SteelSeries just re-entered the chat: I spent a month testing its new elite gaming mice

The time has come for SteelSeries to get back into the elite mouse game. While the brand has been pumping out the odd mouse here or there, it knows it’s been falling a little behind its rivals when it comes to cutting edge competition mice. Enter the new SteelSeries Rival Pro and its symmetrical sibling, the Sensei Pro — the latter named, of course, after SteelSeries’ legendary Sensei mouse from 2011.

The Rival and Sensei pack some powerful specs and interesting features, including Ultra-wideband (UWB) connectivity through to 8K oversampled polling, 8K reporting and 42,000 DPI sensitivity. There’s also zero downtime battery life (SteelSeries’ favorite thing these days), plenty of customization via the GG app and, in a first for SteelSeries, web app support.

So could this be one of the best gaming mice for esports and competitive players. Read my full SteelSeries Rival Pro review to find out.

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A competition gaming mouse from SteelSeries
• Who is it for? Elite or highly competitive players
• What does it cost? $179 / £169
• What do we like? The UWB connectivity, zero downtime battery, responsive performance, and high levels of customization
• What don’t we like? The black model is a fingerprint magnet, and its optical sensors feel a little featureless versus competition

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: Specs

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: The ups

The SteelSeries Rival Pro is an elite gaming mouse through-and-through. It offers bags of performance and stability, low weight, and plenty of customization.

Ultra-wide band connectivity

Key to the Rival Pro’s performance is its connectivity. Instead of the usual 2.4GHz connectivity we typically see on mice, the Rival uses Ultra-wideband (UWB), which operates in the 6GHz band instead of 2.4GHz. Why? Because everything else you’re running over 2.4GHz can cause connection dropouts for the others.

As some of your devices hog 2.4GHz channels, there can be a momentary pause while other devices hunt for a free channel. On most tech, this doesn’t matter — that hunting takes milliseconds. But on a mouse, which has to track so quickly and accurately, and across so many pixels, those millisecond hunting dropouts can leave you with dead zones in cursor coverage. What happens if an enemy’s head is in that dead zone? No headshot, that’s what. And you’re probably dead as a result.

By using UWB, which has more bandwidth and less other stuff on it, the Rival Pro ensures no dead zones and better tracking accuracy. Your cursor should be wherever you actually put it, every time. All the main competition — the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2 ($159) and Pro X3 SuperStrike ($199), the Razer Viper V4 Pro ($159) and the Corsair Sabre V2 Pro ($99) — use 2.4GHz.

The downside of UWB is its connectivity range, which is very short, but enough to cover a mousemat area on your desk. That short connectivity range also means other UWB tech likely isn’t going to interfere unless you have them right next to one another. And even then, it won’t be an issue. Let’s say you put an UWB AirTag on your desk within your Rival Pro’s connectivity bubble: UWB covers 6GHz to 9GHz, meaning there’s lots of space and bandwidth to avoid crossovers, and most UWB devices use a very narrow channel within that wider range anyway.

The main UWB hub and charging dock are obviously not ideal for carrying around. Thankfully, SteelSeries also makes a USB-C travel dongle, although it's a separate $24 purchase.

Lightweight and responsive

As SteelSeries puts it: if you suck already, the UWB stuff and ultra high poll rates won’t magically turn you into a competitive FPS player. However, the Rival Pro’s inherent lightness and responsiveness will definitely help up your game regardless of existing skill.

While I’m no esports player at Counter-Strike 2, I don’t suck, and I definitely felt the benefit of the Rival Pro’s rapid sensor and streamlined design. With up to 42,000DPI and up to 70G of acceleration, you can zip your cursor across the screen with just a tiny flick. But you can also customize the acceleration profile in the GG app to get it just right for you. There are several behavior profiles (linear, etc) to get you started.

The Rival Pro is also super lightweight at 53g for the Rival and Sensei Pro, and 49g for the Mini variants. That makes it effortless to slide rapidly across your desk, feeling extremely snappy and responsive. I felt I was able to move and turn quicker and more accurately in Wardogs and Counter-Strike, helping me score kills when reacting to stuff going on behind me. I also played Hell Let Loose and Isonzo with much the same benefits. I had a lot of trouble going back to my heavy Logitech MX Master 4 ($119) after using the Rival Pro.

