SteelSeries Rival

"He is the Asian guy with black hair, brown eyes, and glasses," I told my friend. "Oh yeah, I know that guy!", my friend replied, albeit with a slight tone of sarcasm that can be clearly sensed from a mile away without any further explanation required. Sometimes, it is quite impressive how often we can give a description of someone or something that can be so detailed, yet so useless all at the same time. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I mention "optical mouse"? For me, it will have to be a beige Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical I got years before APH Networks even came into existence. This was back in the days when CRT monitors were still common, and everyone still had a ball mouse. The Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical was my very first optical mouse, and having one was definitely something only the cool kid on the block had. Heck, it even came with red LED lights! Well, that was until someone showed up with an IntelliMouse Optical, but that was a completely different story. Fast forward to 2014, if you told your friends you have an optical mouse, will it still have the same effect as it did ten years ago? Probably not; but just like I told my friend to look for the Asian guy with black hair, brown eyes, and glasses, you are really just giving a description that is technically correct, yet fundamentally useless at the same time. To prove my point, today, we will take a look at the SteelSeries Rival, the latest optical mouse from the renowned gaming peripherals manufacturer. Designed specifically with first person shooter gaming in mind, and featuring a sensor that can go as low as 50 DPI to as high as 6500 DPI (Or CPI in SteelSeries language), this is certainly not my decade old Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical packed away in a box somewhere in the basement. Let us take a closer look and see if it is the real deal!

The Rival 5 meets a lot of requirements.