind of requirement to suit to their preference.

For the advanced portion, the first setting that can be adjust is device behavior where Orbita mouse can be set either to work as a mouse, multimedia keyboard or a multi-axis controller. The 3D mode is unchecked at default as most of the applications that we are using are 2D except for those application that supports 3D then Orbita mouse can be fully utilized. Button and device mappings can be adjusted as well (default, mouse button, keyboard, multimedia or disable). Besides that profile can be set either for multi-users or for multi-applications. If you notice there is a battery indicator on the top right corner of the software window which is good to allow user to check and remind them to charge the battery when it is needed.

 

Test Bed:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink: Titan Fenrir
Memory: 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: OEM Nvidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB
PSU: Arctic Cooling Fusion 550R
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Benchmark Software: Prime95
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

It's time for us to reveal its performance for this innovative mouse and maybe you are eagerly want to know how this mouse perform; either good for looking but not practical or works as well as its look? First of all, we would like to highlight that the user's manual is playing an important role for Orbita mouse because everything is unique and new to us since we have been using those traditional mouse all the while; you may get stuck if you ignore the user's manual.

Once the base station of Orbita mouse is connected with the system, the power LED will be lighten up with blue color and wireless LED will be lighten up too with green color if the Orbita mouse is within the wireless range. However we think that the LED color need to be swapped as the standard LED color for wireless/Bluetooth connectivity should be blue not green; just a suggestion.

For the first few hours, we were really stuck with Orbita mouse; it is not user friendly at all and we always can't get the right click correctly as we have ignored the user's manual in the first place since we would like to try out this device urgently. However after we have gone through the user's manual and understand how it works then everything is working perfectly; of course patient is required else you will get mad. The learning curve is higher than normal traditional mouse but if you pay attention with it then you should able to master it within 3-4 hours for those dedicated users.

 

We temporary ignore the advanced functions of Orbita mouse and let us focus on its basic functions which are left & right clicks and scrolling. Since Orbita is a spinning mouse then it needs to be designed in such way that all the left & right clicks are working in the same way no matter which orientation it is and due to this, basically Cyber Sport R&D team did a good job here where they define the top button as left click while side buttons as right click. All these are perfect but sometime we still stuck with the right click and we hope it can be further improved so that the dead zone (which can't be clicked) will be minimized.

In term of the performance, we would say that Orbita mouse is a great mouse if you are patient during the learning process and you will start to like it as we do. Most of the time, our palm will be stressed when using those traditional mouse for long period or some tension applications like gaming but Orbita mouse will not give us such problem because you can hold the mouse very lightly; not just having repeating press or scrolling for those traditional mouse which may hurt your palm. However Orbita mouse is not meant for heavy gaming because it is not designed to optimized for gaming since it is harder to be controlled with precision and fast respond.

The charging period for Orbita mouse is around 3 hours and it can last around 50 hours for average usage or 3 months for in sleep and off mode. Orbita mouse is one of the most long lasting wireless/Bluetooth mouse that we have ever seen before and the charging method is simple as well; just place the orbita mouse on top the base station.

Last but not least since this white mouse can be dirtied easily after some time, Orbita mouse can be dissembled for cleaning purpose where the outer silicon soft skin/cover can be removed out from the device easily.

 

Conclusion

Orbita mouse is one of the most innovative products that we have reviewed so far and honestly we have been searching a way to get this device for reviewing purpose and finally we get it. The result and performance of Orbita mouse is as good as we thought before we have physically touched on it; it gives us a new way of controlling a mouse. Orbita mouse is so interesting that caused us addicted with this wireless freestyle mouse. For a 98USD mouse, you may get an optical high end gaming mouse or even a laser mouse but we can guarantee that Orbita mouse will not let you down once you have tested it. We are not sure whether Orbita mouse will be mass production or not because it is not easy to ask everyone to accept such new and funky design although it works very well; but if you are always looking for such innovative device then you may give it a try and show off among your friend, colleagues.

 

Pros:

* Innovative & interesting design
* Perfect mouse especially for scrolling, 3D & multimedia usage
* Flawless performance with revolutionary continuous scrolling
* Support both vertical 7 horizontal scrolling
* Wireless connectivity with 2.4GHz
* User friendly GUI for the software configuration
* Battery indicator & recharged battery
* Button function customization
* Disassembled for cleaning
* Pouch is included

Cons:

* Longer learning curve; patient is required
* Default right click can be further improved
* Not retractable USB cable
* Price

 

Thanks to Cyber Sport for providing this sample for us to review.

 

Only registered users may post a comment.

There are currently no user submitted comments.