This is Microsoft's new Arc Touch and, to experience the latest in cursor control technology, you'll have to stump up £70.

Yes, seventy English pounds.

Thankfully, Microsoft's at least attempted to justify this high price by cramming it with some pretty impressive technology. For starters, it's possible to snap the Arc's curved back into a totally flat position, which turns it off and makes it easy to slip into pockets and bags. It's also absolutely tiny: 14mm thick at the business end, and just 7mm from top to bottom at the rear.

This rear portion is constructed from rubberised material with a steel frame beneath, and snapping the mouse to its prone position is oddly satisfying - especially at the end of a long day, when it can be whacked into submission. It's not likely to break, either: Microsoft boasts that the flattening mechanism has been stress-tested for 40,000 actions.

The underside is also magnetic, and can be used to store the tiny USB receiver that connects the Arc to your PC.



The front section of the Arc is thicker - it contains a pair of triple-A batteries and Microsoft BlueTrack optical lens - but there's one notable omission: the scroll wheel. Instead, the Arc boast a capacitive touchpad that can be used to scroll up and down pages. Haptic feedback can be used to replicate the feel of a wheel, and the touchpad's sensitivity can be customised.

So, the Arc serves up a capacitive touchpad, a snappy flattening mechanism and design that makes it look like Jean-Luc Picard's phaser - but we're still not sure that this particular rodent is worth its exorbitant price.

That capacitive touchpad, for instance, might seem smooth under the finger, but scrolling still feels as jilted and jerky as it does with old mechanical wheels and, while using the middle of the pad to open and close web pages is a neat idea, it requires a double click, which initially proved annoying. The pair of buttons are better, with a reasonably comfortable action, but they're small and require a fair amount of precision to hit, which proved especially annoying as our fingers slid around the cheap, glossy plastic that Microsoft has used for the Arc's business end.

The Arc's crammed full of gimmicks, then, but we're not convinced: while the flattening mechanism makes the Arc easy to store and is about as innovative as mice get, the capacitive touchpad and glossy buttons feel more mediocre than we reckon a £70 mouse should. Check back next week for our full review.

