A mouse is a mouse, right? Wrong, particularly when it comes to gaming mice, and at CES 2018 SteelSeries is proving that point further with an interesting innovation in its latest model, which adds a secondary optical sensor.
The Rival 600 gaming mouse not only has a TrueMove 3 sensor – as seen on the firm’s previous mice, boasting true one-to-one tracking and a maximum sensitivity of 12,000 counts-per-inch (CPI) – but it has a second optical sensor for tracking lift-off distance and further reducing any potential cursor jitter.
What that means in practical terms is when you sweep the mouse across the mat in a bigger movement, if you lift the peripheral while doing so, as can easily happen, the cursor can potentially skip as the mouse comes back down, perhaps messing with your aim slightly.
This new dual-sensor system ensures that doesn’t happen, continuing to track movement even when the mouse is lifted. Furthermore, it allows the user to customize when the secondary sensor stops (or starts) tracking movement depending on the distance the mouse has been lifted.
Weight for it
There’s a raft of other customization possibilities with the Rival 600, which includes being able to adjust weight and balance across 256 different possible combinations.
The mouse has a base weight of 96g, with eight weights of 4g each that you can load it up with (for a possible maximum weight of 128g). Because the weights can be placed on the sides of the mouse – not just piled in the middle – you can also adjust the relative feel of the balance.
This SteelSeries peripheral also sports a 32-bit on-board ARM processor which allows the user to save sensitivity settings, button mappings and macros, as well as custom RGB lighting effects.
We loved the SteelSeries Sensei 310, which introduced the TrueMove 3 sensor that we found really did help combat hand-jitters, and this further dual-sensor refinement sounds promising indeed.
The SteelSeries Rival 600 is on sale now and will set you back £80 or $80 (around AU$100).
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