Computer mice should smell nice. That’s the basic idea behind ASUS’ newly-announced Fragrance Mouse MD101—yes, a mouse that radiates aromatic essential oils. You can’t stop progress, I guess.
At a glance, this is just a regular ol’ mouse. It features Bluetooth and 2.4GHz connectivity, its sensor resolution is adjustable up to 2,400 DPI, and it runs on a single AA battery. ASUS brags that the battery will last up to a year, which is neat but not particularly shocking.
As for how the mouse emits fragrance—well, it’s not that complicated. There’s a cavity at the bottom of the mouse that holds essential oil. Fill it up, and the fragrance will passively diffuse from the mouse. ASUS says that you can use any essential oils you want, so long as they are not100% essential oil. (The company suggests using the kind of oil that’s normally sold for reed diffusers, ultrasonic diffusers, and aroma stones.)
I’m kinda weirded out by the fact that the mouse’s aroma chamber closes from the bottom. Like, if the chamber doesn’t fully close for some reason, you’ll end up with oil all over the mouse’s battery and your desk. But maybe I’m overthinking it, I don’t know.
Anyways, this is actually the second fragrant device from ASUS. The company’s Adol Book 14 Air, which launched in China last year, has a hole in its chassis that can hold interchangeable scent disks. The discs passively radiate fragrance—they aren’t fan-powered or anything like that—although I assume that the smell is stronger when the laptop is emitting a lot of heat.
I don’t know whether ASUS will sell its fragrant mouse or laptop outside of China. That said, the company definitely wants to know how U.S. customers will react to this sort of product. ASUS showed off the fragrant laptop at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, and it devised a very nice English-language press release for the Fragrance Mouse. The name “Fragrance Mouse” also gives me hope, as it’s very straightforward and should be easily understood by westerners (unlike the Adol Book 14 Air, which is one letter away from being a disastrously bad name).
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And, just as a side note, I think that a fragrant gaming mouse would do a lot of good for the world. The jokes would be funny, at the very least. Remember that Irish Spring gamer chair April Fool’s joke? Maybe we could get something like that if the Fragrance Mouse MD101 is a success.
I’ve reached out to ASUS to ask how much the Fragrance Mouse MD101 will cost and whether it’ll be sold in the United States. Naturally, I’ll update this article when I receive a response from the company.
Source: ASUS
