Official Review Hardware Updated

Review cover SteelSeries Sensei Ten (Hardware)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

All the mice I've reviewed haven't catered for the left-handed community. Can this one offer-up decent features, plentiful functions, and right this wrong?

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Originating as Soft Trading in 2001, the company has been branded as SteelSeries since 2007. Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, SteelSeries has fuelled the gaming industry by bringing relentless innovation to the arena while aiming to provide unique company-defining "firsts", utilising inspired professional-grade design, and building growing partnerships within eSports. With a huge variety of products on offer, SteelSeries insist on tournament-grade, handpicked materials, and stringent specifications to deliver focused and quality-assured products worldwide.

When this mouse arrived at my door I was suitably impressed by the calibre of packaging and the detail it goes into before you even open it up. SteelSeries have definitely gone all out in optimising their packaging to not only sell the product on the sales floor, but get it pristinely transported home with you thanks to burly and exacting padding inside. Listed on the box is a vast array of information to guide you into securing a solid purchase, with no technical ambiguity or unspecified features.

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Technical Specifications:
  • Sensor: TrueMove Pro
  • Sensor Type: Optical
  • CPI: 50–18,000 in 50 CPI Increments
  • IPS: 450, on SteelSeries QcK surfaces
  • Acceleration: 50G
  • Polling Rate: 1000Hz 1 ms
  • Hardware Acceleration: None (Zero Hardware Acceleration)
  • Shape: Ambidextrous
  • Buttons: 8 programable
  • Switches: SteelSeries mechanical switches, rated for 60 million clicks
  • Lighting: 2 zone prism RGB
  • Onboard Memory: yes
  • cable: 2m rubber coated
  • Software: Engine 3.15.1+
  • Weight: 92g
  • Dimensions: 126mm x 68mm x 39mm

The Sensei Ten can be held in any of the three standard grip methods you prefer, claw, palm, or fingertip, and it fits the hand superbly by rising up in the middle of your hand to 39mm from your surface, tapering down to 21mm at the tip of your fingers. I defaulted to the fingertip method to gripping this mouse, and after even a few hours it was exceptionally comfortable to use with no notable cramping or fatigue on my hands or wrists. The buttons are snappy and responsive leaving no doubt in mind I was firing off a perfectly timed killer shots in-game, and I was navigating myself around the environment with assured confidence in this piece of technologies ability to instantaneously relay what my brain was formulating.

This mouse feels solid. It has a great weighted feel to it and the slide pads on the bottom let this work well on every surface imaginable. To give it a variety of test surfaces I tried it on my desk, over a table cloth, on a glass table, and on a plastic surface. The Sensei Ten worked perfectly across all of these and while I thought it may struggle on the glass surface, which is backed by a black layer, it actually worked just as well on that as on any other surface. The TrueMove Pro sensor is ridiculously fast, and incredibly accurate thanks to a 450 IPS rating combined with the 50g acceleration with zero hardware acceleration. Every flick, swipe and change of direction is perfectly and accurately tracked, so even in the heat of battle with the top online games you won't lose any contact with your pointer. I noticed quite a high lift height when I brought the mouse up away from my desk, and though I rarely found myself lifting it more than a few millimetres, thanks to the TrueMove Pro it never lost track and not once did I felt like I had to adjust my usage style to compensate for tracking.

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Given the ambidextrous nature of this device, anybody is capable of using it right out of the box. The symmetrical design evenly distributes the buttons around the device and doesn't bias one side more than the other, leaving it suitably set up for left or right-handers to get to grips with. The positioning of the four side buttons, though awkward for your ring finger to locate the button closer to your palm, feel nicely aligned with your natural average handspan. This mouse probably isn't intended to be used for all four buttons by either left or right-handed players, but you are easily able to hit three out of those four on either side quite comfortably without looking. It could definitely have improved reachability for those hard to tap buttons, and it could also do with a little more grip overall as there are no rubberised grip strips on the mouse for you to really cling on to. The CPI button on the top illuminates according to the setting you have selected, flashing a number of times to indicate which profile is in use, and the mouse wheel is illuminated in accordance with the main logo on the body which is entirely customisable in-software. I was personally loving the neon pink and turquoise colour tones I could implement on this unit as it succinctly complemented the overall simplistic aesthetic nicely.

