SteelSeries’ new mice are super light, with ultra-wideband and swappable batteries

The new ergonomic Rival Pro and ambidextrous Sensei Pro wireless gaming mice are some of the company’s most interesting models in years. They’re familiar designs that feel incredibly lightweight to hold (53 grams each in black, one gram more in white), and they ship with two signature SteelSeries features found in its other product categories: swappable batteries and a wireless base station to pair to.

The circular batteries are easy to use, unlocking and locking in place in the mouse and base station. The station can keep a spare charged — and you might need it sooner than you think, as each battery is rated to last for 16 hours in the 8,000Hz polling rate. I’ve swapped these batteries at least six times during my few weeks of testing, though knocking the polling rate down to 1,000Hz boosts it to 60 hours for each battery.

Instead of using 2.4GHz like most wireless gaming accessories, these mice communicate with their base station via ultra-wideband (UWB) between 6.4GHz and 9.056GHz, giving them access to parts of the spectrum that aren’t cluttered by signals from any (or, at least, as many) nearby consumer electronics. SteelSeries says that this affords the mice 20 times the bandwidth and lower latency, and it’s used to deliver high polling rates with better consistency than other brands.

The mice launch alongside some new developments for the GG companion app. There’s SuperSync, a feature that decouples click and sensor polling, letting you have, say, 8,000Hz click reporting and 4,000Hz sensor reporting. SteelSeries says that decoupling them should lessen the burden on your CPU with 8,000Hz enabled, and may work better in games that have incompatibility issues with high polling rates. There’s also Smart DPI, a feature that can automatically adjust DPI when transitioning from in-game to navigating through menus, slowing when it comes time to make a selection in a menu, and returning to your preferred sensitivity when you resume the game.

One of my favorite new updates is that GG is available as a browser-based web app now in Chrome or Edge, not just as something you need to download. The feature-reduced web version seems good in a pinch, letting you install firmware updates and adjusting simple settings. It’s always nice to see more gaming companies adopt web-based alternatives.

The Rival Pro and Sensei Pro cost $179 each and are available to preorder now, shopping on October 13th. SteelSeries is also releasing miniature versions of both form factors that weigh four grams less and cost the same price.

I’ve been expecting more gaming companies to take on Logitech’s X2 and X3 Superstrike with haptics-based mice of their own. Perhaps those will come someday, but swappable batteries and better connectivity via UWB prove that there are still plenty of appealing ways to improve on mice before moving on from mechanical switches.