DATE OF PURCHASE: March 2018
TL; DR: It’s a great mouse. A great design that fits well in the hand, however it suffers from one or two unnecessary feeling shortcuts that keep it from being the last word in mouse peripheral design.

The Steelseries Rival 600 solves one major problem (for me at least) – a mouse that I can actually use with big hands while having my palm resting on the mouse. For many big handed people like myself who also opt to rest the palm of their hands on the mouse while using a PC, most mice on the market (even now after three years of use) are still designed for people to use the claw-grip, due to the smaller size of the mouse, or for people without the issue of large hands. The Rival 600 answers the call for more larger mice, the mice for the big handed. The mice I can actually lay my hands on without causing a first degree burn on my pinkie finger. At some stages this will sound like a love letter to the mouse (it is in some ways), but it will give an idea of just how much I love using this mouse, and why for me, this review is a solemn swan song.

FIRST LOOKS: From the box, it’s packaging to the software suite, Steelseries has done a very good job at keeping the experience nice and smooth. The box it came in was nicely packaged and the out of box experience was very good. The build quality was absolutely excellent on first look and use, and I was blown away at how much better it felt in my hands over the previous mouse (being a Logitech G502 HERO), even without the need of a thumb rest. The grips on the side were grippy, the feet on the bottom allowed the mouse to slide nice and cheerfully, and on a large mouse mat, it was a joy to use.

SOFTWARE: The Steelseries Engine 3 software has evolved nicely over the three years since I first got the mouse. The ability to be able to assign F13-F24 keys as native macros to the three macro buttons on the side of the mouse was a huge quality of life improvement that made (I imagine at least) many gamer’s lives easier. “No more setting Num Lock as my Push to Talk in games for me! I could use F13!”. It’s confusing why this approach wasn’t adopted earlier by the likes of Steelseries, Logitech etc. (Windows has had native support to recognise F13-F24 all the way since the beginning), but at least it’s here. The ability to set two discrete DPI settings based on a click of a button is very welcome (in case you need to use this mouse for multiple applications on the one machine), lift off distance adjustment is nice, the option for Acc./Dec. control, Angle Snapping (for mouse smoothing) and variable polling rate are all available to tweak the mouse to your liking. And I have made full use of all of them for various applications that may not have been the designer’s intended use case, but they’ve let me pull off some “bodging”. So that nets good marks in my books.

THE TODAY: Today the mouse core construction is still as strong as ever. The software, still very nice. However some of the long term use I’ve put to the mouse has unfortunately caused issues. On one aspect, not through the fault of the mouse itself, but in another, an oversight that did let me down. I’ll break it down into the two now:

NOT THE MOUSE’S FAULT: The reason why I’m writing this review today. As of today, I’ve had to make the heartbreaking decision to buy a competitor mouse. I do this every 2-3 years or so, to make sure that I don’t get anchored into one eco-system (or in other words, become a “fan boy”). But I *so* badly wanted this mouse to live forever. My extremely heavy use of the mouse has caused the Left Mouse Button to lose alignment with the mechanical sensor, and it has now unfortunately not 100% usable in a comfortable way. I let the mouse down. I doubt that many people would use it more than I do (this was my work AND play mouse, so it saw use for 12+ hours every single day).

ACTUALLY THE MOUSE’S FAULT: The grips. Many reviewers before me have already written about this extensively. The grips are usually the first thing that goes wrong with this mouse, and I can also join the line of people that make note of this. Steelseries really needs to fix their design choice of just simply cementing the grips on to a smooth plastic surface. It has only one little notch in the plastic indent on either side (one side for the plastic injection residue, the other to make room for the adjustable weight compartment), and the rest is smooth as you like plastic. After only a year and a half both the main grips for the left and right sides were gone. The glue had already started deteriorating only a year after I had owned it, and the grips were constantly moving around. This unfortunately has dragged back an otherwise great product from being the last word in mouse design. And it shouldn’t have to be – they could be replaced by some interchangeable part that fixes this issue and it would strive to first place, however the tire puncture has left it under threat from competitors. And from what I understand the problem still remains, so there’s still work to be done here.

While this mouse has to unfortunately go to e-recycling heaven, it is still worthy of five stars in my book. The fact the grips were the only thing I had an issue with (minus myself probably bricking the LMB on my own), should pay dividends to what a gem this mouse is. This review may be a silly little love letter, but it’s the only way I can convey how much I love it. And how sad I am to see it go.