The slick black soft-touch finish is a bit of a fingerprint trap but looks stealthy and sleek, even rather ubiquitous and unassuming as from a distance it just be any other black optical USB mouse. The soft rubber cabling feels a little off though; maybe it's more notable as the quality of the mouse is so elevated, but it seems cheap in comparison to the other materials used, and I would have preferred a stronger braided cable to know it was reliable. The weight of the mouse is decent, if perhaps a little light, and with no option to add any external weights to it there's not much you can do to rebalance this quibble. Even so, I found it a joy to glide around my desk.

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The companion software, which goes by the name Engine, is a masterpiece in itself. This software enhances every aspect of the Sensei Ten by giving you the freedom to customise every aspect of your pointing device. Engine allows you to create multiple profiles, record complex macros, adjust angle snapping, CPI modification between 50–18,000, acceleration and deceleration,. On top of this, you can customise the two RGB colour zones any way you like with 16.8 million options and user-definable patterns, letting you craft bespoke blinking or fading colour schemes. Another feature is that you can scan for games in your library and automatically add them into the app, allowing it to auto-select profiles when you load up your games. This is a masterstroke in terms of cutting down steps for people looking to jump into games, but it relies on the foresight of being willing to set up each game, once, ahead of time to get that all ready for when you have time to play.

Overall this mouse is a superb one that I can actually recommend to the other 20% of the population that struggles to find a genuinely great ambidextrous mouse. I can see that some may favour the jellybean-shaped lean of a tailored left or right-handed mouse, but this one quite literally sits in the middle, offering comfort and grip regardless of preference. As a gaming device it never skips a beat, and should be commended on just how amazing the sensor within really is. There is a visible lack of innovation here, but instead of griping about that, let us understand that this mouse more than makes up for this by not even attempting to innovate, but instead it has notably refined every feature it boasts, to the point that it is hands down incredible in every area. Currently, this mouse is retailing at a discounted price of just £39.99 on most major retailers sites, and with a price tag like that, it's difficult not to be enthusiastic about it.

Store & Software:

https://steelseries.com/gaming-mice/sensei-ten

https://steelseries.com/engine

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • A great feeling mouse regardless of handedness
  • The Engine software is an excellent companion
  • The TrueMove Pro sensor is amazingly accurate
  • £39.99 in the sales is a steal
What We Didn't Like ...
  • The finish is an absolute fingerprint magnet
  • Perhaps a little light
  • The cord is questionable
8
out of 10

Overall

This mouse is virtually perfect for everyday use and it incredibly able as an eSports-rated gaming mouse. During my testing, it never skipped a beat and the Engine software only helped to solidify my relationship with it. While it may not be innovative in shape or specs, it perfects every aspect it offers and culminates in a brilliant piece of kit.
crea
Originating as Soft Trading in 2001, the company has been branded as SteelSeries since 2007. Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, SteelSeries has fuelled the gaming industry by bringing relentless innovation to the arena while aiming to provide unique company-defining "firsts", utilising inspired professional-grade design, and building growing partnerships within eSports. With a huge variety of products on offer, SteelSeries insist on tournament-grade, handpicked materials, and stringent specifications to deliver focused and quality-assured products worldwide.​

I'm sorry but this first paragraph was ghost-written, or badly copied, from the company steelseries themselfes. It just reeks of house advertising.

The company began by repainting and slightly modding Microsoft mice. I wouldn't call that innovative, nor any product the years after. Their own mice that flopped horribly from a technical point of view. Not listening to consumer feedback, instead as it seems focussing all efforts on false advertising and hiding any flaws with their products, sponsoring a shitton of players to make them use their gear (at least on surface level) to make it look like it was top notch.

I'd say that's the polar opposite of innovative.

No, the real innovators were Microsoft, Logitech, even Razer at some point.
 
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