The 53g Rival/Sensei are lighter than the Logitech G Pro X Superlight 2 at 60g (51g for the mini variant) and the X2 SuperStrike ($179) and X3 SuperStrike, each weighing 61g. The Razer Viper V4 Pro and Fnatic x Lamzu Maya 8K ($119) weigh less, though, at 49g and 44g.

Oversampled 8K polling

Set at the highest poll and sensor report rates of 8K, movement feels incredibly smooth, too. Fun fact: the 8,000Hz polling is actually oversampled down from 9,000Hz — an extra ninth data package is sent after every eighth, providing extra redundancy against instability. Mostly theoretical, of course, as you’ll never actually notice this, but nice to know.

Not all games work well at 8K, though — Valorant, Apex Legends, Fortnite and Rust (among others) notably suffer frame rate drops. To help with this, you can adjust sensor report polling and click polling independently of one another. This way, you can keep ultra low latency clicks while keeping the sensor poll rate lower to maximize performance.

It’s easy to switch through customizable poll/report rate profiles using the UWB dongle. There are five presets which you can customize to your liking in GG, and all are color coded via an LED on the dongle, so it’s easy to quickly cycle through them on the fly.

Highly customizable

No surprises here — the Rival and Sensei are fully compatible with the SteelSeries GG app. I see a lot of companion apps in my job. Many are good, but plenty are not. GG is one of the good ones. It’s slick, reliable and packed full of useful features — so, yeah, essentially the opposite of Asus’ Armoury Crate bloatware. I also much prefer GG to Razer’s Synapse, Corsair’s iCue and Logi’s G Hub. Admittedly, they all tend to hog system resources.

GG is fundamental to the Rival/Sensei’s operation. You use GG to adjust poll and sensor report rates, set DPI levels, and tweak binds for every mouse button. It’s also where you can fine tune acceleration curves, set your angle snapping levels and use SteelSeries’ Aim Trainer — it’s essentially a set of mini games all focused on helping you hone your aim, which is genuinely really fun (although I’m not sure it’s improved my aim much).

I mostly use GG for tweaking poll and DPI rates, and setting different per-game configs for the side buttons — I like having crouch and prone set to them in FPS titles so I can quickly kit the deck when fired at, so it’s useful to have per-game configs as not all games use the same prone keybinding.

But there’s more! For the first time, SteelSeries has moved the GG app to an online interface (as well as the traditional GG standalone app). I love having the versatility of a web app, letting me tweak your mouse on any computer without installing the GG app. One of the main reasons I love using peripherals from Keychron, Wooting and NuPhy is that I can tweak them via web apps, so it’s great to see SteelSeries following suit here.

Unfortunately, pre-existing SteelSeries gear won’t be backwards compatible with the web app, although future products should be. That’s fair enough — there has to be a starting point somewhere and it’d be unreasonable to expect SteelSeries to retrofit its entire back catalog of products via firmware. Still, it would’ve been cool to see at least a few choice products get firmware updates and be supported. Bah humbug.

Zero downtime battery

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Zero downtime battery systems are fast becoming SteelSeries’ hallmark these days. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite ($599) and Nova Pro Omni ($399) headsets, plus the SteelSeries Aeon Pro ($259) controller, all come with spare batteries and charging slots in their USB hubs. It’s one of my favorite things about SteelSeries gear, so I’m happy to see the Rival Pro getting similar treatment. Atop the UWB dongle is a spare battery and charging port, meaning your downtime is only ever the few seconds it takes to swap out batteries.

Run the Rival/Sensei at full tilt at 9K-oversampled 8K polling, and single-battery life isn’t amazing at around 16 hours. Indeed, in testing a single battery lasted me around two days of gaming. Dropping back to lower poll rates in GG, however, nets you up to 60 hours (1K polling).

You can also customize the different poll rates with the profiles I mentioned above. When working or playing slower titles like Total War: Rome II or Cities: Skylines 2, I just switched the Rival Pro back to 1K polling. But there are five profiles, giving you lots of options to balance performance versus battery based on your per-game needs.

