Several mice have attempted a design where the entire hand is supported by the mouse, therefore never touching the mousepad. The idea is that supporting the weight of your hand on your wrist and moving the mouse with your fingers can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome because your wrist is bent during use. The majority of designs on the market up til now felt like they were brewed in someone’s basement and manufactured with a little VC capital. The handshoe mouse on the other hand is the real deal, well made, and created by some researchers at a couple universities.

The first couple hours with the handshoe mouse are a little awkward, but afterward it starts to feel a bit more natural. It’s the first mouse we’ve heard of that comes in 3 different sizes for those with differently sized hands. When making a mouse that’s so highly contoured to your hand, I can see where providing different sizes of a mouse is important. I got the medium sized one.

One mouse I’ll compare it to is the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. The handshoe mouse is halfway between a normal mouse and a vertical mouse in that it tilts your hand about 30 degrees to the side. I found the angle to be just right. If fits my hand pretty much like a glove; more so than any other mouse I’ve ever tried. The upper part of your thumb kind of has 2 options for where it can go. The curve for your thumb is a little steep downwards, so you can place you thumb into the little nook or you can hold it straight. It’s the difference of having your thumb bent at a slight angle or straight, and both feel pretty good.

The takeaway is that the curvature of the mouse feels great. It holds my hand very close to the position my hands wrest naturally when sitting in a chair. They did their homework.

With the Evoluent vertical mouse, the bottom side of your pinky finger replaces your wrist’s job of providing an anchor for moving the mouse with the rest of your hand. The big jump for the handshoe mouse is that there is no anchor. Your hand is completely supported by the mouse. Your fingers have more dexterity than your arm in fine movements, so when using only your arm, your level of control is reduced. I wouldn’t recommend it to FPS gamers, but for day to day business people, I’d say it’s definitely livable. I had to reduce my mouse sensitivity a little bit in the computer.

The buttons are very solid and have a nice click to them. If you have severe ‘trigger finger’ then you might want something with a softer click. I will say the right button is softer than the left, so it might be a manufacturing inconsistency. The scroll wheel is the same story. While it’s has an excellent feel and is very high quality, it doesn’t exactly glide like butter like some mice. This is a mouse oriented towards relieving wrist pains & hand aches more so than trigger finger. For people with both trigger finger and wrist problems, you might consider this mouse in conjunction with perhaps a foot pedal for the mouse click.

The verdict? I like it a lot. The build quality is excellent and it has a nice weight to it. The downside is that it costs $130 which puts it in a whole different price bracket from other ergonomic mice. I think that for people who have wrist and hand pains in their mousing hand that this mouse should definitely be considered. Although expensive, it’s a lot cheaper than hand surgery, and the difference between it and a normal mouse is night and day.

Update: It’s now been 3 months since I initially wrote this post. So far I think this mouse takes the crown in effectiveness against RSI. My wrist pains have mostly subsided and my fingers aren’t cramping like they used to. It strikes a great balance between a vertical & horizontal mouse. I’m starting to think there’s something concrete here, like this mouse might be the magic bullet. It’s pretty funky & gets a lot of comments from my coworkers, but if you’re not afraid to be different and you’re serious about your RSI, then this mouse should be near the top of your list.

Here at RSI Stuff we’ve tried several vertical mice from the Joysticks to the Plastics, but neither of them treated us as well as the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. The concept is simple, take a normal mouse, and turn it on it’s side so that you hold your hand in the handshake position. For some people, tilting their wrist to use a normal mouse makes it ache over time, and that’s exactly what this mouse aims to solve.

With a normal mouse your wrist sits on the table with your hand bent up, using your fingers to move the mouse around. With the Evoluent Vertical Mouse, your wrist no longer sits on the table because you hand sits on the mouse with you thumb as a brace. You actually move the mouse by moving your arm, thereby no longer stressing you wrist. Simply put, if your wrist on your mousing hand hurts, this is a good alternative mouse to try out and at < $70 on amazon, it's pretty affordable.

Here at RSI Stuff, the question is always: Is this the cure to my repetitive stress discomfort. As always it's neither black or white, although in this case we're pretty impressed. Let's talk about it:

For this review I'll mention two common types of pain from using a mouse. One is called trigger-finger where the mere act of clicking has made your index finger sore. The vertical mouse won't help you there because you still click just like any other mouse. The other common pain is from sitting your wrist on the hard table all day while you move the mouse. A common solution is to elevate your wrist to the same height as the top of the mouse (so your wrist isn't bent) with a mouse pad hand rest. Some people find those comfortable, and some don’t. If thats You, you should most definately consider giving the Evoluent a shot.

Yours truely has been on the Evoluent Vertical Mouse for 8 months and counting, and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s reasonably well made, lightweight, and comfortable to use for 8hrs a day. The scroll wheel leaves a little to be desired, but if your hand hurts, then the pros outweigh the cons. It does take a little getting used to, but it’s no where near as foreign as say an alphagrip and it feels fairly natural after just a couple days’ use.