[section_title title=Performance]Performance
To kick things off, I found the Sensei Wireless to be a comfortable mouse that is easy to use and doesn’t have any questionable button placements or odd shape. The mouse itself is small and undefined in shape allowing you to glide around with ease, or laziness, whichever suits you best. The Sensei Wireless doesn’t suffer form the high-up buttons that I felt the Rival did thanks to the low profile. The LMB/RMB are also very snappy but not too sensitive to pressure, similar to Razer mice which tend to be from experience. The default button for switching DPI isn’t too obtrusive on top of the mouse either and sticking to the top of the mouse, the scroll wheel has good traction which you get used to after some usage.
As for in-game performance, the Sensei continued its low-profile under the radar approach from its aesthetics and comfort into in-game performance. Aside from adjusting to the shape and button placement after a few rounds it felt like I was just using a slightly faster and smaller mouse than I usually use – and that isn’t a bad thing at all. The extra side buttons on the right were a boon for League of Legends for use with active items and Dragon timers.
The DPI switching does inhibit a brief stutter as the sensor switches, but I’m not sure if this was due to the relatively large DPI shift I had setup or just a quirk of the software. Sticking with the DPI switching, it’s a shame that the Sensei doesn’t support more than two individual DPI settings as it means you miss out on having a really low DPI setting – a ‘sniper’ setting – for FPS game play. This seems like something that should be relatively simple to implement in software but there’s no option to create a singular low-DPI mode yourself; an ideal use of the side buttons.
Battery capacity is really quite good given how light the mouse is. On a full charge I managed to squeeze around 5 hours of League of Legends playtime out and it was at the 50% mark in the SteelSeries software. That 5Â hours was all but constant tracking and clicking of all available buttons on the mouse with a DPI of 3200. Personally speaking I was impressed with the battery life and if you do find yourself running out of juice plug-and-play is just a USB cable away – you could even keep a dedicated one plugged into a keyboard hub or similar to save you taking the supplied one out of the charging dock.
The Sensei isn’t a bad mouse at all then, but how do I feel it stacks up in comparison to previous mice I’ve reviewed? Let’s find out.
