SteelSeries Xai Gaming Mouse Review

I am staring at the box of the SteelSeries Xai. It has been packed up after my review, so we can give it away to one lucky reader. Then I look back at my Microsoft Sidewinder X8 gaming mouse. A mouse that is wireless and fracking glows RED! Yet I am so tempted to deny someone the chance to enjoy the Xai mouse – I want to crack open that package and go back to it right now. I won’t of course, but that feeling shows how much of an impression my few weeks using it left on me.

When SteelSeries first sent us the Xai, I was initially a little sceptical of this unassuming black mouse. I had never used a mouse from a ‘boutique’ gaming hardware manufacturer like SteelSeries or Razer before. What could they do any better than the established peripheral manufacturers like Microsoft and Logitech? A lot of these ‘pro’ gaming mice were too flashy, and were promoting specs like super-high DPI and refresh rates. I am not a ‘pro’ gamer. Actually I wouldn’t even consider myself a hardcore gamer anymore – real life now takes up a lot of the gaming time I used to have. So I don’t need all the bells and whistles, but I am a long time serious PC gamer and I need a great mouse. A mouse that feels right in the hand, a mouse that is super smooth, accurate and responsive and free from gimmicks. Could the Xai be that mouse? The first clue that perhaps it could be is one of the taglines SteelSeries uses: It’s a “Precision tool, not a gadget.”

Let’s get some of the specs out of the way. While the Xai is a looks at first glance like simple basic ambidextrous mouse, within its black plastic shell resides a LOT of advanced mousing technology.

The headlining specs are:

• Laser Sensor with 5,001 Counts Per Inch (CPI), 150 Inches Per Second (IPS), up to 12,000 FPS, 30G max acceleration
• Gaming grade UPE Teflon mouse glides
• 7 control buttons and 1 CPI sensitivity button, using high-grade micro switches
• Ambidextrous design
• Ultra lightweight mouse with optimal rubber grip coating
• Anti-tangle braided cord
• Driverless operation
• On mouse LCD Set-up menu, mouse stores up-to 5 profiles
• Record up to 8 macros for key combinations on each of the 7 buttons
• Automatically-adjusting lift distance of around 1mm
• SteelSeries Xai software for advanced setup

You can find a more detailed list here on the SteelSeries website here.

As you can see SteelSeries measures the mouse’s sensitivity in Counts Per Inch (CPI) instead of the industry standard DPI, which they call the ‘Mouse Myth’

Over many years, a huge myth has developed in mousing. The acronym DPI, “Dots per inch” is used by many manufacturers to describe a level of accuracy: the higher the number, the more accurate the mouse. In fact, this statement means extremely little and does not correlate to the accuracy of the mouse at all. To put the term into perspective, a mouse set at 5,000 DPI would essentially move the mouse pointer 5,000 pixels on screen with just an inch of physical mouse movement. That means that the mouse cursor will probably more 3 to 4 times your screen length (or even more than that), if you move the mouse one inch. In extremely few situations is this of any benefit to a user and in no way should be a measure of accuracy.

SteelSeries does not refer accuracy measurement in DPI. Instead, the closest specification is referred to as CPI, “Counts per inch”, which is the number of motion counts the mouse translates per inch of movement. CPI is a configurable option which allows the user to set how far the mouse pointer should move on screen in relation to the distance the mouse is moved.

Physically the Xai hardware is very well built from quality plastics, and is coated with a rubber-textured finish that improves the feel of the mouse in the hand. It is also very light, and bucks the of trend gaming mice with adjustable weights, by not including any. The Xai’s weight means that it’s less fatiguing after long periods of use, and along with the Teflon coated ‘glides’ on the bottom, this contributes to extremely smooth movement across your mousing surface. It also has a perfect centre of gravity and feels very balanced in your hand. The buttons are very responsive, and the click action on the main buttons is the same no matter where you push them, thanks to the use of micro-switches, which accommodates different gaming grips and hand positions.

