Steel Series Rival 700

Steel Series Rival Mouse 700

If you haven’t heard about steel series then either you haven’t been to a e-sports tournament, haven’t watched any online or you never paid any attention to the banners and the advertisements. It may sound weird but Steel Series is the most prominent part of any e-sports competition and they products are loved by gamers around the world, based on the outclass quality. Personally, I love the name of the brand and how their products are conventional looking yet have the classic feel that gives it the awesome touch.

When it comes to the Steel Series Rival 700 in particular and the rival series in general, the company has done an amazing job. We consulted a bunch on professional gamers and they love the overall performance and the feel that they get from the steel series mouse. The Rival 700 has made its name in the market due to some pretty cool and unique features. The steel series has tactical alerts system, which means it can vibrate based on the event happening in a particular game. Imagine, you are in the middle of an online match in CS: GO and you don’t concentrate on your ammo, the mouse will vibrate in order to bring your attention to the limited bullets in your magazine. It is widely known as “The Mouse that Vibrates”, and it is pretty much in-line with that statement.

Moving on, the Steel Series Rival 700 has an OLED display panel as well. The OLED display can be programmed to display anything at all ranging from the score in the game to GIF of your choice. It gives you that extra information for which you may have to look around the screen and end up being distracted, with the OLED panel you will always know where to look for the information you need during a game. For instance, if you are playing Dota 2 and you go out of mana or health, the screen will display the mana or the health.

The list of features doesn’t stop right there, there is more included within. The Steel Series Rival 700 is particularly for those people who would like to setup their mouse according to their liking, whether it is from a software perspective or hardware perspective. Yup, that’s right! The Rival 700 has a modular body that allows you to set up your mouse the way you wish for it to be. The modular design allows you to change the body cover, the rubber at the back of the mouse, the connecting cable and also the pointing sensor. The mouse comes with the optical sensor in-box, namely, the Pixart PMW3360 which offers a whopping 16,000 DPI, however, you have the option of switching to a ADNS 9800 which offers 8200 CPI. The choice may vary from gamer to gamer and definitely depends on the game you are playing.

The top cover can be changed to any color as the user pleases and this can also be an option for people who think the mouse isn’t good with the grip. Similarly, there are a few options with the connecting cable including a soft material, totally depending on the preferences of the user.

The Steel Series Rival 700 has multiple software editing options a well, you can program all the 7 keys on the mouse including the forward and backward key above the rubber thumb rest and the key on the far end of the thumb rest, besides the DPI balancer, the scrolling wheel, the left and the right key buttons.

Even though the Rival 700 has to offer several features and functionalities, but there are still a few short comings. The GUI of the steel series application is pretty confusing and takes a while before you can get a hold of it. The OLED screen of the left is pretty useless, logically thinking you cannot use it for any in-game functionality because you will have to rotate the phone a little in order to view that. The opinion of others may conflict with that of ours though. The mouse weighs 135g, which is pretty heavy and unlick the G502 Proteus Spectrum, there is no option of lowers the weight. Adding up to the weight, the rival 700 doesn’t offer an ambidextrous design, which means if you are not a right-handed user then the mouse is not an option for you.

The biggest drawback to the steel series rival 700 is the price tag. It is pretty expensive for a mouse and would have been more logical had it included a few cover options within the box, however, that is not the case. In that price range, there are multiple rivals that may fall short in terms of the uniqueness factor but if you are in for a mouse that has an amazing performance over all the gimmicks, then you may need to give this one a second thought.

Pros:

  1. Has an RGB lighting of industry standard
  2. Mouse can be customized according to the needs.
  3. Players are notified through programmable tactile alerts of in-game events.

Cons:

  1. Price is high for some.
  2. The modules are useful though but a bit expensive