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The RGB phenomenon for gaming peripherals is old news now; today we are looking at a mouse that vibrates. The Steel Series Rival 700 gaming mouse has many cool features that may justify the high price in a few months. But at today’s price of 100 USD on Amazon you can skip it altogether, unless you are a hardcore CS Go, Dota 2 or a Minecraft player.
The main highlights are the OLED display on the left side that can show custom bitmap pictures, but the resolution is pretty low, though. But in all honesty, even with game specific features for the CS Go, Dota 2 and Minecraft, it was anything but useful. It is kind of cool though to see the number of headshots, your kill to death ratio, the team score, and many others. And I also got to give it to Steel Series for doing a fantastic job with giving users a lot of options with what happens on screen. But with a very poor UI unfortunately and it took me some time to figure exactly what I wanted to show and how to show it on the display.

So is the OLED display a gimmick?

Yes, a big fat, yes. Our eyes are glued to the screen and never do we give the mouse any visual attention while gaming. And this is where Steel Series has introduced a new fantastic feature with the tactile alert which vibrates the mouse, and that is a lot more functional and useful than the OLED display. I bet it has been challenging to develop those custom APIs. So for example, in CS Go, every event can have a distinct vibration like if you get a kill, your health drops below 20%, you get flashed, and all those combined can have different vibration indicators. And this is pretty cool if you narrow down to your playing style. For example, I have double vibration every time I get a kill in CS Go which means I don’t have to look at the kill feed and detract my eyes from the crosshair. The same thing with my health bar, every time it drops below 20%, I have a distinct vibration that I know what it feels like.
You would also think that this is just a gimmick, but it has improved my concentration on the crosshair again because I don’t have to look those UI elements for information. Everything is coming from the mouse in those vibration indicators.

As for the rest of the mouse, it is very well built. The back cover is removable for extra plates. The rubber piece at the back is removable too. The cable is removable. You have two cables included. And finally, the sensor is also swappable. The Optical Pixar 3336 is included. It is considered to be the best sensor ever and also found in many other fantastic mice with an optional laser sensor module available. You can buy that separately.
I can see what Steel Series is trying to achieve here with having a good core body that is customizable. As for the rest of the stuff, we have excellent buttons. The primary clicks feel the best out of my entire collection. The scroll wheel is submerged exactly how it should be with a nice light middle click. And every scroll step is easily recognized. And I like that we only have 2 CPI settings. I always enable two on all my other mice. And the only thing that I would say is out of reach here is the bottom thumb button.
We have nice curve on the right side, slightly taller body on the left which supports my hand very well. No complaints here. But the weight is 135 grams without the cable, so it is a pretty heavy mouse. The sensor is brilliant, no acceleration with very low LOD. The vibration is just subtle for you to notice it but without affecting the aim.

I like their Engine 3 driver software integration so you can adjust your CPI, acceleration pulling rate and button customization plus the two lighting zones. But I am surprised that lift off distance is not configurable. And then entering the “Gamesense” tab is where you can go nuts with screen and tactile for these three games, unfortunately, those three games only. Honestly, I wish that they ditched the OLED display and dropped the price to $79 which is that sweet spot for a quality mouse. That tactile vibration is fantastic; I was more impressed with it than I initially expected. So that concludes the Rival 700 review.