Skip to main content

Is Swiftpoint the ultimate portable mouse?

IFA 2024
This story is part of our coverage of IFA Berlin 2024
The Swiftpoint mouse began life on Kickstarter, surpassing its target at the end of 2014. Since it started shipping, it has received rave reviews, so we decided to take a closer look at it on display at IFA.

Portability is the name of the game here. The Swiftpoint is tiny, and it’s shaped to be held in a pen-like grip instead of the traditional claw grip, which can cause cramping with smaller mice. There’s a traditional left click button at the front, a right click button behind it, and a mouse wheel of the right hand-side.

Recommended Videos

The grip feels a little funny at first, but you soon get the hang of it. Swiftpoint inventor, Grant Odgers, has also put a tiny stylus on an angled portion of the underside of the mouse, so you can tilt it to the right and then use the stylus like you would a trackpad. It emulates finger flicks to cycle through windows and quickly scroll.

It’s a snappy, slick device to use, that gives that little bit of extra fine control that can be tough to achieve with a trackpad. Boosting its laptop credentials further, there’s a small mat you can stick on the right of your trackpad to use the mouse on. There’s room to use this thing on a plane or anywhere you’re sitting with a laptop on your lap and no other available surface.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The clever design extends to the included USB dongle which enables the wireless operation, because it can also double as a charging pad that you can stick the mouse on. If you don’t want to use the dongle, that’s not a problem, because the Swiftpoint supports Bluetooth 4.0 as well.

It comes in an attractive carry case with a cleaning cloth, replacement stylus, and a parking spot, which is really just a magnetic pad for your laptop cover that you can stick the mouse on if you have to move around.

You’ll get a couple of weeks of use out of the Swiftpoint before you have to charge it up, and you can get a whole hour of use out of a 30 second charge. It works with Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS

The only real sticking point for the Swiftpoint is the price. If you want to pick one up, you’ll have to part with $150. That’s a lot for a mouse, so you’ll have to be doing some serious clicking for the Swiftpoint to make sense.

Simon Hill
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Simon Hill is an experienced technology journalist and editor who loves all things tech. He is currently the Associate Mobile…
Logitech has a new gaming mouse, and it looks incredible
Someone using the Logitech G309 gaming mouse.

It takes a lot to get me excited about a gaming mouse, but Logitech's new G309 looks incredible. Unlike the recent G Pro X 2 Superlight, the G309 comes in at a more sensible $80, but it's still packing some insane features.

It's not exactly a budget mouse along the lines of the G305, but Logitech is offering an awful lot for under $100. The mouse itself is wireless, with support for both Bluetooth and Logitech's low-latency Lightspeed connection, and the company claims it can last for 300 hours. What stands out most, however, is Powerplay support.

Read more
Companies are cracking down on mouse jigglers
Vaydeer Mouse Jiggler in use.

Ever since the proliferation of remote work, there's been a growing demand for ways for employees to appear productive to their managers when away from their computers.

But now, we're starting to see some high-profile cases of companies cracking down on this kind of workplace deception. Bloomberg reports that Wells Fargo recently fired over a dozen employees last month who used "mouse jigglers" to fake productivity. The fired employees were in the bank's wealth and investment management unit. They were "discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating the impression of active work," according to disclosures filed with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Read more
Watching Tim Cook defend the Magic Mouse is pure gold
Tim Cooking looking confused.

If Tim Cook made a list of all the things he expected to talk about at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), you can bet the Magic Mouse wasn't on it. But thanks to tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee's interview, Cook was faced with the considerable task of ranking the Magic Mouse alongside other "top" Apple products like the MacBook Air, the iPad, the iPhone, and the Vision Pro.

After a pretty pronounced pause, the Apple CEO refers to the mouse as "an incredible moment," but his efforts to come up with the right comment for the product failed spectacularly. Infamous for its badly positioned charging port and design that seems to completely ignore the shape and comfort of the human hand, the Magic Mouse is one of the most memed Apple products out there. So which part of it did Cook decide to praise? The ergonomics.

Read more