3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator

[jujubee]

Best money spent on hardware input was my used Cintiq. Forget the SN imo... More people don't use it than actually use it.

[schroeder]

Well I'll chime in - I've got a spacenavigator, and I swear by it. I use it for viewport navigation while modeling and texturing mostly and zooming selected/playing the 3DSMax timeline (only two buttons). We had to reverse the axis on it but this small amount of setup yields a much smoother workflow for us. Plus, it's a blast to navigate in other software (google earth, ArcGIS, AutoCad, Solidworks). AND it looks pretty nice too. Nice and heavy, not some lightwieght toy, doesn't take up much space. I would totally recommend it.

Edit to add that the polycount doesn't seem to have any effect on the navigation (and we have plenty of scenes with just crazy polycounts)- the only thing that I've noticed is the adaptive degradation doesn't work while orbiting using the controller, but does when using the regular mouse method.

[voltron7]

works for me

Well, thanks for everyone's input on the matter. Some interesting views and now I will add mine.
I've had it for half day now and I love it! I did reverse the axis (about 2.5 second task) and program some of the keys.
That's all, it is taking a small amount of getting used to, but I already am using it on a job so the curve is not so steep as I had thought.
Very easy to set up, too and any changes you make to the software happen immediately. I do like my Intous3, but this really takes up less than half of the space
and fits better physically, with my current setup. Plus, I can still use my Intous as always, it's still in the same place, etc.
It also cost only a few dollars more than my Logitech MX Revolution mouse. It was used, but so new it even had the plastic films on the knob and screen.

Thanks for all the suggestions and reviews folks, much appreciated.