Recently I was playing Transport Fever. If you’re unaware of this epic, nerd, god game and you like those types of games, you should definitely check it out. If you’re not into those, just suffice it to say that there is a lot of mouse clicking in the game. During the last few weeks when I startup the game and navigate about building my railroad empire a certain someone else noticed that the mouse clicking increases exponentially.

I thought to myself, “we need a solution to this!” I began searching for a silent mouse, first using a little Google-fu, but also a quick query on Twitter among the Twitterverse. Quickly a result came back that looked like it would work out in Logitech’s M331 Silent Mouse product.

Logitech M331

Alright, here’s the rundown on what it does well and what it does not do well. For context, here are the specs for the mouse.

DIMENSIONS
  • Mouse (height x width x depth): 105.4 mm x 67.9 mm x 38.4 mm

  • Weight: 91.0 g

  • Nano receiver (height x width x depth): 14.4 mm x 18.7 mm x 6.1 mm

  • Weight: 1.8 g
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
  • Windows® 10 or later, Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 7
  • Mac OS X 10.5 or later
  • Chrome OS™
  • Linux Kernel 2.6+2
  • USB port
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
  • Connection Type: 2.4GHz wireless connection
  • Wireless range: 10 meters 2
  • Connect / Power: Yes, on/off switch
  • Battery Details: 1 x AA
  • Battery Life (not rechargeable): 24 months1
  • DPI (Min/Max): 1000±
  • Sensor technology: Yes, 2D, mechanical
  • Sensor resolution: 1000 dpi
  • Scroll Wheel: Yes
  • Number of buttons: 3
  • Standard and Special Buttons: Middle click

A few pictures to give you a good idea of what it’s like close up.

The Side

A View

On

Off

Batteries, Meh

That’s the technical details and a thorough view, so here are a few of the things that I’ve used the mouse for;

  • Working in PicMonkey (to edit the photos for this blog entry)
  • Played about 75 minutes of Transport Fever.
  • Work with Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ to edit some Terraform configurations.
  • Execute a lot of bash scripts, and issue terminal commands in a variety of terminal windows.
  • Worked on scrolling & reading through a lot of documentation related to Honeycomb.io, HashiCorp, and others.

Observations

It may be important to note, this mouse is being used to complement and sort of replace my Razer Krait mouse which has been an epic, all around, general purpose, bad ass, amazing mouse for more years than I’m going to count. This mouse is the baseline I’m using as a reference when speaking about this new mouse.

Downsides

  • Bluetooth, no wire, means sometimes flaky behavior.
  • When moving extremely quick, that wireless nature leaves the mouse cursor lagging sometimes.
  • Batteries. Nuff’ said.

Positives

  • The mouse, when the bluetooth isn’t being flaky, is extremely smooth.
  • The mouse clicks are barely audible, but not 100% silent.
  • The feel of the mouse when moving is physically precise.
  • The wheel on the mouse I absolutely love. Easy to be quick or slow and precise with it.