I'm a UI/UX designer who was historically very invested in the Surface ecosystem during the early Win8/10 era, so this was a day-1 curiosity purchase for me.
As a physical object, I like it a lot. It's not _perfect_, but it has a great weight, the Dial has a satisfying resistance (like a 70s stereo knob), uses AAAs, and the haptic feedback is solid for a digitally-triggered vibrating motor (vs a literal ratchet).
What I find, however, is that it's a superior consumption tool vs creation tool. It's at its best when being used as a single-function knob. Great for sitting at a desk while reading a whitepaper, or perhaps controlling volume while listening to music. Day to day I use a mouse with a stepped-wheel, but the smooth scroll on the Dial makes it my preferred way to handle longform content. Keeps a long article flowing.
However, it has not become an indispensable part of my workflow. That may just be me. I need to pivot between Windows/macOS/Linux over the course of a day, so a lot of its proprietary-tech promise is wasted and I've built fewer habits. I'm also not sure offhand how good the integration is with design tools after the initial fanfare around Adobe, Surface Studio, etc.
Other tricky part: It's bluetooth. Once it's awake and in-use, that's...acceptable, if you aren't actively looking for tiny bits of input lag. But if you need it on-demand (sudden noise from the speakers, etc.) and you haven't used it in a while, it may be a couple seconds before it's responsive to that first input.
Still, it _is_ intriguing enough to me that years-on, it's still on my desk and is one of the only bluetooth devices I own, much less tolerate using. I think it's at it's best when it's a context-sensitive linear actuator with some light multifunction capability vs a new paradigm.
Did you ever own a Griffin PowerMate[1] to compare it with? They were out in 2001 as a USB device I always wanted to play with but never had any reason to buy or use. In 2018 they were discontinued and replaced with a Bluetooth version, by the looks of it.
I'm a UI/UX designer who was historically very invested in the Surface ecosystem during the early Win8/10 era, so this was a day-1 curiosity purchase for me.
As a physical object, I like it a lot. It's not _perfect_, but it has a great weight, the Dial has a satisfying resistance (like a 70s stereo knob), uses AAAs, and the haptic feedback is solid for a digitally-triggered vibrating motor (vs a literal ratchet).
What I find, however, is that it's a superior consumption tool vs creation tool. It's at its best when being used as a single-function knob. Great for sitting at a desk while reading a whitepaper, or perhaps controlling volume while listening to music. Day to day I use a mouse with a stepped-wheel, but the smooth scroll on the Dial makes it my preferred way to handle longform content. Keeps a long article flowing.
However, it has not become an indispensable part of my workflow. That may just be me. I need to pivot between Windows/macOS/Linux over the course of a day, so a lot of its proprietary-tech promise is wasted and I've built fewer habits. I'm also not sure offhand how good the integration is with design tools after the initial fanfare around Adobe, Surface Studio, etc.
Other tricky part: It's bluetooth. Once it's awake and in-use, that's...acceptable, if you aren't actively looking for tiny bits of input lag. But if you need it on-demand (sudden noise from the speakers, etc.) and you haven't used it in a while, it may be a couple seconds before it's responsive to that first input.
Still, it _is_ intriguing enough to me that years-on, it's still on my desk and is one of the only bluetooth devices I own, much less tolerate using. I think it's at it's best when it's a context-sensitive linear actuator with some light multifunction capability vs a new paradigm.