SteelSeries XAI Laser Gaming Mouse

[Stefan]

At first I want to thank SteelSeries for providing me the XAI Laser Gaming Mouse for reviewing.

Description : On the market there are lots of mice with different DPI resolutions, interesting features, different shapes or even with fans attached to cool your hand while gaming or other intensive work. The mouse I am going to test in this review is made by SteelSeries, does not have a lot of bling-bling attached to it, has a very ergonomic shape and the most interesting feature is the LCD screen attached under it. Let’s take a look in this review at its features, software and see if its good or not.

About SteelSeries:

“From day one, SteelSeries has been focused on making professional gaming gear that provide meaningful benefits to gamers of all skill-level, with the most demanding being those gamers whose lively hood depends on the performance of our products. We believe, as most gamers do, in winning, not trying!

What originally began as a small two-person operation in Copenhagen back in 2001 has become a global leader in professional gaming products. SteelSeries recognized the need for superior, high-quality professional gaming gear that would give players a competitive edge.

Fast-forward to today, and we've come a long way since our first glass mousepad. We have global offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, providing an integrated portfolio of products designed specifically for gaming. Fueling our growth is you, the gamer!

While we are proud of our technology and product innovation, we are even more excited about how these products are developed to meet the needs of gamers. Many companies may claim to develop superior gaming products but few actually do. Instead, they spend countless hours with lab engineers trying to force fit a new technology with bells and whistles and mediocre functionality for the end-user.
At SteelSeries, we develop our products with a small internal team and a vast network of technology partners, channel partners, game publishers, and gaming communities around the globe. We aren't afraid of being challenged and implementing new ideas. Our main goal is to always to listen to the collective feedback of our professional gaming community.

We won't bore you with cheeky slogans, trying to underline our authenticity as gamers. We fully acknowledge that the best professional gamers in the world know more about what they want and what will make them better, than we do. We are proud to be working with our partners, but we can't take credit for their invaluable input and feedback. Instead we tell it like it is: they help us. We want to know what works and what doesn't. For this reason, SteelSeries creates innovative solutions that provide a competitive advantage for all gamers.

Critical to our company's success is also our reinvestment in the gaming communities and the individuals who support them. As a result, our corporate philosophy is to take a substantial portion of our revenue and put it back into the gaming community to help spur industry growth. We support our community in numerous ways, ranging from co-hosting tournaments like Iron Lady and King of the Hill, and supporting gaming competitions of all sizes, to promoting the top and up-and-coming gaming teams/organizations.

Put simply, SteelSeries does not claim to invent or reinvent the gaming industry. Nor do we focus on one specific product, copy other companies or follow the crowd.

Instead we leave it to you, the gamer, our customer/partner/inspiration, to decide if we are deserving of such declarations and accolades. What we do promise, however, is to remain committed to you. We will continue to work with you and the gaming community to make the best products possible and give you that competitive edge. We will continue to do our best to support the growth of the professional gaming industry and give back to the gaming communities. By doing so, we don't just talk a good game, we win!”


Highlights, Specifications

SteelSeries Xai Laser highlights:

- Ambidextrous shape

- Pro-play performance with accurate tracking and extreme precision

- Best-in-class technology: 100-5001 CPI, 12,000 FPS & 150+ IPS

- High definition sensor sporting 10,8 MegaPixels Per Second

- Advanced on mouse menu system on built-in LCD display

- Use the same settings as pro gamers with gamer profiles

- Advanced macros through 8 programmable buttons, with the option of 10 total programmed macros

SteelSeries Xai is a tool - not a gadget. The SteelSeries Xai Laser Mouse features state of the art technology and groundbreaking technical specifications. The technology, shape, size, weight and surface of the SteelSeries Xai were designed with one purpose: to enhance the users performance. Research and development was done in close cooperation with fulltime professional gamers from USA, Europe and Asia.

The sensor offers huge improvement over current laser mice, processing 12,000 Frames Per Second at movement speeds of 150+ Inches Per Second. This level of performance results in completely reliable tracking even during the most frantic and fast-paced games. SteelSeries Xai can be fully configured via a LCD menu system on the back of the mouse, while supporting advanced macro capabilities of up to 200 strokes per button programmable through the lean software.

