Looking for Nub: Best and Worst Notebook Pointing Sticks

April 27th, 2011 by Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director  

Notebook pointing sticks? I’m in nub with them. Call me old-fashioned, stubborn, or stuck in the “PC era,” but when I’m using my notebook, I want the most accurate navigation tool possible, one that lets me do my work as quickly and efficiently as possible. That tool is not the ubiquitous touchpad, but the little rubber pointing stick that sits between the G and H keys on some business notebooks, most famously Lenovo’s ThinkPad line.

Pointing sticks are still far better than today’s touchpads for a couple of reasons. First, there’s no chance of jumpiness or interference with a pointing stick, because the isometric joystick below the little dome is directly linked to hardware. Touchpads, on the other hand, use capacitive touch technology that can suddenly jerk your pointer around if your finger emits too much current or one of the notebook’s components delivers a competing signal.

Second, there’s no “dead zone” with a pointing stick like you experience when your finger runs off the edge of a touchpad. Even better, touch typists like me don’t have to lift our hands off of the homerow to use a pointing stick, allowing us to work faster and put less strain on our wrists and shoulders.

Despite these obvious advantages, notebook vendors have convinced themselves that pointing sticks are too scary for the masses, so they’ve limited their deployment to a handful of business laptops. In addition to Lenovo’s ThinkPads and their red “TrackPoints,” there are pointing sticks on Dell’s Latitude series, HP’s EliteBooks, and certain Toshiba Tecras. As with all notebook components, they’re not created equal. So whose stick sticks it to the others? I decided to do some testing.




First Place: Lenovo TrackPoint


Lenovo’s TrackPoint is still the gold standard: comfortable, accurate, and pleasant to touch. The cap is nice and wide at over 4mm and sits ever-so-slightly above the key level.

I particularly like the bumpy, raised surface — which Lenovo compares to a cat’s tongue — on the standard TrackPoint cap. If you don’t like that particular texture, the company sells two other styles of replacement cap: classic dome and soft dome.

Second Place: Toshiba Tecra R Series AccuPoint

Dubbed the AccuPoint, Toshiba’s slate blue pointing stick was extremely accurate and smooth in my testing. I love the slightly-rough surface on the cap, because it’s easy to grip, but some users will definitely find it too sandpaper-like and a bit too narrow.

Unfortunately, the 1mm cap is significantly narrower than those on other notebooks and a little bit lower than it should be. The company also failed to include a scroll button like you’ll find on its Dell and Lenovo competitors. Note that the AccuPoint isn’t even available on every Tecra model.

Buck up, Toshiba, because you’ve got a good thing going here, if you’d only believe in it.

Third Place: HP Elitebook with Synaptics TouchStyk

On its EliteBook line, HP takes its stick from Synaptics, which calls the nub a TouchStyk. On the EliteBook 8460p I tested, the stick was nicely positioned in a wide open space between the island-style G, H, and B keys. Elevated higher than key level, the 4mm wide TouchStyk was easy to grip.

However, its concave surface and sharp dots were a bit uncomfortable to use and made impressions on the surface of my index finger. The stick also feels a little bit stiffer than its Lenovo and Toshiba counterparts. Still, I was impressed with HP’s implementation overall. I just wish I could just swap the cap for one that has an upward-arching, convex dome.

Last Place: Dell Latitude Pointing Stick

Imprint on my finger and this Latitude’s to blame, Dell gives nubs a bad name. The 3mm pointing stick on Dell’s notebooks has sharp, raised points that sit inside the stick’s concave surface, which itself sits lower than key level. This means that you have to push downward to use the stick. In my testing, my finger kept coming off the cap low-sitting cap, and I had to press so hard that I ended up with indentations on my finger from the sharp tendrils on the cap.

The only thing Dell’s pointing stick has going for it is a scroll button that lets you move up and down web pages.


Comments (9 Responses) 

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9 Responses to “Looking for Nub: Best and Worst Notebook Pointing Sticks”

  1. Al Says:
    April 29th, 2011 at 1:09 am

    What about the nub on the Samsung business models?

  2. Lava Says:
    April 29th, 2011 at 4:16 am

    This review is all well and good, but the jumpiness you complain about in trackpads is only present in PCs. The trackpad on MacBooks never jump and they are far faster than pointing sticks at selecting tiny objects. The same cannot be said for PC notebook trackpads, which jitter like a meth addict in withdrawal.

