JLAB Epic Wireless Mouse Review: An Epic and Affordable Mouse for Business Users and Gamers

JLab Epic Wireless Mouse Review

Mice have come a long way from overly thick wires and mechanical switches that required a meaningful finger push to register a click. Apple offers the most arguably elegant mouse, hiding all of its features beneath touch-sensitive glass. Logitech went the other way, creating a wind-sweep looking mouse covered with buttons that put some keyboard controls into single clicks configurable through an app. The $59.99 Jlab Epic Wireless Mouse follows in the Logitech tradition of many buttons and, in many ways, offers flattery to the Logitech MX series through imitation, but Jlab adds enough of their own features to ensure the Epic mouse isn’t just a Logitech clone.

What we like

Pros

• Ergonomic: Great hand feel and movement
• Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz. dongle
• Connects with up to 3 devices
• Rechargeable battery
• Up to 4 months on a single charge
• Adjustable refresh/polling rate
• Adjustable DPI
• Cross-platform compatible
• OLED display
• Environmentally friendling packaging

All mice are ergonomic, at least to the first order. I haven’t used an outright offensive mouse since the Apple Lisa. Most of them are roundish ovals with sensitive buttons and a wheel. The Jlab Epic Wireless Mouse is sculpted, clear right hand leaning, but a receptive shape, curved with a place even for the thumb so it need not drag across desk mat or mousepad.

The quiet buttons don’t annoy. And its a good thing. This mouse has a lot of buttons. Six buttons on top, if you count the “middle” button beneath the scrolling wheel. The mouse also has three buttons on the side. Jlabs Work app, downloadable from their site, allows many of those buttons to be reconfigured for a wide variety of functions that once assigned, become just a click away. Jlab, however, does not support macros, even Apple’s shortcuts.

From a communciatons standpoint the Jlab Epic Wireless Mouse supports enough connections for most use cases. The 2.4GHz dongle offers the default, but two additional Bluetooth connections are also available, making for one mouse to rule multiple desktops.

One of my favorite featues is the rechargable battery that lasts for months. I recharge mine every once in awhile, but I haven’t yet, had to, recharge the mouse.

For gamers and artists, the Epic mouse supports customized polling rates and dot-per-inch, or DPI. Polling reduces lag and DPI increases precision. Most business users won’t need to touch either beyond their default settings. Gamers will want to adjust both to their confort needs, and artists may want to toy with DPI to match the delicacy of their digital brush strokes.

Jlab’s EPIC mouse supports macOS and Windows with Work software to enhance the experience. But the EPIC mouse also supports ChromeOS, Android and iOS with less customization available.

All of those features, like the rechargable battery, the DPI and the mouse’s general status, appear on a tiny OLED screen just above the thumb rest. A very nice feature that shows engineering synergies. While the OLED display can be turned off to eek out even more battery life, its power drain proves neglibable which makes it, at least for me, always on—a reminder at least, in some ways, that the future I imagined did actually happen.

Jlab ships the Epic Mouse in excellent, all paper-based packaging. They show exemplary attention to environmental concerns in their packaging. I did not give Jlab 5 stars as there are not notes on recycled material in the device manufacturing.

What could be improved

Cons

• Can’t assign horizontal scrolling to buttons

I looked several times and was left wanting when it came to horizontal scrolling on the Jlab Epic Wireless Mouse. I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro. I can hold shift down and scroll the mouse, and horizontal scrolling works. On my Microsoft Sculpt mouse, however, the wheel could be moved left or right for horizontal scrolling. And of course, Apple’s Magic Mouse senses left or right swipes. I’m not sure why Jlab doesn’t support horizontal scrolling, at least as a reassignable button feature, but they don’t. Buttons can be reassigned to print or screen capture, but not to horizontal scrolling. I’d like to see them address that.

And yes, so far, after several weeks of use, that’s my one complaint.

JLab Epic Wireless Mouse Review: The bottom line

The JLab Epic Wireless Mouse is epic as mice go. Its well-designed, sculpted exterior wraps around components that give owners a lot of flexibility on how to use the mosue in their day-to-day workflows. Gamers and artists will appreciate the adjustable DPI and polling rates, while power users will enjoy the power of the programmable buttons, despite some limitations on their programmabilty.

JLab provided the Epic Wireless Mouse Review for review. Images courtesy of JLab unless otherwise noted.

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