The mouse and features work well, but privacy concerns.

I decided to write this review using the speech-to-text feature of this mouse, and then edited the result to make it easier to read. Overall it actually worked very well, but it definitely needed some thorough editing. I’ve found that to be true for most speech to text programs. Considering this is a chinese non-name brand mouse though, I expected that function to be awful, so I was really impressed.

This mouse has three notable features that other mice do not have. First, it has a button that you can hold and then speak to translate your words into text on-sceen. A second button does the same, but it will translate your text into another language which you select in advance. A third button allows you to quickly search via a search engine by speaking out loud. So for example you hold the button, say what you want to search, and a new tab or window will open Google or several other options and search it for you. After experimenting with these three features for a few days I have to say they work remarkably well.

One thing I am not a fan of (and the reason for removing a star) is that you have to download 3rd party software to get these functions to work. This software is actually downloaded by holding down the mouse scroll button for five seconds. When you do that, the mouse runs a command on your computer, which opens up the website of the manufacturer, which is almost entirely in Chinese. On the website itself it’s very easy to find where you download the software because there are two large buttons with the Windows and Mac logos. But there’s a lot of other text on that website and I have no idea what it says. Since I’m a bit of a daredevil and like to test thoroughly, I went ahead at this stage. But if this sounds like hell to you, this mouse probably isn’t right for you!

When I downloaded the program, Windows recommended I not install the program because they couldn’t recognize the developer’s name, as it was also in Chinese. I had no way of knowing if the program was safe, but after installing it I haven’t found anything unusual or suspicious. It seems to do exactly what it claims to do. I ran some scans and did some googling to test that nothing weird was being done to my computer as far as I could tell. That being said, I’m not a tech expert and AGAIN if you don’t like the sound of this, I’d avoid.

The instruction manual included with the mouse is not great. It’s written in very broken English that can be hard to understand. The actual instructions for how to translate your words into another language took me a while to figure out just because the instructions for that step, in particular, are really poorly translated. Once I figured it out, it’s a simple process. It doesn’t take very long at all to translate. You hold up the orange ‘upper’ button for this feature.

It has the option to translate into a lot of different languages which you select through the program in advance. I chose to translate my speech into french, as my partner can read French, and the result was not perfect but easily as good as Google translate. It’s a very basic, very literal translation. At this price point, a fluent translation is not expected and indeed we haven’t invented a perfect system for translating yet.

You recharge using a Micro USB cable, and I found it lasted a long time on its first charge. I didn’t have any problems or anything like that.

I really like the design of this mouse. It’s sleek, not too small not too big. The blue color is really bright and I like it a lot more than the usual black and grey colour I see on other mice I’ve owned. On the subject of its design, the buttons are large enough to be easy enough to find. Two are on the left and another is in the middle; none are hard to reach.

Overall, I’m very impressed with this mouse. It works well, it looks good, and the speech-to-text options are much better than I expected them to be on a Chinese mouse. However, there are some privacy concerns. The badly written manual, Chinese website and non-windows approved software are enough to give some folks a heart attack. So while I did like this mouse, both as a mouse and a talk to text tool, there’s a limited amount of people who would feel comfortable with the flaws of this product.