Review Steelseries Sensei

Steelseries Sensei, looking at the brand SteelSeries, you know that it is high quality gaming gear equipment. Steelseries works seriously on the gaming products only. Working side-by-side with world gaming champions to create a gaming mouse. This mouse has been tested over and over by all the masters from Counterstrike 1.6, Starcraft 2, HoN, Doom, Warcraft 3, LoL and last but not least DotA. The main purpose of this mouse is to maximize the skill and fulfilling the needs of the champion.  

Now, we are done with mesmerizing story from the brochure, What we need is the proof. Lets take a look one by one about this SteelSeries Sensei.

All the Steelseries box looks alike, it is designed to proof you that this product is created for professional gamer and not just a low-end one.   

It reminded me of Silver Surfer (on Fantastic Four) meet GABAN (old super hero movie) when I see the design. Covered in Chrome Steelseries Logo with Black color makes the look of Steelseries more like Robot Futuristic.  Gold plated and Braided Cable are must for Steelseries, since the Razer team always thinking about the worst-case on playing game. When we look at it, we know right away that the size and shape looks like SteelSeries Xai. If we change the Chrome color with Black and in unplug to the computer, it is very hard and confusing for us to differentiate with Xai.  

After we plug in the computer, you can see right away the light on the bottom of the LCD written STEELSERIES (the default setting). Also, it lights up the orange LED on the scrolling, the Optical LED and the SteelSeries Logo. There are too many LED lights and all of them are changed-able.   

In the weight, Sensei is much heavy than XAI. As my hand touching it, I felt the comfortable of the Mouse. Eventough it is not ergonomic design, its ambidextrous is very comfortable in my right hand. As I moved the mouse, than I felt its minus points; the 2 buttons on the right side (activate the “Page up and Down”), “accidently” being clicked everytime by my ring-finger. But then I thought, I just need to accustom to it

I have not see the wild-side of Sensei, therefore I opened up the driver profile, but what I got was “though” customization. Eventough Sensei provide the presetting from Counterstrike and Starcraft Masters, the setting of this mouse is much less user-friendly.

It would be a waste when you play a game in 400 dpi, so I changed it into 11400 dpi. Don’t be surprised since this Sensei is equipped with 32 bit processor equal to Pentium 75, which able to double the 5700dpi. Make a bit tuning on Windows Acceleration by putting it on the Second bar, you can controlling the mouse nicely and un-wild running around. Running smoothly in the highest dpi without any jitter and skipping with having the Hard-surface mouse like Steelseries 4HD.

Gold Plated USB cable is a must for Gaming Gear

As I said before, this is a very sophisticated mouse every sell. The Steelseries team names this features EXACT. For examples we have Angel Snapping for drawing a straight line, Exactlift to adjust your lift-distance, Exactaim to slow-down the movement customade to your hand movement too, Excataccel the opposite side of Exactaim that make mouse moving faster, and Exactsense that give us the freedom to choose dpi from 1 to 5700 (you can put it 1, 358 or 5699 dpi).

It is great isn’t it? When you go to the Gamenet, you Noneed to have your driver, you just need to turn your mouse around and make a tweak on the LCD so that adjustable to your gamenet computer. For Macro user, you will have lots of fun with this mouse because of its complexity and the number of buttons.

On the numbers of test on Mousepad 4HD, there has been a bit scratch on Sensei’s Mousefeet; therefore you need to prepare yourself for extra money to change the Mousefeet. The hardsurface will “eat” your Sensei’s Mousefeet even faster, so I tried using the SteelSeries QCK mass Soft Surface. I felt the changing on its lift-distance everytime I lifted the mouse. So I went to Exactlift and made it smaller to 3%, but it still have problem. This brings to the decaying of its Speed-performance and Accuracy.

Overall, it performs very good. Smoothly aimed but not slow and un-responsive. It is nicely designed for 3 different types of grabbing and ambidextrous. For those who have either small or big hands, will found no problem. In my opinion, may be this is the most advanced mouse every sold at this moment.

Pros :
- Most Sophisticated mouse, macro, light, custom name it!
- Very comfortable with PLAM, CLAW or FINGER grabber.
- Ambidextrous, easy to use for left-handed.

- You don’t need any driver when you play in the gamenet, just turn Sensei around and do the setting from the LCD.

Cons :
- Very complicated
- For button 6 and 7 on the right side is very annoying (for right-handed user)
- You will feel the heat after using it too long.
- No Weight Adjustment