Roughly a year ago, SteelSeries released the Rival 5. Being the spiritual successor to the Rival 600, the Rival 5 struggled in several areas: motion delay, above average CPI deviation, subpar click latency, and polling rates below 1000 Hz being unstable. Unfortunately, while the Aerox 5 overall improves on these issues, many of them persist all the same.

Much like the Rival 5, the Aerox 5 employs the TrueMove Air sensor, which is a customized PixArt PAW3335. Primarily intended for use in wireless mice, the 3335 can be made to work in wired mice, as proven by the ASUS TUF M4 Air, among others. On the Aerox 5, results are a mixed bag. Thankfully, the issue with motion delay that was present on the Rival 5 has at least been resolved on the Aerox 5. CPI deviation, on the other hand, is just as high as it was on the Rival 5, and more importantly, CPI adjustment isn't consistent or linear. That is, even steps nominally separated by 100 CPI may end up deviating by 140 CPI or 80 CPI or some other random value. Accordingly, getting the value one actually wants is difficult to impossible on the Aerox 5. Moreover, polling rates below 1000 Hz still suffer from instability. While the Rival 5 had periodic off-period polls, the Aerox 5 has bursts of entirely broken polling, which really is no improvement. Click latency at least has been lowered compared to the Rival 5, though at 7.2 ms, latency is still nothing more than decent.

Aside from these issues, all of which would be fixable in firmware updates, the Aerox 5 is a genuinely good mouse. Much like on the Rival 5, the buttons are the greatest asset of the Aerox 5. TTC Gold switches are used for the main buttons, which provide fairly light yet firm and snappy actuation. The side buttons are excellent across the board: Pre and post-travel are equally low, and despite quite large buttons, the pressure point is even across their entirety. Much like on the Rival 5, however, the rocker is quite stiff, which may result in the entire mouse being lifted up when using it. The placement of the sniper button is close to ideal: out of the way yet readily accessible. The scroll wheel is solid as well, with tactile and controlled scrolling, albeit at elevated noise levels. The cable is the same as on the Prime Mini series: detachable and decently flexible. Thankfully, the Aerox 5 too utilizes a more standard connector, so replacing the cable with a more flexible one shouldn't be much of an issue. Unlike on the Rival 5, the feet are now made of pure PTFE, resulting in significantly improved glide.

While the Rival 5 weighed 86 g, the Aerox 5 clocks in at a whopping 20 g less. SteelSeries employs the help of holes to achieve that, though the sides are kept solid. Despite the addition of holes, the build of the Aerox 5 is just as solid as that of the Rival 5: no rattle, flexing, and just very minor creaking. The side buttons cannot be actuated by squeezing the sides, either. Given how large and bulky of a mouse the Aerox 5 is, getting the weight this low without any compromises in regard to shell rigidity is an impressive achievement.

At the same time, the Aerox 5 costs $20 more than the Rival 5, which is a rather hefty premium for a weight reduction, slightly lower click latency, and fixed motion delay. For $79.99, I'd at least expect SteelSeries to address issues still pending from more than a year ago, especially considering a largely comparable competitor such as the Glorious Model I retails for $59.99. In addition to that, the Aerox 5 is still dependent on SteelSeries GG, which continues to use a whole lot of resources for no good reason. Even though all settings can be saved to the mouse, most people using a button-heavy mouse like the Aerox 5 prefer leaving the software running at all times, which comes at a significant RAM usage cost. Overall, the Aerox 5 is not a bad mouse, but simply too pricey for what is on offer.