Do bright mouse pads really boost battery life of wireless mouses?

Edit: Oops, I posted this in the wrong forum section. If any admin/mod see this thread, place move it to the "accessories" section.


Logitech, which makes tons of wireless mouses, says that a dark mouse pad surface hurts battery life. I've seen this statement referenced several times on the web, but haven't seen any reviews or tests supporting it.

Has anyone here been switching between dark and bright mouse pads and noticed a difference in battery life?

If the story is true, I may put my very dark mouse pad away and get a bright one.

 

I can see this as being potentially true - but if it were, the 'light' mouse pad revolution would have started decades ago - when battery life was simply horrible on wireless keyboard/mice.

If your mouse has an 'off' switch, I would guess you'll save more battery using that than switching mouse pads.

 

The mouse has a palm detector to shut down the sensor (which is the most power hungry part) when I'm not holding it, it also shuts down most of the system when the receiver's signal is lost, so there isn't much power draw when I'm busy typing or have finished using my computer. I do mechanically switch it off if I won't use it for a long period of time, or need to put it in a bag for traveling.

Still, a charge survives 10~20 hours of gaming use, or about a week of office use, so I could enjoy a boost in battery life.

When I get the time for a controlled test, I may test how much idle power draw I can get rid of by mechanically switching it off every night.


Most pure color mouse pads are only offered in dark black or bright white, and I'm not sure why. I got a dark one because I was afraid of the white ones being too bright, resulting in overexpose and bad tracking, which does happen with some mouses. Unfortunately, when I got the mouse later I found that it's surprising tolerant to bright surfaces and works flawlessly even on polished white porcelain disk.

 

If anything, using a "light" mouse pad with the wrong mouse may interfere with the opticals of the mouse depending on how much light is reflected/refracted by the pad surface. For example, try using some of those horrible shiny gel-like pads.
Sounds like bsmarketing to me (kinda like the "infinite" contrast on LCD TV's).

Still, physical evidence trumps all, so if you can do the test and report your findings, it will help in increasing the awareness of the species

 

Mr.Koala, what mouse do you use?

I get 3 weeks per charge out of my Anywhere MX and I still find that disappointing. I'd probably throw the mouse out a window within a month if I had to recharge every week, much less every 10-20 hours

 

It's a mouse made by "Fuhlen", a regional brand only known in Asia.

The gaming-oriented Avago sensor (albeit a low-end one) is quite power hungry. In order to kill wake up lag the sensor doesn't go to sleep at all when in gaming mode. Battery size is also limited to keep the weight down. As a result the battery life isn't anywhere near good. Without the palm sensor this thing would be unusable for office work.

I still find it a good balance for someone who needs both acceptable tracking performance and acceptable battery life. Typical wireless gaming mouses (I've used a Logitech G700 which is a good example) have very bad battery life even in battery saving mode, while typical wireless office mouses have tracking performance too poor for my liking.

 

Agree with tiller, that it's "potentially true"

I've seen a few mice coming out lately that have their own relatively complex logic chip on the device. And they tend to switch the amount of updates from the laser reader to hit a set of points that arrive within a set deviation. ..basically, they turn the thing on powersave if the surface is smooth and every read is consistent.

There's also the thing that if you put the mouse on a pillow or a couch, and so on, it tends to move and not turn off when it's not in use. So I can see that statement as being potentially true for for example Logitech's new wireless mice, and some of the other variants available on the market with an arm-chip controlling the "dpi", etc.