Airra Rotary Mouse Ditches The Scroll Wheel For A Dial To Fight Finger Fatigue
Scroll wheels have remained largely unchanged for the past few decades. While gaming mice eventually received "infinite" scroll wheels, that just allowed the wheel to spin freely without any tactile click. More recently, we've seen Razer add an "eSports-grade" optical scroll wheel to its DeathAdder V4 Pro, which Razer claims offers triple the durability and more consistent, tactile control, but ultimately, that's just a high-quality scroll wheel.
The Airra Rotary Mouse also looks like it will offer more tactile feedback to scrolling, in a way that is more like the Steam Deck or Steam Controller than traditional mice. On the touchpads for those devices, page scrolling is done with a circular motion which is reinforced by haptic feedback. The Rotary Mouse uses a similar clockwise motion for long scrolls and has the tactile bumps built in, which should allow for high-speed scrolls without the loss of control introduced by infinite scroll wheel spins.
Airra highlights the rotary wheel for 1:1 steering in driving sims.
All this is to say that the Rotary Mouse design seems better than traditional scroll wheels in a number of ways. Even if you don't use the rotary motion at all and stick to your muscle memory, simple scroll actions are still tactile and responsive on Airra's Rotary Mouse.
The Arria Rotary Mouse isn't yet available for retail purchase. In fact, the Kickstarter campaign hasn't even officially started yet--the campaign will open on June 17th. When it does, backers will receive the mouse for a 65% discount and free shipping. Retail pricing will be $139 USD, but early bird pricing brings it down to only $49 USD.
As innovative as the Airra Rotary Mouse looks, it remains to be seen if it'll make a dent in the gaming mouse market. For enterprise and professional users its utility seems more obvious, especially at the early bird pricing.
