PC World - USA (2019-02)

68 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2019

REVIEWS STEELSERIES RIVAL 650

weight most mice try to target. Fully loaded,

the Rival 650 comes in at a whopping 153

grams. I like a heavy mouse, but even for me

that’s pretty sluggish.

Personally, I’ve been running with the front

two slots loaded on each side, tipping the

center of gravity towards my fingertips. This

allows me to snap-aim left and right a bit

faster, the extra weight throwing the front end

around while the rear stays a bit more

stationary. It’s personal preference though,

and you could easily spend days

experimenting with different combinations if

that’s of interest.

My only real complaint with the Rival

650’s design is, as usual, a button placement.

The Rival 650 is pretty stock-standard for

2018, with the usual left-, right-, and middle

mouse buttons, scroll wheel, and a DPI

switcher on top. It does however have three

thumb buttons—two placed horizontally like

usual, and then a third stretched vertically

towards the front.

It’s too small, that last one. I didn’t even

notice it at first. It’s maybe a half-inch long,

incredibly thin, and placed so far towards the

front of the mouse that only the most

dedicated palm gripper could ever touch it.

Even then, it’s almost impossible to keep your

thumb on all three thumb buttons at the same

time, rendering its existence entirely

superfluous. Given how much thought went

into the thumb panel on the Rival 500 (go.

pcworld.com/rv50), I’m disappointed with

the Rival 650’s.

CHARGING AHEAD

Still, it’s a great effort from SteelSeries—and

made even better by the hardware under the

hood. The Rival 650 actually features not just

one but two gimmicks.

First and foremost, the dual-sensor

system. The primary sensor on the Rival 650 is

the SteelSeries-exclusive TrueMove3, better

known as SteelSeries’s

variant of the beloved and

industry-standard

PWM3360. That’s really all

you need to know. The

TrueMove3 is free of mouse

smoothing up to 3,500

DPI, as opposed to the

standard 2,000 DPI on the

baseline PWM3360—

although that’s a difference

so small as to be