SteelSeries announce Rival 500 multi-buttoned mouse

You hopefully caught my review of the totally tech’ed up Rival 700. Well, SteelSeries has also announced the availability of the Rival 500.

The SteelSeries Rival 500 has been designed around the gamer’s thumb and hand movements to increase efficiency, accuracy, and performance.

According to Ehtisham Rabbani, SteelSeries CEO

The Rival 500 is the first true multi-button gaming mouse engineered to maximize gaming efficiency, while keeping the gamers movement and comfort in mind… We created a MOBA/MMO mouse that fits your hand and not the other way around.”

Intuitive design

The SteelSeries Rival 500 has ditched the traditional multi-button grid layout in favour of a more natural feel.

Engineered for comfort and performance, the 500’s Next-Gen side-button layout makes identifying, clicking and combo clicking precise and easy.

The Rival 500 showcases gaming’s first flick down switches. This promises to be the fastest way to make a move since it responds to your thumbs natural flick motion instead of having to press it.

Tactile alerts

I wasn’t sure to start off with but in-game these just feel right. I am glad that SteelSeries has equipped the Rival 500 gaming mouse with their innovative tactile alert tech.

Gamers can fully customise and feel in-game events and alerts through subtle pulses. This actually gives you more of an advantage than I thought it would.

These alerts can notify you when cooldowns are up, ammo is out, health is low, or any other important-to-the-gamer in-game action occurs.

Maximum personalisation

This SteelSeries mouse comes armed with the Pixart 3360. This is arguably the most advanced optical sensor available, with up to 16,000 CPI. This can be adjusted via the SteelSeries Engine 3 software.

Gamers can also personalise the functions of all 15 individual buttons. Not only that, you can select RGB illumination patterns and lighting effects on the mouse to your taste.

This mouse offers extreme durability with a reinforced key design that evenly distributes the force of each click. The buttons have a 30 million key-press rating.