I always liked the Rival 100 and Rival 110. They were both held back, however—the Rival 100 suffered from a less than stellar sensor and the Rival 110 from less than stellar buttons. Thankfully, the Rival 3 finally managed to leave these shortcomings behind, resulting in the best iteration of this ambidextrous shape yet. Although the implementation isn't quite as good as on the ROCCAT Kain 100, the PMW3331 in the Rival 3 performed admirably in my testing with the exception of a higher than average lift-off distance. Click latency is bordering on very low, which is an improvement over both the Rival 100/110 and the recently released Sensei Ten. Buttons have been improved across the board, providing snappy and satisfying clicks, along with longer-lasting main button switches. Compared to the Rival 110, roughly 10 g of weight have been shaved off, which—along with the nicely gliding feet and the grippy coating—contributes to the great handling of the Rival 3. Finally, the RGB lighting is quite impressive, with a limited selection of fairly complex effects to choose from. SteelSeries' staple software, SteelSeries Engine 3, provides a decent number of customization options, which can for the most part be saved to the onboard memory without a problem.

Speaking of the software, it can still be a bit buggy currently, although I'm confident that those issues will be ironed out rather quickly. The only thing I can really criticize is the cable—while more flexible than the stiff cable of the Sensei Ten, it's still not quite on par with offerings from some competitors. In all fairness, it should also be mentioned that those offerings typically end up costing $20 more than the Rival 3. At $29.99, the Rival 3 is priced very competitively, clearly punching above its weight, which is why it gets the Budget and the Editor's Choice awards from me.