I have purchased a bunch of trackballs, trying to find the best one for me. The Kensington Expert is as you describe, but maybe not quite to my liking. If I did graphic design work, it'd be the one I want for sure - the level of granularity is great.

For my money (clicking with thumb/pinky, using ball and scroll wheel with index and middle fingers) the Kensington Orbit is my daily driver. I even use it for shooter games, since I'm much more accustomed to trackballs these days than mice. As an added bonus, it seems a lot easier on my tendons than a mouse.

I bought a Logitech MX Ergo a couple of years back and genuinely love it for many of the reasons other trackballs users cite in this thread - but I have noticed in the last few months that my thumb joint will get 'stuck' and makes a click when I unstick it. Definitely related to the MX Ergo and the thumb navigation like you say. I'm an older gentleman which likely contributes.

So might be tempted by an all finger alternative - at the moment I'm attempting to up my use of a terminal window manager to minimise pointer use

I'm prone to RSI, and I started using a logitech trackman in '99 or '00. I've occasionally had periods of using mice or trackpads, and extended use of either causes flareups. I've never had flareups with a thumb ball, even with pointer-intensive use like CAD, FPS and graphics. So I keep returning to them -- I've been using them more or less continually for around 25 years. So for my body, it's a clear win on ergonomics; ymmv.

This is the only “Trackball Mouse” I know of: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_Mighty_Mouse_W...

It's a pretty small trackball.

Considering how much higher-end gaming mice can cost these days, $144 CAD for a niche mouse really isn't that bad in comparison.

remember how much the ibm model m keyboard cost back in the 80s? ($200 or about $550 in today’s money)

High quality human interface devices are expensive. There are multiple reasons for this, but the biggest one is that very few people are interested in buying high quality devices so they are very nich product.

In terms of capabilities there isn't much out there that rivals Ploopy. So 144 is pretty reasonable.

To put it into perspective this particular trackball is effectively a clone of "Microsoft Trackball Explorer", which is no longer made despite being well regarded by many. Used ones are usually going to be over $100 with people selling refurbished or NOS or something like that on Amazon for $250.

Budget clones are from SANWA and Nulea and they go for about $40-50

Ploopy Classic will get a much higher optical sensor, fully programmable, and better bearings. Budget trackballs usually are going to use budget sensors and tiny little ruby static bearings and have limited programming options.

This is a problem because one of the weaknesses with track balls is trying to balance out very fine movement with being able to move the pointer quickly across the screen without wearing your thumb/fingers out or being annoying.

This isn't a problem with the mouse. Big movements are accelerated by the OS and you have a large object that is easily moved very finely. This is why mice dominate competitive first person shooters and other games that require both very high speed with pinpoint accuracy.

To compensate if you have a nice trackball you can crank the DPI settings up and turn the mouse sensitivity and acceleration settings down low and gain a lot of control. If your bearing suck then you can't really fling the ball and have to do a lot of repetitive motion to move quickly across the screen.

And if your sensor is low quality then when you fling the ball it won't be able to track the movement accurately. Like the effect of helicopter blades being recorded on a video camera.. The pointer will stay still for a bit, and even go backwards until the ball slows down enough to be tracked and the point shoots forward.

I have a Kensington Slim Blade pro, which is a popular trackball of a different style and it suffers from this. And that costs over $100 retail.

On top of all of this cheaper balls will tend to rattle around a bit. Which makes it miserable when you just _can't quite_ move the pointer over just one more character or hit that tiny corner of a window correctly.

So this is the sort of thing you do get what you pay for and Ploopy is pretty darn nice. It isn't perfect, but you can do a lot worse for the money.