Page 4 - Conclusion
As it turned out, $40 can buy you quite a bit with the SteelSeries Rival 100. It is not going to send Sensei owners out throwing their $80 mouse away tomorrow, but seriously though -- you are getting quite a bit of bang for your buck. Firstly, let us talk about its physical characteristics. The Rival 100 is a relatively compact mouse designed for people with small to medium sized hands, and can generally comfortably accommodate people with different grip preferences well. The soft touch shell and textured sides provide an excellent grip, even if you have sweaty hands while fragging your opponents at a LAN party. Combined with its smooth glide, lightweight build, zero acceleration sensor, and low lift off distance, the Rival 100 will satisfy first person shooter gamers on a budget and more. The overall build quality is also great for the price; the buttons are not as crisp as the company's higher end offerings, but who is expecting that anyway? The Rival 100 even features RGB illumination. It is configured for a single zone only, but do recall its price tag. Secondly, let us talk about its performance characteristics. You can expect a lag free experience with relatively sharp and precise handling characteristics up to around 1000 CPI. Once again, it is very good for a $40 mouse, but once you step up to higher sensitivity settings, you will definitely start to notice some jitter. Also, you are limited to eight preset sensitivity settings only. There is no fine tuning, so if you plan on buying this mouse, make sure you are comfortable with the steps. Thirdly, let us talk about the software. It uses SteelSeries' Engine 3 software, which is well-designed piece of software with an intuitive and smooth graphical user interface for a great end-user experience. All in all, the SteelSeries Rival 100 is a great value proposition. It will not blow your socks off in performance, but I must repeat myself one last time: For $40 at press time, you are getting a good chunk of high end features without a high end price tag.
SteelSeries provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Review Focus Summary:
8/10 means Definitely a very good product with drawbacks that are not likely going to matter to the end user.
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks; but should be considered before purchasing.
-- Final APH Numeric Rating is 7.2/10
Please note that the APH Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other sites.
The SteelSeries Rival 100 is a budget oriented mouse with a neat array of features normally found on higher end products.
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Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Performance Tests
4. Conclusion
