I’ve been playing PC games since I was a kid, but until recently I never felt great doing so on a TV.
It’s not that I don’t love dragging a computer into the living room—my apartment is so small that ease of access could be considered a selling point of the floor plan.
As part of my work here at Tom’s Guide I get to review some of the best gaming laptops you can buy, too, so I often have a chance to plop one down on the coffee table and play a bit of Cyberpunk 2077 on the big screen.
But even though I love my LG C1 OLED TV, I’ve never loved the experience of navigating Windows 11 on a big 65-inch screen that’s ten feet away. Either I have to awkwardly lean forward to use a mouse and keyboard on the coffee table, or I have to balance a laptop or lap tray on my couch.
It’s doable, but enough of a hassle that I didn’t take advantage of all that PC gaming on the big screen has to offer—until now.
See, the folks at Elecom recently sent me a couple of trackballs to test and since I’m also reviewing the 2025 Corsair Vengeance i8300 desktop, I figured I’d give their handheld Relacom wireless trackball mouse a shot.
It’s a selfish mission, because Corsair make some of the best gaming PCs on the market and I wanted to do my hands-on testing from the comfort of the couch. So when Elecom sent over a Relacom with the 2.4 Ghz wireless dongle, I couldn’t resist.
This little 4-ounce optical mouse looks like nothing so much as a TV remote, but there’s a bright red trackball on top. It sits up near the front of the mouse in easy reach of your thumb, and below it two buttons stick out of the front of the device.
In my hand it sort of feels like one half of an Xbox Series X controller, except the triggers are the left and right mouse buttons. The chassis is cheap plastic and the trackball rattles a bit in the frame, so it doesn’t feel quite as sturdy as your average game console controller.
But I’ve been using it for weeks now and the Relacon has yet to bend, flex or otherwise feel flimsy in my big mitts.
I’ve come to really love using this thing over a cheaper wireless trackball mouse because it’s a lot more comfortable and easy to use on the couch.
Normally, I’d have to plop a trackball on the coffee table or couch arm to fiddle with Windows or play something like Civilization VII on my TV. But with the Relacon I can just plug the USB-A dongle into the PC, kick back and mouse around however I feel most comfortable.
The ten buttons are reassignable via the free (and good) Elecom Mouse Assistant software, and the three DPI settings (500, 1,000 and 1,500) give me some latitude for customizing the speed of the mouse cursor to feel comfortable on the big screen.
And while I haven’t had a chance yet to really see how good the battery life is, I have to imagine this cheap handheld mouse can go for years on the included pair of AAA batteries. I’ll update this article if I encounter any unwelcome surprises down the road, but after weeks of use I think the Relacon might be the best wireless mouse I’ve tried yet for PC gaming on the couch.
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