We've got to have a play with Apple's new £59 Magic Trackpad this afternoon. So what are our first impressions?

Firstly, despite appearances, this is a surprisingly weighty peripheral, manufactured from stainless steel and backed with the same non-slip material as the new-style Apple Bluetooth keyboards.

The surface of the Magic Trackpad is glass, just like the MacBook Pro trackpad - but the surface area is 80 per cent larger than the trackpad on a MacBook Pro .

The Magic Trackpad's pitch, as well as the front-to-back measurement, is exactly the same as the Apple keyboard – it matches up quite nicely should you want to put them end-to-end.

The Magic Trackpad isn't designed to replace the mouse - says Apple - but is designed as a complement to it for those who are used to the multi-touch gestures of their Mac laptop. You could, theoretically even plug in two! It also adds to the abilities a new gesture, which we'll come onto in a minute.

You can almost put your whole hand onto the trackpad. Apple's gesture range only goes up to four fingers, so there's plenty of room. Apple also says you're able to rest the palm of your hand on the bottom half of the trackpad without any ill effects in terms of control.

Ideal for the fun stuff

The Magic Trackpad is definitely at its best in apps like iPhoto or Preview – it's certainly not something you'll be using to work on fiddly jobs in Photoshop or laboriously processing video with Final Cut Pro. Apple says it's great for web browsing, but we're not so sure about that, we'd rather stick with a mouse, especially for a large screen.

We also had a few issues with rotating pictures – the gesture that twists two forefingers around in a circle motion. In Preview, the iMac often thought we were trying to select an object area rather than rotate.

We found performance is better if you do the gesture towards the top of the trackpad, rather than the middle or bottom. It is, however, easier to perform gestures on the Magic Trackpad than it is on a MacBook Pro. We didn't, however, find it as easy to click with the Magic Trackpad – there's no tactile click-down like there is on the laptop.

The new gesture (which will also be rolled out to the MacBook Pro via a software update) is three-fingered. Placing three fingers on the trackpad enables you to drag a window around the screen. Not exactly headline-grabbing, while you'll still need to use the title bar to hold onto to make it work – you can't just move a window from anywhere.

You are able to plug the Magic Trackpad into a Windows-based machine, though it will only act as a basic mouse-type device so none of the gestures are supported.

The Magic Trackpad won't replace the mouse and you'll still need the age-old peripheral to perform a lot of everyday tasks.

However, there's certainly potential with the Magic Trackpad to be used in situations where a mouse isn't so practical – such as if you're on a sofa controlling your Mac from your lap.

But for most, the Magic Trackpad is a luxury – and when most multi-touch gestures can be performed using the Magic Mouse anyway, you may find yourself perplexed as to exactly what the point of the Magic Trackpad actually is.