SteelSeries Rival 110 Mouse Review

Sensor

• Sensor Name  SteelSeries TrueMove1
• Sensor Type  Optical
• CPI  200 – 7,200, 100 CPI Increments
• IPS  240, on SteelSeries QcK surfaces
• Acceleration  30g
• Polling Rate  1ms
• Hardware Acceleration  None (Zero Hardware Acceleration)

Design

• Top Material  Finger Print Resistant Semi-Rough Matte
• Core Construction  Plastic
• Shape  Ergonomic, Universal Design
• Grip Style  All Styles, Palm/Grip/Fingertip
• Number of Buttons  6
• Switch Type  Mechanical Rated For 30 Million Clicks
• Illumination  RGB Illumination
• Weight  87.5g
• Length  120.6mm
• Width  58mm (front), 57mm (middle), 68mm (back)
• Height  38.12mm
• Cable Length  2m, 6.5ft

Compatibility

• OS  Windows, Mac, and Linux. USB port required
• Software  SteelSeries Engine 3.10.12+, for Windows (7 or newer) and Mac OSX (10.8 or newer)

Box Content

• Product Information Guide
• Rival 110 Gaming Mouse

The Closer Look

The box for the Rival 110 is one of the smaller boxes I have received a mouse in before, but don’t let this fool you as it’s a pretty decent sized mouse once you’ve gotten past the simple packaging. After popping the box away its time to have a look over and see if there’s anything fancy and I have to say the mouse itself has a really nice matte finish to roughly 90% of the surface, the breaks in this being the side grip portion that have a glossy finish.

If you look closely at the left and right grip portions of the SteelSeries Rival 110 the moulded plastic dots, that somewhat help add a grip to the mouse, are visible and help somewhat although I would have liked a rubberised grip, however, this doesn’t affect usability. The rubber grip on the scroll wheel may look really pronounced but when in use it actually has a smooth rounded feeling to it which is great for page browsing. Did I Mention it has single zone RGB? This, as you may have guessed, covers the SteelSeries logo of course but also the sides of the scroll wheel. It’s also somewhat understated which is pleasant to see compared to some devices available at the moment when gaming the RGB lighting which is using SteelSeries Prism isn’t very noticeable which is a nice bonus.

One thing I was a little disheartened by was the lack of braided USB cable on the SteelSeries Rival 110. The braided cable has pretty much become a mainstay of the peripheral market and can sometimes help the longevity of hardware, mileage may vary on this sort of thing. The light grey cable used isn’t too stand out which isn’t so bad but even though it has a rubber coating it doesn’t drag too badly on my mouse pad or desk space.

Software and Performance

This section, for me at least, is the important bit finding out how well the SteelSeries Rival 110 performs in gaming and day to day tasks. I’ll also cover the SteelSeries Engine here that allows DPI/CPI and macros editing as well RGB customisation. Out of the box the SteelSeries Rival 110 is plug and play so you can get going straight away, I would however highly recommend getting the SteelSeries Engine as this will aid you in getting macros mapped, RGB lighting tweaks and of course getting the mouse up to date with the correct drivers.

Luckily the SteelSeries Engine is a really easy piece of software to use compared to some suites I have played with in the past. You can also save your profiles to your SteelSeries profile if you have one meaning you can get the settings on any PC you sign in to SteelSeries Engine with. You can also see all the SteelSeries devices you have within the Engine which can be quite handy for some folks.

Once you open up the item you want to set up, in this case it’s the SteelSeries Rival 110, you get presented with a plethora of things to click. Ranging from what each button can achieve via macros or remapping buttons to the all-important RGB settings. You can also fine-tune sensitivity, in Steelseries’ Engine they call it CPI but it’s just an alternative name for DPI, the max you can hit with the Rival 110 is a giddy 7200 CPI (DPI) perfect for many eSport titles where quick movement is needed. You can also change between top views and side views of the mouse which I found really helpful to make sure macros were being set on the right buttons.

So after getting the settings to a point where they feel just right, your mileage may vary, I hit my go-to game for testing out a mouse and that is CounterStrike GO. I felt it was actually a little faster than I was expecting as I could flick about and get hits on enemy players quite quickly. This was a little bit of a surprise as I had associated the Rival being a League of Legends type mouse. The only thing I really missed was having multiple side buttons but for how light the mouse is and how comfortable it is but that’s a happy compromise for me. However, as I have somewhat larger hands the mouse does feel a little small but that doesn’t knock down its effectiveness. The Truemove sensor used is actually super accurate and I found it was a little better when gaming due to its responsiveness. Overall I was pretty impressed with this little mouses performance and usability.

Conclusion

Performance

The sensor is really impressive for such a compact mouse, I definitely recommend this mouse for its impressive and accurate performance too. One thing I feel that lets the mouse down a smidge is for people like myself, with hands on the larger side, it feels quite small in the hand but this doesn’t affect how well it performs! It handles well in the usual day to day tasks as you’d expect but when the games come out it doesn’t have any trouble keeping up with the fast moments gaming usually brings.

Design

The SteelSeries Rival 110, as I have mentioned previously, is a really compact mouse but don’t let the compactness of this mouse fool you it’s very impressively designed for ergonomics. I felt that the lack of buttons initially was a downside to the mouse but after getting to grips with it the minimalistic approach makes it a whole lot less cluttered which is ace for its size.

Value

This point is a slightly difficult one as it has features some more expensive mice carry but it also lacks features mice of a similar price have. The SteelSeries Rival 110 can be had for anywhere between £38 – £40 online from what I can find which isn’t too bad. I feel that this may be in the higher price range for a mouse like this but the SteelSeries badge more than makes this reasonable as you get what you pay for, a really high performing sensor and an ergonomic mouse all with great design thrown in.

So after getting to grips with the impressive Rival 110 what do I think? Well, if you are looking for a cost-effective upgrade for an older mouse, at time of writing the SteelSeries Rival 110 can be nabbed online for around £40 online. I’d certainly recommend going for this mouse as it’s a great all rounder for daily tasks and gaming as its perfectly ample for the job. After all this I guess its award time for the SteelSeries Rival 110 and it gets a gold award from me for the performance and price being equivalent to each other making the price more than ample.