Performance

The SteelSeries Sensei was put through its paces in both games and doing general desktop work. The gaming tests were all conducted using raw input from the mouse. The sampling rate was fixed at 1000 Hz at all times. Sensei's sensor has a native resolution of 5700 DPI which is more than enough for everyone; it does however allow for interpolation up to 11400 DPI or twice the resolution of the sensor. Our initial tests show that the interpolation algorithm works way better than those of yesteryear, but it still not a substitute for true resolution.

The mouse was tested on a solid wood desk, SteelSeries 9HD and ModMyMachine SlamePad (black).

Games

Sensei performed well and handled just like its elder brother the Xai. With all the options present in the driver suite I am confident that anyone can tweak the mouse to their liking. Right from the start the Sensei mouse was quite easy to get used to coming from the older Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 1.1. In order to take full advantage of the sensor it was fixed at 5700 DPI for the game tests, and in-game sensitivity was lowered to provide the wanted total sensitivity. Once configured the gaming experience was very pleasant. It is worth noticing that the sensor performs best at its native DPI, so to avoid any unnecessary grief go for the high DPI and then simply scale back the sensitivity.

In Battlefield 3 the acclimatization period was extremely short because the mouse handled my usual low to medium sensitivity setup with ease. Even at high sensitivities the mouse remained very calm despite having zero angle snapping or any other custom smoothing features turned off. SteelSeries allows you to customize that as well in their driver suite which works great, when it works. Over our week of testing the "SteelSeries Engine"-service dropped four times on our fully updated Windows 7 x64 machine.

SteelSeries even lets you tweak the lift-off distance of the sensor, and this should be tweaked per mat. On the 9HD around 25% was need to keep the mouse tracking well, for the Mod My Machine pad 29% was used, even though the lift-off distance did not feel different between the two mats.

CounterStrike:Source yielded very similar results, this mouse is quirk free if you stick to the basics. Once you start meddling with the advanced settings in the driver you usually end up with a bad result. Tampering with the driver will of course allow you to get just the right amount of acceleration and angle snapping you want, but our guess is you are better off just learning to play with the mouse without the tweaks.

The buttons on the SteelSeries Sensei are definitely better than what is on the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 1.1 and is on par with what you find on the Mionix 5000 mice, which in short means they are great. They have just enough tactile feedback, and are positioned brilliantly for people with normal sized hands.
The Sensei uses the same sensor as the Xai gaming mouse which means it has very close to perfect tracking on hard mats. On soft mats some might experience slight negative acceleration at high speeds. On the two hard mats at our current disposal the mouse performed admirably.

Pushing the Sensei to a point where it does negative acceleration on a hard mat is impossible under normal circumstances. Sensor performance varies with the surface used and it should be noted that the Sensei is no different, best tracking was achieved on the 9HD and Mod My Machine mat, brief tests on a black cloth mat revealed that it is not ideal.

General Work

Working in various photo editing suites and CAD programs turned out to be a painless affair with the SteelSeries Sensei. Due to the seven well placed buttons you never feel that you have to go out of your way in order to activate a function. The insane DPI count does not make a difference, the interpolation works alright but is again totally uncalled for with desktop applications, even on a 2560 x 1440 monitor. Even at 5700 DPI the mouse is way too fast for any type of precision work and rockets around on your desktop. For those with ultra-high resolution monitors it might be usable.

Durability

The mechanical side of the mouse seems very robust. How the integrated hardware will hold up only time will tell. The driver suite does need a checkup with focus on stability at the very least on x64 systems.