SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless Review

Layout, design and features …

The SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless Mouse has several lighting elements. The logo adorns the rear part, the two stripes serve both as lighting and to display the current connection status.

If these light up red, there is still no connection to the radio receiver. Once this has been established, the LEDs emit a beautiful blue light.

The Rival is connected via 2.4 GHz radio. In the past, these were unfortunately always very susceptible to interference from both WLAN and cell phones. However, even the positioning of two cell phones directly next to the Rival could not disturb it.

The mouse looks great. The large buttons and the rubberized thumb rests are very appealing.

However, the highlight of the Rival is hidden under the removable side panels.

Hidden underneath are the slots …

… for the supplied weights.

This means that the Rival can be variably equipped and adapted to the player’s requirements.

This is not only evident in terms of weight, but also in the total of seven freely assignable buttons. In addition to the three thumb buttons, this also includes a button for changing the DPI and a mouse wheel with click function.

The lower part of the mouse reveals the two sensors. Yes, you read that right. Z-W-E-I sensors! The main sensor scans the surface and allows the mouse to move across the screen. The second sensor measures the distance to the surface and prevents erroneous movements when the mouse is lifted. In addition, the power button and the connect button are located on the underside.

Despite the size of the Rival, it only weighs around 121 grams. This can be increased to up to 153 grams with the aforementioned weights.

The mouse is charged via USB cable. As the mouse is originally a model from 2018, it unfortunately does not yet have a USB-C port. However, to make it easier for the user to plug it in, the micro-USB connector has been fitted with an adapter.

A little tip from us: Get a magnetic micro USB adapter. They make charging much easier and are also quite inexpensive. But please be careful not to use round adapters. These may not fit due to the shape of the recess.

Now let’s move on to installing the software.

SteelSeries Rival 650 Wireless Software …