SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless Gaming Mouse Review
The SteelSeries Rival 650 is an upgrade of the Rival 600 Gaming mouse. One difference between the two is; while the Rival 600 is a cabled mouse, Rival 650 is wireless. Another variance between the Rival 600 and 650 is that a battery is required to power the later.
Like the original 600 version, Rival 650 boasts of having two sensors: one meant to track movement, and the other for sensing lift-off from a mousing surface. The two mice have eight-zone RGB lighting, 7 buttons, as well as an adjustable weight system.
Read on to discover more differences and similarities of these two SteelSeries Rival mice.
Design and features of the SteelSeries Rival 650 Gaming Mouse
Minus the cord and battery, Rival 650 gaming mouse is identical to Rival 600. The mouse comes with a soft-touch plastic finish on its side grips and palm rest. The mouse’s right and left buttons have a matte finish and an easily notable concave shape that cradles your mousing fingers. A rubberized scroll wheel gives a pleasant, notched movement, and behind it is a DPI sensitivity button.
Buttons
On the left of SteelSeries Rival 650 Gaming Mouse, there are forward and back buttons and another button that sits a little bit far in front of your thumb. This button comes unassigned, and you can program it like the rest of the mouse’s buttons if your grip can reach and engage it.
On the other hand, the two buttons are placed conveniently to sit just above your thumb. They don’t protrude far from the mouse’s side surface, and so you can avoid them if you do not intend to engage them. These two buttons give a gratifying click once pressed.
Lighting
Rival 650 wireless gaming mouse has an 8-zone RGB lighting, that’s similar to that of Rival 600. However, the mouse may look as if it only has 4 zones- the logo, the scroll wheel, and two lighting strips on the palm rest.
Conversely, each lighting strip can be programmed to give a sum of eight colors. Better, you can get creative when choosing your lighting options.
Sensors
There are two sensors underneath the mouse. One is the requisite SteelSeries’s TrueMove 3 optical sensor used for tracking movement. The other is a depth sensor meant to detect anytime you lift your mouse from a mouse pad. You can easily set the lift-off detection sensitivity to make the cursor not move once you lift your mouse from the surface.
This TrueMove 3 sensor is similar to the one in Rival 600 and comes with a range of 100-12,000 DPI. While this is quite a high sensitivity, other makes like Logitech G Pro Hero 16K offer more sensitivity of up to 16,000DPI.
Weight
SteelSeries Rival 650 snaps off to show slots of the mouse’s adjustable weight system. These sides attach using magnets and you can hence do an excellent job of keeping the sides in place steadily, even when playing the most furious games.
This mouse comes with eight 4g weights that are inside a handy rubber case. You can put 4 on each of the mouse’s side to give you more flexibility on weight distribution from right, left, front, and back.
However, even without adding a single weight, SteelSeries Rival 650 is quite a heavy mouse. It weighs about 121g without weights, goes up to 153g when all 8 weights are added. This makes the mouse heavier compared to Rival 600 whose weight ranges from 96-128g, and the Logitech G Pro which weighs 83g.
Cable, Adapter, and Battery
On top of the weights package, Rival 650 wireless comes with a USB 2.4GHz wireless adapter and a charging cable. This mouse gives you 24 hours of continuous use, and SteelSeries claims that with only a 15-minute charge, the battery can last up to 10 hours.
Software
SteelSeries Rival 650 works well with the customizable SteelSeries Engine 3 software. You can use this exceedingly easy-to-use software to customize the mouse’s wireless settings and lighting.
There are only 2 main tabs for this mouse: settings and illumination. You can customize any of the mouse’s 7 buttons on the settings tab, and also set the mouse’s level of sensitivity for its two DPI settings.
Bottom Line
Selling at $119.99, SteelSeries Rival 650 is undeniably one of the higher priced gaming mice in the market. However, its great design, comfort, accuracy, and splendid performance make it worth buying. We hence recommend this mouse to any gamer in need of a high-end gaming mouse, and one who has no issues with an extra-weighted mouse.
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