    I never understood why PC makers still can’t make a half-decent trackpad, but there you go. Pointing sticks might be competitive with the them, but they don’t hold a candle to Apple trackpads for speed or productivity.

  3. [Gm] Says:
    May 9th, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    @Lava
    “but they don’t hold a candle to Apple trackpads for speed or productivity”

    It depends on what you do. If you are typing more than ‘browsing around’ with your cursor, trackpoint is superior for speed and productivity. In that sense, combination of trackpoint and keyboard shortcut would work wondrous.

    When I’m using my laptop on my lap, I would prefer trackpoint over touchpad/trackpad. When I’m on the table, I use a combination of trackpoint and mouse. It’s a personal preference, and due to habit I guess.

  4. Roy Says:
    May 14th, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    I’ve had a much better experience with the Dell pointing sticks, myself, but I think they must be a different model from the one you tested. The pointing stick on my Latitude D630 (and, if I remember correctly, my D820) more closely resembles a blue version of the HP stick pictured in third place. The dots aren’t sharp at all, in my opinion, though it’s possible I’ve worn them down in the nearly 3 years I’ve been using it.
    One complaint I have, though, is that my cursor will sometimes move steadily upward when I use it. I’ll have to wiggle the pointing stick repeatedly and sometimes even remove and replace the button itself in order to bring the pointer down from the top of my screen.
    Also, when I originally received the laptop (with Dell drivers installed), I had trouble with the pointer jumping. If I had any pressure at all on the pointing stick while pressing one of the touchpad buttons (more convenient for my particular hand size and clicking style), the pointer would jump an inch or so as it clicked. As you can probably imagine, this caused me a great deal of distress due to unintentional clicking. The problem was solved, however, when I reformatted and didn’t reinstall the Dell touchpad drivers.

  5. Peter Says:
    May 27th, 2011 at 3:39 am

    I got really frustrated with the feeling of oil building up on my Macbook touchpad, and I decided to try texturizing it and comparing to a pointing stick at the same time. I texturized the touchpad by adding a Power Support adhesive and putting a bunch of little dots of glue on it (for a rougher feeling), and at the same time I’m trying out a Thinkpad usb keyboard with a pointing stick. So far, I feel a little frustrated with the pointing stick because slower speeds require a lot of force, and faster speeds make it hard to do anything precise, as if I’m trying to use it at the limit of its sensitivity. To be fair, this could be because I’m still getting used to it, but I’m curious if anyone else finds other pointing sticks more accurate, or agrees with the comment above about Mac touchpads being more accurate.

  6. Avram Piltch Says:
    May 28th, 2011 at 10:52 am

    Try adjusting the sensitivity settings in the control panel.

  7. Fraser Says:
    June 15th, 2011 at 8:01 am

    well i have a hp eliete book 2730p which features pathetic, half size touch pad (which i find impossible to use) and a touchstyk. i use the touchstyk exclusively but after 3 years of heavy use (i suppose it’s gone ok, considering the time iv used it for) the ‘styk’ has become incredibly unresponsive, requiring more and more pressure to be applied. often to the point that the rubber nub itself falls off. I am currently looking for a replacement nub (i believe the rubber edges inside the nub wearing off is the problem).

    I must say i am a fan of the Toshiba rough nubs

  8. Peter Gegenheimer Says:
    March 26th, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Since most of my laptop work involves typing, I cannot stand to take my fingers off the keyboard to use either a touchpad or a mouse. I’m completely addicted to the TrackPoint on IBM ThinkPads (I haven’t used a Lenovo yet). I can’t stand moving my hand to the touchpad, then having to re-locate my touch-typing position. I also dislike having to use several swipes on the touchpad to move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other. (Maybe this is correctable in the driver.)

    It is true that the cursor will tend to drift after using the TrackPoint for an expended period of time, but this is prevented by removing one’s finger for a second or two. (Or tilting the laptop in the same direction… for control freaks only.)

    I love the concave tip (which I think is what the review calls the “soft dome”) — a raised rim around the edge of the tip, with a textured surface inside. The rim adheres to my fingertip and helps distribute pressure evenly. The TrackPoint controller software allows a great variety of adjustment, with respect both to sensitivity and to speed. All told, the ThinkPad’s TrackPoint is the best cursor-control device I’ve used. When typing, I certainly prefer the TrackPoint to a touchpad _or_ a mouse!

  9. chuck hood Says:
    May 14th, 2012 at 8:44 am

    I believe the author should check the dimensions that are quoted for each of these rubber caps. They seem to be off 0.5X or so.

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