SteelSeries Rival 5 Gaming Mouse Review
In spite of launching just a few months ago, I haven’t personally seen a ton of hype around the SteelSeries Rival 5. That’s a shame, because it’s an excellent gaming mouse that offers a wonderful balance of price and performance. It even has some things to recommend it over SteelSeries’ lauded Prime mouse series.
While its affordable price means that it can’t offer every feature that’s in high demand right now, it still has a light solid shell, plenty of buttons, and capable sensor performance. It’s the closest thing SteelSeries has to the popular Razer Basilisk and Logitech G502, and it’s also a great pick if you love RGB lighting.
I’ve been consistently surprised during my last two weeks with this mouse. It nails the fundamentals, and does so with just enough design flair to be fun.
Note: I bought this mouse myself at Best Buy. I don’t receive any kick backs or other incentives if you decide to buy one. I don’t use affiliate links in any of my stories. My reviews policy is right here.
The SteelSeries Rival 5 is a wired gaming mouse with an attached braided cable, and it sells for a competitive price of $59 (official site here). That puts it at the lower end of the enthusiast wired mouse market. Even so, SteelSeries didn’t skimp on the sensor or buttons. It uses their TrueMove Air sensor, which is the same PixArt sensor used in their wireless mice. It’s essentially a re-badged 3335, and honestly that makes more sense in a budget mouse like this than it does in some of their more expensive models. The main buttons have mechanical switches as opposed to optical, but they’re Golden Micro dust-resistant switches just like those found in the Aerox 3 Wireless.
Its 85g weight makes it much lighter than the Razer Basilisk V3, but not as light as the SteelSeries Prime+ or Corsair Sabre. Still, this is an impressively light mouse for its size, and the shell is super durable without any hint of creaking or cheapness. It’s comfortable for long gaming sessions, regardless of your preferred sensitivity settings.
Claw, fingertip, and palm grips all work great with the Rival 5. It’s a little bit less sculpted than the Prime, but still has an ergonomic right-handed shape. My average-sized hand fits right into place every time I grip the mouse. The thumb button cluster looks daunting at first but I quickly adjusted to it, and it’s probably the most capable thumb button zone that SteelSeries has ever designed. It has two standard forward and back buttons, a rocker switch above them that offers two additional mappable functions, and a thumb toggle at the front end that you can use to swap to a lower DPI — but which I always assign to take screenshots.
This thumb button cluster also makes the mouse excellent for productivity use, in spite of not having the free-scrolling wheel of the G502 or Basilisk V3. It’s easy to remap the buttons in the SteelSeries GG software, and if you want to have lots of shortcuts under thumb but without the big nightmare button cluster of an MMO mouse, this is a perfect middle ground.
Tracking and clicking performance are both exceptional, with no hints of smoothing or obvious latency. The TrueMove Air sensor can go all the way up to 18,000 CPI, but I left it set to around 1,800 during my testing. It tracks nearly as well as any of the other popular current PixArt sensors, and it doesn’t have any noticeable lift-off distance issues, though I wish it were adjustable. The buttons have the same exact nice satisfying click as those on the Aerox 3, and although they’re not quite as snappy and precise as the fancy optical magnetic switches on the Prime family, they’re still about as good as mechanical buttons get.
I love that the Rival 5 uses the classic low-profile brilliant SteelSeries mouse wheel, and not the new chunkier model from the Prime. It scrolls and clicks perfectly. Its basic rubber coating isn’t as neat to touch as the aluminum wheel on the Kone Pro, but it’s an all-time performer and I’m still mystified that SteelSeries abandoned it when designing the Prime.
The hits keep on coming if you like RGB: this mouse has the brightest and most brilliant lighting of any mouse I’ve ever used. The light smoothly scrolls across its ten customizable zones, and when set to full brightness it’s incredible to look at. It’s the polar opposite of the subtle wheel lighting on the Prime family, and brighter and more brilliant than the lighting on any other mainstream mouse. If you’re not into that of course, you might find the light off-putting, but I was impressed.
There’s not much I can reasonably complain about here. The mouse sensor doesn’t have a glide foot around it — but its plastic border is recessed into the shell so it doesn’t drag at all. This design negates the need for a foot, and it’s pretty smart. The two glides installed at the top and bottom of the mouse are nice and big and smooth, but they aren’t made of the white “Pure” PTFE that’s so popular right now. Of course, I’ve never had a dramatically better or worse glide experience depending on the color of the PTFE used — except for the shockingly smooth heat treated glides on the Kone Pro.
Glide performance is great in spite of the black dye, and the flexible cable doesn’t get in the way of movement. I do wish it were detachable. Even the cheapest $60 Prime models have a detachable cable, and it would have been nice to see that here.
That’s all I can come up with complaint-wise: the glide feet aren’t the right material for the current zeitgeist and the cable isn’t detachable. Otherwise, this is an awesome mouse for $60, particularly if you’re looking for something a little larger with plenty of thumb buttons. Even if you don’t use the extra thumb functionality, the core clicking and tracking performance are both still good enough to compete with other mice in this price range more than adequately.
The flatter shape isn’t as comfy as the intense curves of the Prime, and the buttons aren’t as nice, but otherwise I prefer basically everything about the Rival 5. It tracks just as well. Its switches have a nice tactile action. And its thumb button cluster is such a refreshing change after the plague of tiny thumb buttons I’ve endured on other SteelSeries models. The Rival 3, Aerox 3, and Prime all wish they had thumb buttons this nice and large and clickable.
If you’re a huge fan of RGB and have $60 to spend on a capable wired mouse, this is a great choice. It’s one of the best new releases of the year, and I’m sad it was overshadowed by “fancier” models even among SteelSeries’ own lineup. It’s nothing like the Rival 3 that it’s closest in number to, and takes many cues from the more expensive Rival 600 series…all while carving out a niche as its own thing that gets the fundamentals right.
