Jamie Robinson
Sep 6, 20213 min
Steelseries is a brand that I've admired for quite some time. Known for making excellent quality products such as the Arctis Pro range of headsets, I've been eager to get my hands on some of their products for testing. So as soon as the chance came up, you bet my answer was going to be a resounding yes. Under the microscope this time is the Steelseries Prime mouse.
I’ve tried a few different mice recently and for me the one to beat is the Logitech G502 Hero and unfortunately the Steelseries Prime doesn't come close. Fortunately however, it's not priced in a way that you’d really expect it to.
Pros:
Lightweight
Great FPS performance
Good build quality
Mechanical button clicks
Cons:
Lack of extra buttons
No “on the fly” DPI button
Scrolling wheel sensitivity
Lack of “frills”
Design wise, the Steelseries Prime mouse is pretty “Plain Jane” and purposefully so. Steelseries have proudly created a no BS mouse here, as their marketing material affirms - “Everything you need, Nothing you don't”. The Prime mouse is exactly that, it’s ultra compact, very minimalistic and overall a very clean design. One question I do have is, why have the removable cable for a wired only mouse? Someone might know the answer to this but it has left me a little baffled. Whilst they have made a mouse to match their tag line, “Everything you need, Nothing you don't”, I think the Prime could really benefit by featuring a few extra buttons or even an “on the fly” DPI adjustment button. It's something I really like about some of the other mice I've tried and something I think is an oversight from Steelseries. I think that minimalism still needs to be convenient when being competitive with what else is on the market.
Performance wise, I did notice an improvement in comparison to my regular mouse when gaming. However, the lack of extra buttons is something I sorely missed after becoming accustomed to the G502 Hero mouse (which has lots). The button clicks on the Hero are precise and satisfying, thanks to those optical mechanical switches. I’m a sucker for a nice click, and Steelseries assures us that we can do over 100 million clicks before ever experiencing any issues.
Probably my biggest problem with the Prime mouse is the scrolling wheel. I’m not sure if it’s because I am so used to the mechanical scrolling wheel on the Logitech, but the wheel on this one is a little too sensitive and I found myself accidentally pressing it in and changing it from a scroller to that stupid on the screen move the mouse to scroll option. This proved very problematic at times.
I'm a fan of RGB. I know it's not for everyone, but I like it. To see that the Prime has RGB lighting on the scrolling wheel was an inclusion I was very happy about. Using the software you are able to change the colour of this RGB and/or turn it off completely.
Speaking of software, once I got it going, the software was super easy to use and allowed things such as changing polling rates, sensitivity, accelerators, RGB, Macros and much more.
The Steelseries Prime is a hard product to review. Being a no frills mouse poses problems when coming up with things to mention, but what I can assure you of is that what the Steelseries does do, it does well. That is except for that pesky scroller. That being said, at its price point, you'll do well to find yourself a better built, more reliable mouse, as long as you get that software sorted.
While the Prime isn't going to win any best mouse awards, it's definitely a very solid and reliable option, and it's definitely a product we would recommend for any budget conscious gamers.
You can get it here: