The toggle-able free-spinning scroll wheel on the M705 was a game-changer for me. When I got the mouse, I was working for a place that had a lot of buggy spaghetti-code programs that interfaced with a massive database, and I often ended up manually scrolling through million-row tables in Toad correcting broken or missing data. It made my life sooo much easier.
I later upgraded to a MX Master ($100) which automatically enables free-spinning mode when you scroll quickly. It's fully adjustable, and it works super well.
The Logitech MX Master series has a heavy, (optionally) free-spinning scroll wheel.
It's the best scroll wheel I've ever used: night and day better than anything else. Scrolling through a long doc is a flick or two, and it just keeps rolling along, until you touch it and it stops instantly. It allows amazing precision.
My Logitech g500 from many years ago has a physical toggle for detent/freewheel scrolling, and I love it. Precise when I need it, and zooming up or down when I need speed.
A bunch of recent Logitech mouses feature an unlockable "free spin" wheel. Basically, you can "lock" the scroll wheel and then it functions as a notched, precise operation for small adjustments. Alternatively, you can "unlock" it and then it scrolls very smoothly and nearly forever. Ideal when you want to move across a large document. It's hard to describe and they do it better at [1].
I would really encourage you to try one mouse with that function. You could be very pleasantly surprised :)
For me nothing beat scrolling with an unlocked scrollwheel on my old Logitech mouse. It could keep spinning for >10 seconds and allowed super fast scrolling. Though FPS games with weapon switching bound to the mouse wheel did not like that feature at all...
I really like the mice that have a clutch button that lets you unlock the wheel for free scrolling. It helps for scrolling through long documents. I feel like a touchpad scroll wheel doesn't really change the finger motions. Unless, they do something clever like where you drag your finger down and hold it at the bottom for constant autoscrolling. They could adjust the speed of the autoscroll based on how fast your finger moved.
Scroll wheels themselves are a bad implementation of a good idea. I bought a cheap USB volume control knob and used AutoHotKey to rebind volume up/down events into wheel scrolls. Productivity increased like crazy! Scrolling is no longer a chore, it's a pleasure. I even went the extra mile and coated it with rubber for a good grip.
So I went ahead and also bought an MX masters, which is generaaly considered one of the best mice around.
You can turn on free scrolling on the mouse wheel, so that you can smoothly scroll the wheel, and not have those little clicks, you normally get. Only that this doesn't transfer to the scrolling that goes on on the screen - this is still 2-3 lines at a time or whatever.
There's a lot to dislike about magic mouse, but it still does some things way better than the competition - particularly scrolling up and down, but side-to-side scrolling is down-right terrible on normal mice, and an absolute joy on magic mouse.
The free and horizontal scrolling benefits can also be found on much better mice. Logitech has some nice ones that allow both ratcheted and free scrolling with the click of a button.
It’s a feature that I rolled my eyes at when I got my mouse, but now use several times a day. Unlock the wheel and spiiiiiiiiiiiiiin until I get far enough down the page. So much more convenient and versatile than clicking and dragging the scroll bar tab.
I've been using this mouse for over 10 years! I do the something similar for scrolling except I use the app MarbleScroll which makes scrolling a lot easier on Windows at least. I wish this mouse had a dedicated scroll wheel.
for example, Logtiech G502:
" Dual-Mode Hyper-Fast Scroll Wheel
Unlock the scroll wheel for hyper-fast continuous scrolling to spin quickly through long pages, or lock it down for single click precision scrolling. The weighty, metal wheel delivers confident, smooth and satisfying control for either mode. "
I later upgraded to a MX Master ($100) which automatically enables free-spinning mode when you scroll quickly. It's fully adjustable, and it works super well.
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