Software
While you don’t need to use the Sensei software thanks to its onboard processing and memory capabilities, you only get the full features of the mouse by loading in the Steelseries engine drivers. They’re nice and clean and are pretty easy to use once you’ve played around for a few minutes.
The first screen shows off the button layout of the mouse, allowing you to remap keys if you so wish. You can also at any point in the software, change the profile you’re editing. There are several pre-loaded ones for a few popular games, but you can add your own as well.
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The second panel allows further profile management, but little else. The third tab however is where the real action starts. Here you can adjust all the features that the Sensei is known for. These include some typical values like colours, sensitivity, polling rate and lift distance (though Steelseries have their own names for all of these.
However there are also three features that arn’t commonly found. ExactAccel, Freemore and ExactAim, these allow for some interesting tweaks. The former and latter allow the DPI (Steelseries insist on calling it CPI) to ramp up or down depending on the speed you move the mouse. This allows for increased speed or accuracy depending on the environment. Freemove lets you adjust the ammount of movement correction the Sensei makes. This is a value that’s included in every mouse, but this one lets you have it off, on, or anywhere in between.
On top of all of this, the sensitivity of the Sensei can be adjusted in increments of one DPI, all the way up to 11,400; far too much for almost anyone to handle effectively, but it’s there if you want it. There are only two options to switch between, high and low, but for most this should be enough. This can be switched on the fly using the button behind the scroll wheel.
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Colour options are pretty impressive, with the whole rainbow gradiant of colours available to choose from. There’s no breathing, blinking or cycling effects like some mice, but the colour options are varied enough to keep most happy.
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You can also load in your custom logo here for the LCD. It’s completely pointless but kind of cool. The BMP’s used are shown in negative and it doesn’t like gradiants, but it works well enough.
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The final tab lets you track your own button presses. Presumably this is to help the pro gamers somehow, but I don’t really see how.
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How do you configure the graphics below? Is there any difference of the steelseries engine to that of previous steelseries drivers? would there be in app sensing to find which app is running? smth like the Kone?
As far as I’m aware, you need to manually switch which profile you have setup, but it only takes a couple seconds.
Great review. Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Finding the perfect mouse for yourself is hard. But having multiple reviews on items helps out. Trying to find something to replace my Diamondback still :) this mouse seems like a good option to put on my list.
I would heartily recommend it. The only caveat to this review that I should add, is due to the smooth surface, the top does collect a lot of dirt. It needs cleaning once every couple weeks unless you don’t mind finger marks.