Looking at the current mouse market, one could get the impression that large, right-handed ergonomic mice with lots of buttons have gone a bit out of fashion. That would be unfortunate as the audience for multi-purpose gaming mice no doubt still exists. The Rival 5 aims to fill that gap, but while it succeeds in some aspects, it falls short in others.

First, the sensor. PixArt's PAW3335, dubbed TrueMove Air by SteelSeries, is used. The 3335 is, first and foremost, intended for wireless applications, where its power-saving features serve to extend battery life. On a wired mouse, there is no need to save power, and accordingly, no reason to use a wireless sensor with all the power-saving features enabled. Although other wired mice such as the HyperX Pulsefire Haste or ASUS ROG Chakram Core used the 3335 as well, the power-saving features were disabled, effectively turning the 3335 into a regular wired sensor. Unfortunately, the same isn't true of the Rival 5. Two things are of note here. For one, the behavior whereby motion delay is greater at the onset of motion, which has been observed on multiple 3335 implementations beforehand, also is present on the Rival 5. Essentially, when moved from a standstill, the sensor needs some time to "switch gears;" i.e., to go into higher framerate modes. While this behavior is acceptable on a wireless mouse where efficiency is paramount, it simply isn't on a wired mouse. The second issue pertains to a base motion delay, which compounds the first issue even further. Across all CPI steps, a base delay of roughly 1.5–2 ms is present, which really adds up with the onset delay. In addition to these two main issues, less relevant but still unnecessary issues surfaced during testing: All polling rates except for 1000 Hz suffer from periodic outliers. Even though 1000 Hz is the most important and indeed works just fine, I'd expect this to be true for all available settings in this day and age. Lastly, a recurring issue on 3335 implementations also makes its appearance on the Rival 5: CPI deviation; i.e., actual CPI not matching nominal CPI. Though not excessively high, it's definitely higher than I'd want it to be. The same goes for click latency: Just short of 10 ms, click latency isn't unreasonably high, but considering previous SteelSeries mice with the same switches displaying significantly lower latencies, I struggle to see why the same shouldn't be possible on the Rival 5.

The performance issues are really unfortunate, since aside from these, the Rival 5 is a solid mouse. At 86 g, the Rival 5 is appreciably light despite being genuinely big and built like a tank. Very much intended for palm grip, the Rival 5 fills the hand like few other right-handed ergonomic mice. What's more, it has ten buttons in total, all of which are of high quality. The side buttons are arranged in such a way that they're readily told apart, easy to get to without having to change one's grip too much, and without being in the way. Particularly the main buttons provide a very nice click feel, with minimal travel, snappy actuation, and virtually no lateral button movement. The only flaw pertains to the side-button rocker, as pushing that one up typically lifts the mouse as well, rendering it somewhat useless during regular use. Still, coupled with the tactile and not too noisy scroll wheel, the Rival 5 handles very well, with a nice quality feel from top to bottom. Furthermore, the mouse feet are perfectly fine, and even though the cable isn't amazingly flexible, it's no doubt flexible enough.

Just recently, SteelSeries created a new overarching software suite called GG, which the trusty old Engine 3 has been embedded into. SteelSeries Engine in fact hasn't received any changes and functions the same as it always has. GG, on the other hand, introduces some new stuff: First of all, upon launch, one is prompted to create a SteelSeries account, which is required to use SteelSeries Moments, the second addition. While one can safely skip this step, GG really doesn't have much new to offer if one does not use Moments, which is nothing but capture software anyway. Frankly, I fail to see what GG adds in the first place, aside from a higher RAM footprint. I don't think the world has been waiting for Moments, and it would've been easy to offer it as a separate executable. Thankfully, Engine currently can still be downloaded as a separate application, but for how long it'll be supported is anyone's guess. Apparently, SteelSeries is planning to phase out support for Engine as a stand-alone application, which I'd consider unfortunate as there's really no reason to exclusively provide Engine bundled with GG. At least for the time being, Engine is still there, and allows the Rival 5's rich RGB lighting to be adjusted in detail.

Overall, I don't think the Rival 5 is a bad mouse. The potential is there, and with some firmware fine-tuning, it could become an easy recommendation. As of now, however, there are a few edges too many for me to hand out an award. When looking at the competition, the Rival 5 does quite well. The ASUS ROG Chakram Core has better performance, a similar number of high-quality buttons, hot-swappable main button switches, ultra-low click latency, but a stiffer cable, for $99.99. The EVGA X17 too has lots of buttons, although oddly positioned, better performance, including 8000 Hz polling, but a stiffer cable and higher weight, for $79.99. The Corsair Sabre RGB Pro goes for $59.99, also has 8000 Hz polling, lower weight, great performance, but less buttons, and merely thinking about iCUE gives me a headache. Lastly, the ASUS ROG Gladius III comes with better performance, hot-swappable mechanical and optical main button switches, ultra-low click latency, and a highly flexible cable, but less buttons, for $89.99.