Buttons, Scroll Wheel

While the IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 had some notoriously bad buttons (except for the main ones), the Pro IntelliMouse has stellar buttons. The main buttons are nice and tactile with a medium tension. They are very much spammable, have a great click-feel (this is quite intuitive, though), and lack significant amounts of unnecessary travel before and after actuation. The main switches are the widely used Omron D2FC-F-7N models rated for 20 million clicks.


Scrolling is a million times better than on the IME 3.0, that's for sure. The Pro's scroll wheel is tactile and has some rather well-defined notches, but it's not stiff or hard to scroll through the steps. I couldn't break down the shell surrounding the scroll wheel, so the type of encoder is not known, but I'm convinced it's a mechanical one.


The middle mouse button requires slightly more force to actuate than the main buttons, but is still comfortable to use. Its travel distance is rather short, and the switch is a standard 3-legged switch manufactured by Kailh.


Two side buttons sit on the left side of the mouse, and these are very good as well. The difference between these and those on the predecessor model is absolutely ridiculous. These side buttons pretty much have no unnecessary travel and feel tactile and spammable too. The switches are once again made by Kailh, but these have a white housing.

I also made a video in order to demonstrate how the buttons sound:

Mouse Feet

There are four relatively small skates on the bottom of the Pro IntelliMouse. These provide a relatively smooth glide, but could have less friction. I also noticed that their contact edges aren't as round as they should be, which may be making the glide a bit scratchy. Thankfully, size and shape of these feet are exactly the same as on previous models, which means there are many different aftermarket options for replacements. As I mentioned before, there are unfortunately no spare feet provided by the manufacturer.

Cable

As for the cable, it's extremely average and braided, not very flexible, but not too stiff either. I'd definitely recommend using a bungee or affixing it somehow to reduce both drag and resistance. It is about 1.8 m long, which should generally be enough for anyone.

Disassembling

Disassembling the Pro IntelliMouse is very easy since only four screws underneath the skates have to be removed. Unfortunately, these are not standard Philips-head screws, but Torx screws I could only extract with a T6x40 Torx screwdriver. Once you have removed all four screws, simply pop the two main parts of the shell apart. A ribbon cable connects the main PCB with the PCB holding the side buttons, so be careful not to rip it out during disassembly.