SteelSeries Rival 5 Gaming Mouse Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The SteelSeries Rival 5 Gaming Mouse is available now from many major retailers. It has an MSRP of just £59.99, which I think is a perfectly fair price for what you get. However, it’s currently listed for an even more appealing £49.99 on Amazon, which is a deal that is just too good to ignore. There are a LOT of great gaming mice for around £50, actually, quite a few from SteelSeries too, but for a programmable 9 button lightweight mouse, that’s a great price.

Overview

SteelSeries has once again delivered a pretty killer product here. I am a big fan of the Rival series though, and the Rival 3 is still one of the best value mice on the market. However, the Rival 5 certainly takes things to the next level. It’s a mid-budget mouse, but it’s delivering big on features that would once have been enough to call this a high-end mouse, albeit SteelSeries slap haptic motors, OLED displays and more on their premium models these days.

However, at its core, this is a premium product. The sensor is very competitive and able to be adjusted in 100 CPI increments from 100 right up to a “where did my pointer go” 18000 CPI. It’ll track at up to 400 IPS and with 40G of acceleration too, so I know I can’t throw it off target, even if some pros would prefer a 500 IPS/50G option, this is really more than enough. Plus, this mouse has tilt tracking, so when you do angle drops, quick flicks or use a lift-off technique, it’s less likely to pick up unwanted tracking data.

The mouse buttons are super responsive too. They’re the same dust and waterproof switches I tested in the Aerox, but while it’s unlikely this mouse body design will need that protection, it certainly can’t hurt. Plus, they’re just really nice feeling switches, and with an 80M click rating, you’ll likely replace the mouse in a few years before the switches ever start to fade.

The addition of that slick ultra-light cable, and the fact the mouse has been on a diet to keep it around 85g, the vibrant RGB lighting, and the fully programmable 9-button design take this mouse to the next level. SteelSeries called this mouse a “precision multi-genre gaming mouse” and honestly, it delivers on that perfectly. You can tune the configuration to suit FPS, MOBA, MMO, or Google Sheets if you so desire, and it’s just a solid all-rounder.