SteelSeries Rival Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅04-06-14
Closer Look


The Rival is coated with a rubberised finish which feels very nice and during testing our hands didn't slip which we have found happen with mice that have glossy finishes. As you can see from this top down view, the mouse has a bulge to the right which offers great support to the palm. The design however is very much biased towards right handed gamers.


The base of the mouse features four Teflon feet to allow the mouse to glide on most any surface. Sadly, there are no spare feet included with the package which was a shame however the Rival's laser equipped brother, the Sensei has been used for the past year on a daily basis with no signs of requiring replacement feet so we can forgive SteelSeries for this omission.


The left hand side of the mouse has a large slab of textured rubber to give a non-slip surface. Two large buttons are recessed into the contoured shape of the mouse. The rubber grips are not a sticker, but direct injected moulded rubber for better control and grip. The buttons are a little too large for our liking in that while they are easily accessible and therefore ergonomically sound; we found that during intense gaming session, these buttons were inadvertently pressed on occasions.


Moving to the right hand side of the mouse, again we see the injection moulded and textured rubber making this mouse a very grippy rodent indeed.


The mouse wheel sits in a slight recess which shouldn't work as well as it does. The wheel itself is unobtrusive and out of the way when not required but responsive and tactile when needed. Thanks to the grooved, rubber finish there is no fear of the wheel slipping and just in case you didn't know where the mouse wheel sits, it glows any one of 16.4 million colours!


The giveaway for optical mice is the led that sits adjacent to the sensor. This is no cheap 'burns your retina' type sensor though because the Pixart PMW3310 optical sensor is one of the best available. It is capable of 6500 DPI which is enough to rival all but the highest spec laser sensors and with true 1:1 tracking, unbelievable precision and accuracy are simply par for the course with this mouse.


The mouse cable is 2 metres long with a thin soft rubber coated cable rather than the fashionable braid. We must confess we do like a braided cable and felt that omitting such luxuries on this device cheapened the appearance a little. The USB plug was not 'Gold Plated' either which doesn't concern us with regard to durability (as we have never had a USB port fail because of a lack of coating) but again, the plain silver plug didn't look as expensive.

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