SteelSeries Rival 5 review
Our Verdict
The SteelSeries Rival 5 incorporates the best features from previous SteelSeries gaming mice, with rock-solid performance and lots of colorful lighting.
For
- Comfy, ergonomic shape
- Gorgeous lighting options
- Lots of buttons
- Intuitive software
Confronting
- No adaptable scroll wheel
- Paddle is hard to employ
Tom'southward Guide Verdict
The SteelSeries Rival 5 incorporates the all-time features from previous SteelSeries gaming mice, with stone-solid functioning and lots of colorful lighting.
Pros
- +
Comfortable, ergonomic shape
- +
Gorgeous lighting options
- +
Lots of buttons
- +
Intuitive software
Cons
- -
No adaptable gyre bicycle
- -
Paddle is difficult to use
SteelSeries Rival v: Specs
Max DPI: xviii,000
Buttons: nine
Size: 5.i 10 2.7 10 1.7 inches
Weight: 3.0 ounces
EDITOR'S NOTE: The SteelSeries Rival five won a "highly recommended" honor for best gaming mouse in the Tom'due south Guide Awards 2021 for gaming.
The SteelSeries Rival five looks and feels like a much more than expensive gaming mouse. When I starting time took this $60 peripheral out of the box, I couldn't assistance but wonder what made it dissimilar from the $80 SteelSeries Rival 600 — still a potent contender for the best gaming mouse on the market place, fifty-fifty iii years after its initial release.
The respond is, thankfully, "not much." The SteelSeries Rival 5 doesn't take tunable weights, but it does have a comfy, ergonomic grip, gorgeous LED lighting strips, a plethora of programmable buttons and a suite of sensible SteelSeries software. It also has an extra "paddle" push, which I never fully got the hang of. But either way, it does little to impairment an otherwise-excellent mouse.
- Logitech G604 review
Read our full SteelSeries Rival 5 review for more than details on this well-crafted and affordable gaming mouse.
SteelSeries Rival 5 review: Design
If you're familiar with the SteelSeries Rival 600, you lot should accept a good idea of what to expect from the SteelSeries Rival 5. Like its more expensive cousin, the Rival five is an ergonomic right-handed mouse, with a high ridged palm rest, a small indentation for the thumb and two LED strips running downwardly either side. The SteelSeries logo on the palm rest also lights upwards.
In terms of buttons, in that location are quite a few for a mouse of this size. In improver to the left and correct buttons, you also go a clickable scroll wheel and a dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivity adjuster right below that. On the left side of the mouse is where things become interesting, however. There are two thin pollex buttons, likewise equally a "sniper" thumb button that temporarily lowers DPI past default. That's all pretty standard.
What'southward unusual, nonetheless, is the pocket-size "paddle" button just above the two thumb buttons. The idea is that yous balance your pollex on this long, sparse button and press it either upwards or down for different effects. Y'all could use this to zoom in or out with a sniper rifle, shift speed upwardly or downwardly in a racecar, toggle betwixt weapons in an activity/RPG or any other command that benefits from bidirectional controls.
Paddles on gaming mice are non unheard of (the excellent Razer Basilisk has a slightly dissimilar one), only they're non very common either. I respect SteelSeries adding an extra, uncommon potentially useful button to a mid-tier mouse. At the same fourth dimension, I never found it peculiarly useful, as the roll bike tin do a lot of the same tasks. Furthermore, the paddle'southward inclusion ways that the thumb buttons are tiny. Differentiating between all iii of them within a split up second requires a pretty steep learning curve.
SteelSeries Rival 5 review: Features
In addition to its anarchistic paddle, the SteelSeries Rival five has a few other interesting features, mostly software-based. Similar other gear from this manufacturer, the Rival v runs on the SteelSeries Engine software, which recently underwent a pretty big revamp. The SteelSeries Engine has always been 1 of the better gaming peripheral programs on the market, letting y'all easily customize lighting, program button shortcuts and create profiles for individual games and apps.
Using SteelSeries Engine is simple and intuitive, whether yous want to reprogram the thumb buttons or suit the DPI levels. (You tin now program 5 or more than unlike DPI levels; the previous iteration of Engine capped you at 2.) The large draw, all the same, is that y'all can ready gorgeous lighting patterns on the Rival v's two bright, colorful LED strips. Whether you want a different static color for each game you play, or a pulsating rainbow while you lot piece of work, having RGB lighting that you can actually see (dissimilar the palm logo, which your hand unremarkably covers) makes a big departure.
My only complaint hither is that some similar mice (by and large from Logitech) offer adaptable curlicue wheels, which let you choose between tight scrolling for games, and more than freeform scrolling for documents and websites. The Rival 5 has only ane center-of-the-road coil bicycle resistance setting, which isn't ideal for either application.
SteelSeries Rival 5 review: Performance
Similar other SteelSeries Gear, the Rival 5 performs beautifully in-game. I tested the peripheral with Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, Doom Eternal, Baldur's Gate Three and Terminal Fantasy 14, and constitute that it performed well in every genre. The mouse responded accurately to my commands, whether I was leaping around a battlefield to chainsaw demons in one-half, or wandering the streets of Ul'dah to assemble MMO quests.
My only quibble is that I didn't get much use out of the paddle in any genre I tested; the thumb buttons worked better for one-off commands, and the scroll wheel worked meliorate for back-and-forth actions. I would have preferred bigger thumb buttons instead, but perchance other players will find better applications for it.
SteelSeries Rival 5 review: Verdict
The SteelSeries Rival 5 is simply an excellent mouse, especially for its modest price. It'due south effective; information technology'due south functional; information technology's colorful. The only potential drawback is the unusual paddle button, though that may well be a draw for some fans.
If y'all're willing to spend a little more than money, the Rival 600 is a slightly better mouse overall, specially due to its tunable weights. Likewise, the Logitech G502 is our aureate standard for gaming mice, and normally available for around the aforementioned cost every bit the Rival 5. But if you lot want something that's both straightforward and packed with RGB lighting, the Rival 5 is an easy recommendation.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/steelseries-rival-5
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