Software

The Aerox 3 Wireless is compatible with SteelSeries Engine, SteelSeries' staple software suite. All available options are accessible on a single page: button remapping, macro functionality, acceleration settings, angle snapping, and polling rate (125, 250, 500, or 1000 Hz). CPI adjustment ranges from 100–18,000 CPI in increments of 100 CPI, for up to five levels.

Additionally, several further settings related to wireless functionality are available. "Sleep Timer" controls how much time has to pass before the mouse enters sleep mode. "Illumination Dim Timer" is for setting the idle time before illumination is dimmed. "High-Efficiency Mode" automatically disables all illumination, sets the polling rate to 125 Hz, and puts the sensor into a low-power mode. I've tested this mode in terms of latency, and the results aren't good—roughly 6 ms of motion delay make this mode rather pointless for pretty much any sort of gaming. "Illumination Smart Mode" automatically turns off any illumination whenever the mouse is not stationary. During testing, I discovered a rather annoying bug—after entering sleep mode, the mouse simply keeps slumbering. No amount of mouse movement will awaken it from its deep sleep, only turning it off and on again does the trick. This issue already plagued the Rival 3 Wireless, so I'm a bit surprised to see this bug still going strong several months later. That having been said, I've finally figured out the problem: Sensor movement only awakens the mouse after a random button has been clicked.

All settings are saved to the on-board memory, so the software does not need to be running (or be installed) all the time. On my system, the software had a RAM footprint of 255 MB on average when running in the foreground and a footprint of 50 MB when minimized to the system tray. Upon exiting the application, all processes are terminated, as they should be.

Lighting

The Aerox 3 Wireless has but a single physical zone for RGB lighting, which is an LED strip on its underside. However, through the software, three individual lighting zones can be configured. When selecting an RGB lighting effect, make sure to select all or at least one of these zones as no effect will be applied otherwise. A total of three pre-defined lighting effects are available in the software. These are Steady (single color), Color Shift, and Multi Color Breathe. Furthermore, a trigger effect can be combined with each of those effects. All effects can be further customized in terms of speed and colors. Of course, it is also possible to disable the lighting altogether.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. I had yet to figure out how RGB lighting is adjusted when shooting this video, so the ColorShift lighting effect has to suffice here. Please note that illumination was set to 100% brightness:

Battery Life

SteelSeries states a maximum battery life of up to 200 hours in Bluetooth mode, and up to 80 hours with the default settings. By default, the Aerox 3 Wireless disables illumination whenever the mouse is moving, and dims all lighting by 50% after 30 seconds of inactivity. Sleep mode is entered after five minutes of the mouse sitting idle. For this review, I decided to take the opposite route and test the Aerox 3 Wireless with the most draining settings; that is, at 1000 Hz, illumination at 100% brightness, and all power-saving options disabled. The results were quite shocking, to say the least. After just 10 hours of continuous use and gaming, the battery was fully drained. Based on this, I have my doubts about the battery indeed lasting at least 80 hours with the mouse set to 1000 Hz with no illumination at all.

Using the included USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable, I also measured charging speed during the constant current stage, which sits at around 0.320 A. According to my calculations, the battery has a capacity of 250 mAh.