When shopping for a device to suit your needs generally you look for a product that does everything you want for a reasonable price or even a bargain before you make a sale, this reflects value for money and although the product you get may not be top draw it delivers on your expectations. However a cheaper alternative doesn’t always reflect value for money and is just plain ‘cheap’. Today I am looking at the SteelSeries Rival 100 mouse hopefully giving you an indication or not if it is value for money.
Out the box
You are able to pick up the SteelSeries Rival 100 at €39.99 which is a very standard price for a mouse that you hope wouldn’t break at just the thought of reaching the scissors to open your packaging.
First things first like many SteelSeries products you can download the SteelSeries Engine 3 software from the SteelSeries website and is pretty much a necessary to get the most out of their products. This opens incredible routes for personalisation and customisation of SteelSeries products and I can’t say enough great things about it, to the point I won’t say anything more about it as I have gone over the Engine 3’s robustness in previous reviews of SteelSeries products and the same applies here. It’s good simple as that.
Unlike the last SteelSeries mouse I reviewed the Sensei Wireless the design of the Rival 100 is not ambidextrous, the six-button design only lends itself to right handed use in order to make use of its intended design and layout. Unlike its bigger brother the Rival 300 it does not feature interchangeable nameplates at the back. These features are not included to save money and are more or less treats than necessary components of a decent mouse. This is not a negative, this is just a matter of fact you want to pay less so don’t expect flashy features like these.
Just to clarify you can grip the mouse with your left hand perfectly fine, it would just mean you wouldn’t be able to use the extra buttons available to you. The Rival 100 mouse rocks up to the plate with pretty standard dimensions 120.6mm deep and 67.13mm wide, perhaps it may be a little compact compared to some of the competition. When it comes to weight the Rival 100 is non-adjustable and weights in at 120g, this could be considered pretty light but I ha no problems using it and it didn’t feel flimsy or cheap at all.
The other issue I have with the symmetrical design of the Rival much like the Sensei is that sleek body lends itself towards people who tend to grip their gaming mice with their fingers, if you prefer to grip using your palm like I do quite frankly this mouse is a little awkward to get used to. This doesn’t affect the performance of the mouse, it is a personal preference of each gamer and just something you should consider you would need to get used to. I have big hands and so some adjustment was necessary when considering the shape, size and weight of the mouse. If your not willing to change the way you hold your mice then this may be a little off-putting, especially when considered that SteelSeries claim the Rival 100 is “ergonomic for all”.
The Rival 100 doesn’t come with a big arsenal of buttons to click, just the basic six as I mentioned above although this does cater for every day use perfectly well. As from the images above you can see we have the standard left and right buttons, a sensitivity toggle and clickable mouse wheel on the top and forwards and backwards buttons on the left side tucked away near your thumb would rest. As you would agree this is all pretty standard. I will point out here that you can only have two sensitivity profiles to switch between using the button on the top of the Rival 100.
The buttons switches aren’t anything groundbreaking or specially advertised like with other SteelSeries products even so, I found the buttons on the Rival 100 to work absolutely fine with no problems or issues to report. Yes there is no arguing that the Sensei is much crisper, sharper and more definite clicks than the Rival 100, but you would be able to but almost three of these mice for the price of one Sensei. The Switches used in the Rival 100 are still distinct, crisp and clean overall and you really get a feel that the components and materials used have been put together to construct a very solid and well-built mouse. Something you don’t always expect to get at this price range.
The SteelSeries Rival 100 like other products from the company features the Prism RGB illumination system, which lights the SteelSeries logo and the mouse wheel. The Rival 100 can also make use of the 16.8 million colours available through the Engine 3 software and they can be configured. You can assign your colour of choice to either zone of the Rival 100 and have it show in 1 of 3 modes. You can choose between having your lighting steady, cycle between colours or pulsate.
The SteelSeries Rival 100 is powered by a Pixart 3059-SS optical sensor capable of up to 4000 DPI sensitivity. You are able to choose between eight different sensitivity settings which consist of includes 250, 500, 1000, 1250, 1500, 1750, 2000, and 4000 CPI. If you want to fine tune this setting further that’s not possible. the Rival 100 also promises 1:1 tracking with zero hardware acceleration. You can lower the initial standard polling rate away from the 1000Hz starting block down to 500Hz, 250Hz, or 125Hz should you so feel inclined.There is no onboard memory to speak of so you would be required to save any customization you do to your desktop, this will also have cloud support for you to access that profile elsewhere but it does require the PC you’re using away from home to also have the SteelSeries Engine 3 software installed. This I feel is a good alternative to having the cost and technology included for onboard memory. All in all pretty good considering the price of the Rival 100.
