For the past couple days, I’ve been gesticulating even more than normal—at times, subtly, at other times, wildly—while getting to know the latest in gesture-control technology: the Leap Motion controller.

Long anticipated due to its low cost ($80), unobtrusive sardine-can size, and purported accuracy and ease of use as demonstrated in some impressive videos, I was pretty excited to try out the device, which was released today. Gestural interfaces like the Leap Motion controller and Microsoft’s Kinect have generated a lot of buzz over the past few years, and hopes are high that they’ll eventually become as common as the mouse and keyboard, if not supplanting them.