My name is Marlon, I suffered last year of CTS, everything is ok right now but I want to prevent.

I have been looking option in market an there are these two options: Evoluent says vertical is the most effective arm positon (it is vertcal) nevertheless Smartfish created something called ergomotion (which is a regular mouse base modified) which you believe is most ergonomically correct and why?

Hi Marlon,

Thanks for writing in.

I used to be a big fan of the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. Having suffered from wrist pains, the change in hand position made a huge impact within just a couple weeks of switching. I even gave the mouse a raving review, but after a year of use my opinion changed. I came to 2 realizations:

1) A large change in hand position can be very positive. However, long term I discovered it was the mere act of changing things up that made the difference. It had less to do with one position being better than the other.

2) I noticed after about a year that relief was temporary and that the pains merely shifted to my forearms and shoulder. My theory is that with vertical mice you don’t have as strong of an anchor point (your wrist on the desk) to do fine hand movements from. Instead your arm starts doing a lot of fine motor control to move the mouse around. I now think that vertical mice are flawed because it’s the exact opposite of how humans are designed. Your arm should handle the big movements and your hand should handle the finer movements. Think big muscles with rough control vs little muscles with intricate control.

I switched to the Smartfish Ergomotion mouse about ~8 months ago and so far it’s been my preferred mouse. It’s a tad more awkward to get used to, but it doesn’t take too long. There’s no one locked in position so you still get a range of movement which is good. It has the added benefit however that you can maintain a good anchor point on the desk so you’re not overworking your arms to avoid working your hand.

In my opinion if you’re having a flair up the vertical mouse would provide the most drastic change in position giving short-medium term relief. However, I think that the concept behind the Ergomotion mouse is more solid for long term prevention.

Hope that helps

- Drew