Over the years I’ve used many laser pointers, both with and without navigation options. I’ve used them for lectures, presentations, and various other public speaking occasions. When it comes to the basic laser technology, it’s almost impossible to go wrong. Laser has been around for over a half a century, and the solid-state lasers have been a part of various household electronic devices for decades. As a physicist, I am still a bit amused with the notion that this once incredible discovery has become such an integral part of our everyday lives.

When it comes to brightness this laser pointer, pardon the pun, just shines. The impressive brightness of this pointer helps make it visible over great distances (relatively speaking). I tried this pointer across a large classroom and it worked just fine. One thing that this pointer is not that good at is using it on an LCD or plasma screen. It’s OK, but you definitely need to pay a close attention in order to notice the bright dot on the screen.

When it comes to the functionality of the presenter, I am very satisfied. I tried connecting it to the total of five different computers: two Macs, two Windows PCs, and one Linux machine. The Macs were running OS X versions 10.9 and 10.10. They included one Mac Mini and one MacBook Air. The setup was pretty straightforward and painless. The Windows PCs were running Windows 7 and Windows 8, and they included one laptop and one desktop. The Windows 7 machine was a bit finicky, but it all worked out well in the end. I had to try different USB ports before the presenter was recognized by the operating system. Every single time, however, I managed to get it to work. The Linux machine, to my slight surprise, was actually the least fussy. It detected the presenter immediately and without any additional setup requirements.

As far as the presentation software goes, I’ve tested this presenter with PowerPoint 2010 (on my PCs), PowerPoint 2011 (Mac) and LibreOffice Inspire (Linux machine). It worked perfectly without any hitches with all of them. I also tried it with the online Google Docs on all of the abovementioned computers and accessing it through Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. It worked well with all of these setting, although I was not able to use the screen-dimming button.

The presenter also works as a mouse, and can be used as such with all the machines that I’ve used. However, I never really liked these “air” mouses all that much – they tend require more dexterity in their use than I am capable of summoning up on a regular basis.

I really like the shape of this pointer. It fits really nicely in your hand. It feels really well built and durable.

**** Product provided for review purposes. ****