Certainly, the Rapoo MT 750S is a high-end mouse although it costs only about $45. It is cheap because it is a Chinese copy of the Logitech MX Master. To me, it looks more sophisticated than the original counterpart while it retains the ergonomics it promised, it feels premium, it has a bunch of features a normal mouse doesn’t have and after all, it looks awesome. So I must say they copied the physical design of MX Master very well but not the user experience at all. For this reason, you just can’t say it is a good product as they didn’t pay attention to user experience. Even sometimes the poor experience design can make you frustrated. Here are some experiences they could improve. The Horizontal Scroll: First of all, one of the main features of this mouse is the horizontal scroll wheel which makes it exceptional. You can scroll left or right using this additional wheel under your thumb. It feels really good while using it. It is helpful too as more content is stacked in a single line to save space in some apps and websites. However, the number of these apps is very limited. I found only one app on the desktop where it works perfectly, Spotify. It is really fun to browse new music suggestions by horizontally scrolling rather than clicking on the arrow button. Fortunately, several apps on my phone support horizontal scrolling including Google PlayStore, Calender, Podcast, Spotify, and so on. The scroll also works on all Adobe programs. You can scroll through the timeline panel in Adobe Premiere and other Adobe programs that use a timeline. But it is not great for scrolling from one artboard to another. It feels too slow and takes too many steps to pass only one artboard. You would rather use the hand tool for panning around artboards. The problem happens because our thumb can’t travel like the index finger and the diameter of the wheel is smaller than the regular scroll wheel for the sake of ergonomics. But I also use Affinity Designer where I can use the horizontal scroll wheel to pan around my artboard. So I think it is just a software mismatch. Of course, Adobe is not going to solve this but Rapoo could do this easily. Did I mention that this mouse comes with an optional app that allows customizing some of the mouse functionality? Unfortunately, there is no option for customizing the sensitivity of the scroll wheel for individual programs. But I know this is possible as I used this type of functionality in my Wacom graphic tablet. Multi-device experience: The mouse can connect with up to 4 devices and one of them should be connected using the dongle provided. Like most Chinese products, this high-end mouse also came up without a proper manual. That’s why I had a hard time figuring out how to connect devices using Bluetooth. It took a few hours to be successful. You have to press and hold the device switching button for more than 3 seconds to turn on the pairing mode in the mouse. Now you can choose Rapoo BT 4.0 MS or Rapoo BT 3.0 MS from the device you want to use the mouse with. It is a little confusing to select BT3 or 4 but I think they are the same. So now you have to switch to another slot by pressing the device switching button and connecting another device. This way you can add 3 more devices. It also has a dial to show you which slot is activated. Now you probably think that turning on the mouse and Bluetooth on all your devices you want to work on will make you ready to go. But unfortunately, it is complicated every time you start your workflow. Suppose you want to work on your PC (connected using the dongle) and your tablet (which is paired in slot 2). The mouse will work on your PC instantly but your tablet won’t be connected to the mouse until you activate slot 2 and wait for 5–10 seconds. This is weird. It should just connect with all my paired devices within a few seconds after I turn on the mouse. Switching between devices is also a mess. I expected the switching process will happen instantly. But after switching from one device to another, you have to wait 2–3 seconds so that the mouse can reconnect with the relative device to the slot. I don’t understand why it needs to be disconnected when I am working. It just breaks my concentration in work while switching. Another point is that you can’t copy & paste content across devices like the Logitech MX series or move your cursor semlessly between devices It disconnects with the devices immediately after you switch to anothe device. Device Dial: The mouse has a cool LED dial to indicate which device slot is activated. Although it can connect with up to 4 devices, its count can show only 1,2 & 3. Yes, when you are using the device with the dongle all LED turns off, this is the clue. It is no big deal until you figure this out. The dial is really useful when you are confused while using multiple devices. The dial doesn’t glow so much or not too low. But the dial sits straightly upward in the mouse and thus the number on the dial is not visible from the usual hand position. So if you want to see the dial you must lift the mouse to see it. It is kinda irritating but a slightly angled position could solve this problem. The desktop app has some places to improve The Desktop App: Although you can just plug and play, you can also install the desktop app for some additional features. You can log in with a Rapoo cloud account and sync your clipboard with multiple devices, customize some button functions and that's all. You can’t assign different button functionality for different apps as Wacom Driver does. You can’t even check your battery percentage here. I also tried checking the battery levels on the “Bluetooth device manager” on all my devices and it always says 85%. Verdict: In this article, I figured out some problems and solutions for a cheap alternative to an expensive mouse. I am totally satisfied with the physical appearance of the product while its experience is very frustrating. This leads to the conclusion that the Chinese alternative is good but it should be better with good experience design too. In a few words, it is good for its ergonomics and delivers more than a typical budget mouse but it can’t beat a High-end mouse like MX Master in terms of multi-device experience. Now you know if you should buy it or not, it is available hereUpdate 2: I recently switched to Mac OS and got something more to share. Instantly it felt jittery and the scrolling was laggy. So I reached out to some folks on Facebook and they said it is common for non-Apple mice to act that way in Mac. But later, I found that this problem was caused by the mouse adaptor that was plugged into the USB hub. If I directly plug it into the laptop the problem goes away. But it is very inconvenient for portability as the MacBook has only type-c ports while the adapter plugs into USB A. So I ended up using Bluetooth to connect my mouse it also works. In this experience, I also learned that if your mouse wheel is laggy most probably it is the mouse encoder that can be easily replaced. The encoder is also very cheap on Ali Express. It can cost only $1 to a few bucks based on the mouse models. You can also find replacement buttons for your mouse here. Although I didn’t have to repair my mouse, I had disassembled it to repair it before I solved that issue. So I am sharing some photos of my disassembled mouse in case it can help someone who needs a repair. Please note that if the horizontal scroll wheel breaks, you can’t repair it as it is fixed with the mouse body. |