The USB power cable measures in at 1.8m and is rubberised, this is perfectly fine for a £30 mouse and a braided cable does come with some performance enhancements but this isn’t a major issue in the grand scheme of things. For me personally I love all my equipment to have braided cable and I would even consider it a deal breaker in a large number of cases, however due to the quality of the build of the Rival 100 I would be willing to overlook it.
It is also worth noting at this point that unlike some other models the Rival 100 is available in a number of colours that may be a plus for some users looking to colour co-ordinate their command centres, personally I love the black and orange.
Performance
I put the Rival 100 through its paces, I ran amok on games, I used it for work and ran it through a number of performance tracking tests. As I had deducted before using the mouse, the Rival is more suited to claw gameplay than palm grips and again I was easily able to adapt and had no problems with the feel and movement of the mouse. The lightweight design of the Rival 100 and solid build quality meant it performed excellently in first person shooter games which in no small part due to the low lift off distance, I would argue that it feels very close to the Sensei which I use regularly.
The Rival 100 is still very comfortable to use once you do get to grips with it, pun intended. The materials feel high-grade and all the buttons are very well placed for gaming use, I never accidently clicked the forwards and backwards key or found it difficult to click them when I so desired which was great.
When looking closely at the sensors performance I was less impressed, the stepping system and lack of control over what exact sensitivity I was using was stifling in certain games despite the large overall range of DPI it covered. 90% of the time I play games I sit on 800 CPI(SteelSeries version of DPI) which was not available so I had to adapt across the board to this…not a fan of that, It is also noteworthy that the last two increments that the Rival 100 can cater for jumps from 2000 to 4000 CPI. Yes for a £30 mouse you could perhaps give this but quite frankly if you’re going to cut corners to save costs you need to provide a solid foundation to replace the feature you pulled out and this is too hit and miss for me. This is obviously not a big issue for a lot of people, people who play on certain settings competitively however just need to keep that in mind.
The SteelSeries Rival 100 main target audience is the gamer looking for a budget gaming mouse and the Rival 100 is perfect for that, the Rival was also equally useful for everyday office uses and the smoothness and control I had using it were superb. This precious continues up to around 1000 DPI, after that is a very severe drop off in control and accuracy as you reach towards the higher sensitivity. If you dare to set the DPI to 4000 you will easily notice hot jittery it is, for a budget mouse this is pretty much expected. The Rival 100 response time is great across all sensitivity ranges and is very responsive which I cannot fault, the only drawback in this area is that you don’t quite have the resolution tracking of some other mice, namely the Rival 300.
Overall when looking at the performance it is safe to say the solid lightweight build is beautifully supported by the customization of the hardware and performs admirably in its price range.
Does the SteelSeries Rival 100 reflect value for money?
You can currently pick up a SteelSeries Rival 100 for less than £30 over on Amazon, this is the cost of a takeaway. Some of the flashier features of some gaming mice have been shelved to make the Rival 100 a robust and affordable option when shopping for a gaming mouse and honestly overachieves on expectations and capabilities of a mice in its price range has any right to do.
Physically the mouse is designed for people with average of smaller hands and can cater to a wide variety of grip styles if you fall in this category, and if you have larger hands you are kind of pigeon-holed into playing claw. The
The soft touched finish, light weight design, zero acceleration, low lift and smooth glide will put in some work for you for minimal cost and perform just as well at home as it would in a sweaty LAN. It is built well and performs above its weight class.
Yes there are some negatives when looking at the sensitivities and other areas but when considering the price of the Rival 100 you really cannot argue that you are getting a mountain of positive features for your money and it is 100% worth the money you’d invest. I’m going to give the SteelSeries Rival a solid 7/10, users certainly should not be discouraged from buying the product as it really will do some work for you, there are some ultimately insignificant drawbacks when looking at the Rival 100 as a whole and may alienate a small minority of people.
Pros
Very well built
Value for money
Good performance
Engine 3 Software
Cons
Bigger hands may have some issues adapting your grip
Sensor has only 8 CPI settings to choose from
#SteelSeries Rival 100 Review, budget mice done well #GamingMice When shopping for a device to suit your needs generally you look for a product that does everything you want for a reasonable price or even a bargain before you make a sale, this reflects value for money and although the product you get may not be top draw it delivers on your expectations.
