SteelSeries Diablo III Gaming Mouse | Computer Games

The SteelSeries Diablo III Gaming Mouse is a well-made and comfortable ambidextrous wired gaming mouse. In most respects, it works as advertised. It has seven fully customizable buttons ? the standard right and left clicks, two pairs of buttons on either side [*see note below], and a scrollwheel button ? plus a toggle button (with a red LED that also toggles) for changing between two adjustable dpi (?mouse speed?) settings. While the device can be used for general mousing and casual gaming, it is very clearly aimed at mid-level-to-hardcore gamers who want high responsiveness, high configurability, flashy styling, and pretty lights.

The ?ENGINE? application (which must be downloaded separately) allows users to create macros for each button, change dpi settings, adjust polling rates, and modify the behavior of the pulsing red lights that illuminate the mouse. (Turning the lights off altogether is an option.) Users can create multiple profiles using ENGINE, and can configure ENGINE to activate a specific profile when a particular application program (game, browser, office program, etc.) is active. ENGINE does not communicate with the standard Windows 7 mouse control panel, and it is much less intuitive than the mouse configuration utilities provided by Microsoft and Logitech. It is usable, but I get the impression that more effort went into making it look cool (with Diablo III stylings) than into making it work well.

Gaming performance seems good, but not being a hardcore gamer, I?m not a good judge. Like most early evaluators of this mouse, I did not have access to Diablo III, which had not yet been released, so it?s impossible to say how good a fit the mouse is to the game. Whether gaming or in regular use, I frankly didn?t notice much of a difference between this DIII mouse and my old wireless Microsoft wireless mouse ? except, of course, for the greater reliability of the wired DIII mouse. The DIII mouse never frustrated me by, for example, flaking out in a crucial situation because of low batteries or poor reception.

I never switched dpi settings within a game because I didn?t need to. I rarely used the side buttons because pressing any side button other than the frontmost button on the left (for righties) requires a shift in hand position, and because, not being very dexterous, I always feared hitting the wrong button. I followed the suggestion of a reviewer on another site and disabled the rear right-hand side button and programmed the front button to handle a low-risk function. (It still got me in trouble when I accidentally hit the button, but that didn?t happen too often.)

I had some problems with the mouse and the accompanying software. First, some games allow users to move by pressing the right and left primary mouse buttons simultaneously. When attempting this, I frequently found that one of the button clicks was lost, so I got single-button behavior. This might be a defect in the mouse I received; I have not yet contacted the manufacturer. Second, the resident portion of ENGINE did not seem to be reliable in switching applications. That is, if I had a generic browser-friendly profile set as my default, and then began playing a game that was assigned its own profile, ENGINE would not necessarily switch back to the default when switching from the game to a web browser. Third, the ENGINE application froze on me a couple of times: once when I deleted the default profile, and at least once when I did something else it didn?t like.

Bottom line: The DIII mouse seems to do pretty much what it was intended to do. Its main advantages over cheaper competition like the Logitech Optical Gaming Mouse G400 with High-Precision 3600 DPI Optical Engine (910-002277) are ambidexterity and better macro definition capabilities. These come at the cost, however, of quirky software and (for those of us who are no longer in our teens) overly flashy styling.

[*Note] For most users this will be a 5-button mouse, not a 7-button mouse. The second pair of side buttons ? the right-hand buttons for righties and the left-hand buttons for lefties ? are more a consequence of the mouse?s ambidexterity than an extension of its functionality. These buttons are difficult to use reliably and should probably be disabled (which the software allows you to do).

P.S. As a possible solution to the problem I mentioned with depressing the right and left main mouse buttons simultaneously, Steelseries tech support advised me to plug the mouse into the USB ports on the back of the computer rather than into a hub or the ports on the front. Having sworn off gaming for a while, I will not be able to test this.

Source: http://www.highdefgeek.com/steelseries-diablo-iii-gaming-mouse/

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