SteelSeries Rival 310
A mouse that won’t break the bank.
The new Rival from SteelSeries certainly punches above its cost, proving that you don’t need to drop big dollars to get the top-of-the-line experience,
The Rival’s new TrueMove 3 optical sensor offers one-to-one raw tracking, meaning the distance the sensor moves on your desktop is mirrored exactly on the screen, with as little processing involved as possible — therefore no lag.
We rather like the Rival’s understated approach to design; all we get here is the SteelSeries logo lit up on the back, surrounded by matte black plastic. Light also leaks out from around the thick, grippy wheel, which has enough click to it that you’re left in no doubt as to whether it has gone round a notch or not. Fibrereinforced plastic helps bring the weight down to a mere 88.3g, too.
The grey silicon side grips are grippy, and the main buttons clicky — they’re separate from one another and the rest of the body, and made from the same fingerprint-repelling plastic, which is slightly textured. They’re very pleasant places for your fingertips to hang out, as long as you’re right-handed.
Underneath are Omrondesigned switches rated for 50 million clicks, and the restrained lighting does all the usual Prism-enabled tricks across your peripherals, the software up to SteelSeries’s usual standards, and the 32-bit CPU onboard showing no signs of slowing anything down.
With its new sensor and complete failure to put a foot wrong, the new Rival is a mouse to watch.