// THE VERGE — MODA & SOCIETÀ
SteelSeries’ new mice are super light, with ultra-wideband and swappable batteries
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
The Rival Pro and Sensei Pro (and their mini counterparts) launch October 13th for $179.99 each.
The Rival Pro and Sensei Pro (and their mini counterparts) launch October 13th for $179.99 each.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
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.