Another key feature found on the Xai is the small LCD display on the bottom of the mouse, first introduced on the SteelSeries Ikari mouse. On the Xai though the screen functionality has moved far beyond just been able change the saved profile. Not only can you select and load up to 5 different profiles, that can be created with the Xai software on your PC, you can also change up to five different settings (ExactRate, ExactSens, FreeMove, ExactAim, and ExactAccel ) right on the mouse. This is especially useful for pro gamers who might travel to an event and have to use a PC that doesn’t have the Xai software installed, but even for the “casual” player if you love this mouse you could bring it to the office, or a friend’s, and adjust its settings without having to install any drivers.

These five adjustments, and even more, can also be set with the incredibly comprehensive Xai software. With the software you can adjust things like standard assignments for each of the programmable 7 buttons, Windows mouse settings, and basic CPI setup. You can also create the 5 different profiles and set up the Macros that can record up-to 200 keystrokes. The hardware settings section is where you fine tune things like the bottom LCD brightness and the five core settings. ExactRate controls how many times the mouse polls your PC, and on the Xai this can be finely tuned to match the Hz on the mouse with, for example, the refresh rate of your display. ExactSens allows you to fine tune the CPI sensitivity in increments of 1 (and they suggest you turn off the Windows acceleration and in-game sensitivity levels to their lowest to allow the Xai to control this 100%). FreeMove allows you to adjust path correction, something most mice do to correct erratic mouse movement on poor surfaces, but which is not ideal in many gaming situations. ExactAim allows you to fine tune Xai’s jitter correction, which adjusts raw movement data the sensor reads from the surface. Lastly ExactAccel allows you to control mouse acceleration on the mouse rather than in Windows. Of course you if you are not a pro-gamer you may never adjust all of these settings – the most common one to adjust would be the ExactSens, since this has the most immediate and noticeable affect on how the mouse feels.

So enough of the speeds and feeds, how does the Xai actually perform in the real world? In the few weeks that I used the mouse I tested it in a wide variety of games, from RPG, RTS to FPS, and also for general desktop use. In all these applications it never failed to impress. The mouse itself glided across my mouse pad effortlessly and the tracking of the pointer on my desktop was precise and accurate when editing video and using Photoshop. In games like Company of Heroes, Mafia 2, Left For Dead 2 and Mass Effect 2 the Xai was also brilliant – fast, accurate and smooth. Since I am not a pro-gamer I didn’t play around with any of the detailed ‘Exact’ settings too much myself, but I found once I found the two different CPI settings that I liked even the default set up felt right. I am sure if I owned the mouse and had more time to play with those settings in more detail I could have tuned it to be close to perfection.

If I had to level any criticism one would be that for the size of my hand the Xai is a little small, and since it is ambidextrous it is not as ergonomic as some other gaming mice. Also the braided cable, while very good for a wired mouse, is still a cable that can get snagged on something, and impede the mouse’s movement. Sadly current wireless technology does not allow for the same level of performance as a wired mouse, so that is a sacrifice that you’ll have to make. Maybe SteelSeries will figure out a way to make a wireless mouse with the exact same performance as the wired Xai. Lastly the scroll wheel is not free wheeling, which is useful when using the mouse on the desktop and need to scroll through a long document.

Final verdict

The SteelSeries Xai at first is very unassuming. However that is the beauty of it, like many other SteelSeries products. Instead of glowing lights and fancy gimmicks they set out the build the best damn gaming mouse ever. Infinitely customizable where is counts, incredible smooth and comfortable to use the Xai is one of the best mice on the market today, whether you are a gamer or not.

The SteelSeries Xai is available for $89.99 from Canadian retailers such as Future Shop.

Footnote
SteelSeries also recommends using a high performance mouse pad with the Xai, and while many of you may scoff at spending money on a high-end surface, when using a good gaming mouse it actually makes a difference. The SteelSeries 9HD is designed specifically for the Xai, though we did receive a review pad from them it was not used for this article [ED Note:  I’ll have something on this next week]. I do however own something comparable made by a different brand that I used to test the Xai on.

This article is also featured on the Future Shop Tech Blog here.

See our SteelSeries 6GV2 Keyboard review here.