{"id":5969,"date":"2021-07-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/steelseries-rival-5-gaming-mouse-review\/"},"modified":"2021-07-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-07-13T00:00:00","slug":"steelseries-rival-5-gaming-mouse-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hdbka.com\/steelseries-rival-5-gaming-mouse-review\/","title":{"rendered":"SteelSeries Rival 5 gaming mouse review"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve got a question for you. If you use a gaming mouse with extra buttons in a competitive game and your opponents don’t, does that count as cheating? I mainly ask because after using the SteelSeries Rival 5 gaming mouse, I feel like I might be cheating during Call of Duty. I definitely feel at an advantage, at least.<\/p>\n
The Rival 5’s best and worst features are the five quick action side-buttons (nine programmable in total). I don’t mind a couple of side mouse buttons, but some gaming mice tend to overdo it by crowding a bunch of buttons that become awkward to use in practice. The Razer Naga X<\/a> puts four rows of buttons right where you rest your thumb, for example. <\/p>\n The Rival 5 tries to find a better way to give you 9 programmable buttons that aren’t in the way, and it mostly gets it right.<\/p>\n To be fair, the Naga gaming mouse targets MMO and MOBA players who have a reliance on a ton of hotkeys. The Rival 5 is geared towards battle royale games where the goal is never having your fingers move from the WASD keys unless they have to. World Of Warcraft PvP players might find a couple of well-placed buttons useful for saving precious milliseconds during an intense battlegrounds match.<\/p>\n The problem with a lot of gaming mice, however, remains one of button placement. The more you add, the more creative you have to be about where to put them. The Rival 5 has a clever workaround by adding a slim up\/down padding above two (also slim) thumb buttons. So now you can map four actions on technically three buttons.<\/p>\n Image 1 of 4Rival 5 Specs<\/p>\n Price<\/strong>: $60<\/a> The oversized silver side button is the only button with questionable placement. I appreciate it not being directly where I rest my thumb yet it does sit slightly out of reach, making it difficult to use during gaming. <\/p>\n Even with a palm grip, the silver button is in an awkward position. I’m actually a claw grip guy, and I found myself having to give my thumb a hell of a stretch. I don’t think it would be an issue for folks with larger hands and longer thumbs—are long thumbs a thing? For my dainty digits, however, it wasn’t a great fit.<\/p>\n I do like the placement of the side paddle and the two long, slim buttons underneath it. It’s useful having an area for your thumb to sit without worrying about accidentally hitting a button in a frantic firefight in Apex Legends.<\/p>\n SteelSeries offers a few smart recommended button mapping templates (which more companies should do) for games such as CoD: Warzone, World of Warcraft, and Fortnite. Yeah, you could just map whatever works, but it was good to see what SteelSeries thought the best for popular multiplayer games.<\/p>\n Offloading commands for armor plates and grenades to the mouse side buttons did make my life so much easier in Warzone, even if it did take a few rounds for my muscle memory to take over. I even tried mapping some build commands onto the mouse in Fortnite and found myself actually enjoying playing it; a game I often do poorly at because I’m so crap at building towers.<\/p>\n
\nSensor:<\/strong> TrueMove Air sensor,
\nSensitivity: <\/strong>18k dpi
\nProgrammable Buttons:<\/strong> 9
\nLEDs:<\/strong> Customizable RGB (10 zones)
\nCable length:<\/strong> 6 feet Super Mesh cable
\nWeight:<\/strong> 0.3 oz (85g)<\/p>\n