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SteelSeries Xai Gaming Mouse Review

by Matty Hodgson on 3 May 2010, 11:54 5.0

Tags: SteelSeries, PC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qax4d

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How good is the Xai?

 

The Mouse:

First impressions of this mouse weren’t anything special really, but this mouse is anything but un-impressive!

The shape of this mouse is quite nice, it’s a basic “mouse shape” with five discretely placed extra buttons, but don’t let this modest exterior fool you, inside this mouse is a very good sensor, an LCD screen, built in profiles, and many adjustable settings. The coating on the top of this mouse is very good, too, feeling very smooth but looking like finely ground stone, I like it!

XAI Mouse 1

This mouse feels very nice to use, the smooth coating on the top paired well with the grippy edge pieces to provide, what I felt to be, a very comfortable mouse. The thumb buttons lie directly below the thumb as well, and with them being moulded from completely separate pieces of plastic, the chance of accidental presses of the wrong button are greatly reduced. The CPI selector button (SteelSeries use Counts Per Inch instead of Dots Per Inch) is also quite big and easy to press, which adds to the overall comfort of this mouse.

Gaming performance was brilliant with this mouse once I’d set it up to how I like, it tracked very well, glide was brilliant, the weight is just about spot on and it worked on several different surfaces including brushed steel and glass. It was even comfortable after a 4 hour session on Modern Warfare 2. Everything you can ask for from a gaming mouse really.

Normal usage was excellent as well, worked fine at low CPI and on all surfaces I could throw at it. It’s also, as previously mentioned, very comfortable, so suitable for use every day.