SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wired Gaming Mouse Review

I like this mouse even though I probably shouldn’t

Photo taken by the author.

Rounding out this week of checking out SteelSeries products that I’ve been curious to try, here we are with the Aerox 3 2022 Edition wired model.

I’ll be honest with you: I bought this mouse expecting not to like it. That’s just how it goes sometimes when you’re an online person who writes stuff about tech. I can’t completely squash my personal biases, and I’ve just never totally understood the Aerox 3’s place in the market or in the SteelSeries lineup.

The mouse sells for $59 normally but often gets discounts, and you can find its official site here. That’s not an affiliate link, as I don’t use those, and I wasn’t asked or paid by SteelSeries to write this — but you can support me directly with your money if you wish by checking out the end of this piece.

You can buy the mouse off the shelf in either black or white, and it also comes in a variety of fun customizable colors through the SteelSeries web site, though those will run you a little bit of extra money. I think that’s a cool program and I wish that more companies offered something like that, since I believe that more available colors is always better. The mouse has a lightweight 59g plastic frame, TTC gold switches under the main buttons, and a detachable braided USB-C cable. The sensor isn’t the TrueMove Air model that SteelSeries uses across almost their entire lineup these days, but the older TrueMove Core.

This sensor is based on the PixArt 3331, and variants of it live inside other popular mice like the cheaper SteelSeries Rival 3 wired edition and the famous Viper Mini. The TrueMove Core has nice tracking performance, though the lift-off distance is just high enough to be prominently noticeable and sadly there’s no way in the software to adjust it. If you’re sensitive to lift-off distance, you might hate it.

I’ve covered two wireless Aerox 3 models before: the original which had tiny skates on the bottom, and the 2021 limited edition refresh that added much larger skates and slightly tweaked the frame design for durability. In 2022, they refreshed the design again, mostly to round off the glide skates for increased smoothness.