If you want the best outright battery from a single charge, check out the Razer Viper V4 Pro, which lasts a huge 180 hours at 1K and 45 hours at 8K. Honestly, though, with zero downtime, the single cell life figures don’t really matter unless you’re playing away from home.

Note that the batteries used in the Rival/Sensei are different to the shared battery used by SteelSeries headsets and the Aeon Pro controller. That battery is way too heavy for a competition mouse, so the Rival and Sensei use their own, lightweight power cell.

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: The downs

The SteelSeries Rival Pro isn’t perfect, costing an objectively pretty penny, and proving a fingerprint magnet, although these flaws are very minor in my book. My only major qualm is that I’d have liked more in the way of click features.

Optical switches a little featureless

The Rival Pro uses optical switches in the click buttons, which for most people and use cases is a good thing. They’re excellent for click registry accuracy, reducing accidental inputs. Typically, though, the main benefit of optical switches has been longevity, thanks to contactless operation.

These days, though, analog switches have gotten a lot more durable, especially with the advent of magnetic actuation reducing contact points. And there are some huge benefits to the analog magnetic switches you’ll find in the Logitech Pro X2 and X3 SuperStrike specifically.

Analog magnetic switches open up way more customization and advanced features that can give you an advantage. I’m talking about adjustable actuation to reduce the input needed, resulting in ultra-short actuation distances. Then there’s rapid trigger, which allows repeat continuous inputs without the need to fully recycle the switch back to its original position, or in other words, repeat inputs without releasing the mouse button fully — this opens up faster continuous clicking to provide an advantage when using semi-automatic weapons in shooters, for example. Admittedly, you probably won’t see much benefit until you can train your fingers to repeat click faster, but that is possible.

Like I said, it’s not like the SteelSeries optical switches are slow. They just feel a little featureless versus the SuperStrike, and for me, that’s a major selling point of the Logi.

Not the cheapest

Objectively, the Rival and Sensei’s MSRP of $179 / £169 is a lot of money. This is a competitive mouse, so it doesn’t pack all the premium bells and whistles of productivity or MMO mice — there’s no plethora of customizable buttons, no fancy scroll wheels. But it’s kinda like a Porsche 911 GT3 RS in that way: it’s a stripped back, speed-focused competition weapon. In other words… pay more, get less, but go faster.

However, in context, the Rival/Sensei are actually pretty fairly priced mice, which is why I’ve left this minor con out of my scoring. The Pro X3 SuperStrike costs $199 while the older Pro X2 SuperStrike costs $179. The Pro X Superlight 2 and Viper V4 Pro, meanwhile, are slightly cheaper at $159, but we’re not talking a huge delta here. And besides, the Rival and Sensei have a unique performance advantage thanks to UWB connectivity.

Utter fingerprint magnet

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The Rival and Sensei are available in black or white, but I chose the former. Unfortunately, the matte finished plastic combined with the black colorway has proved to be a total fingerprint magnet.

It’s not a huge problem, and obviously doesn’t affect the performance of the mouse. However, it looks kinda gross, giving serious ‘Cheeto-fingered basement dweller’ vibes, and results in my setup looking a little more shabby than it otherwise would.

And before you ask: I've been very careful to keep my hands clean (I've not been munching Cheetos while testing). Check out the comparison image earlier on, showing the Rival Pro next to my daily driver that has hundreds of hours of use, the Logitech MX Master 4 — there's barely a mark on the Logi!

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: Verdict

SteelSeries has re-entered the chat. The Rival and Sensei are as worthy competition mice as it’s possible to get: lightweight, ultra-responsive and highly customizable. Sure, the black model is a fingerprint magnet and I’d prefer to see analog magnetic switches as in the Logitech Pro X3 SuperStrike, but neither of those things ought to be a dealbreaker.

Besides, the Rival Pro has two major advantages over all of its competition. There’s the zero-downtime battery life, ensuring you’re never waiting for your mouse to charge. The star of the show, though, is UWB connectivity, which is unique in the market and offers more stable and reliable tracking than any other esports mouse on the market — if that’s not reason enough to buy the Rival Pro, I don’t know what is.