Expert users will appreciate the SteelSeries FreeMove, SteelSeries ExactSens, SteelSeries ExactAim, SteelSeries ExactRate, the automatic lift distance calibration and other sensor innovations from SteelSeries.

Specifications:

- Frames per second: 12.000
- Inches per second: 150+
- Megapixels per second: 10.8
- Counts per inch: 100 - 5.001 (one CPI Steps)
- Max. Acceleration: 30 G
- Sensor data path: True 16 bit
- Lift distance: ~1mm (auto-adjusting)
- Buttons: 8
- Cord: 2 m / 6,5 ft (braided to improve durability)
- Polling: 125 - 1000 Hz (1Hz increments)
- Gold-plated USB connector
- Measurements: 125,5 x 68,3 x 38,7 mm / 4,94 x 2,69 x 1,52 in
- CPI high/low indicator
- SteelSeries FreeMove Technology
- SteelSeries ExactSense Technology
- SteelSeries ExactRate Technology
- SteelSeries ExactAim Technology
- On mouse acceleration Technology
- On mouse LCD display for tweaking above technologies thru menu system
- Large pressure points that reduce friction for optimized glide
- Driverless, plug-and-play feature for LAN gamers
- Built-in memory for 5 profiles
- Operating systems: Win 2000/XP/Vista/7 / Mac OSX

*Configuration software only available for Windows operating systems

Packaging:

The XAI gaming mouse from SteelSeries comes in a medium sized cardboard box; on its frontal part we can see the SteelSeries logo, the top of the actual product, the fact that this is a Pro Gaming mouse and some product features, explained with text and drawn icons :

On the top of the box, we can see some icons of well known professional gamers teams; the mouse was built with the help of these teams for making happy even the most pretentious gamers :

On the back of the box, we can see some specifications, a short mouse description in different languages and some areas of the mouse explained :

When we get the first external box out, we can see that there is another protective box inside, with different compartments; under the mouse there is another little compartment where we can find the documentation :

Along with the mouse, inside the box we can find a SteelSeries sticker, a user manual and a SteelSeries gaming gear catalog :

Here is a quick view of the gaming gear catalog :

On the first page of the XAI user manual, SteelSeries thanks us for making such a wise decision and buying this mouse; the manual also says that its designed to familiarize us with the basic aspects of the mouse setup and usage :

Further inside the manual, we can see the system requirements, how to update the firmware, download the latest drivers and how to operate the LCD screen underneath :

The top of the mouse material looks very smooth and its really pleasing to the hand; near the white scroll wheel we can find an arrow black plastic button, used to trigger the LCD display menu and a little white LED :

On the back of the mouse, a nice SteelSeries logo can be found :

Packaging Part 2

On the right mouse lateral, we can find 2 extra plastic bottons, colored in black, to fit with the rest of the mouse design and rubber underneath them :

On the other side of the mouse there are 2 more extra buttons, fully programmable like the other ones and also rubber under them:

If we look in the frontal part of the mouse, we can see the braided cable getting out of its body, for improved durability, the white scroll wheel and the white LED which goes on and off by pressing the arrow button, to indicate cycling between 2 preset CPI values:

On the bottom of the mouse, we can see the name of the mouse, the SteelSeries logo, model number, the fact that it works at 5VDC, 200mA; this product was designed in Denmark but manufactured in China; the laser class 1 sensor is in the middle and under it there is a SteelSeries embossed logo. Under the logo we can also find out the plastic protective cap for the LCD screen. On all edges we can find Teflon feet, to ensure smooth mouse moves:

The mouse USB connector is gold plated, for very good contact and no signal loss:

When the mouse is connected to the PC, it displays the SteelSeries logo:

The LCD display looks very good even when its low or no light in the room we are in:

The mouse software:

For getting the latest software and drivers for this mouse, we have to navigate to the SteelSeries website. Here we can find the latest driver:

Right after I have installed the drivers and started the utility, I was prompted to update the mouse firmware:

During the firmware update, I could see a progress bar in the software, but also on the mouse LCD screen:

After the firmware update is complete and the software is restarted, all the profiles preloaded in the mouse are loaded also in the software interface; the software that comes for the XAI has 4 tabs and on top we can see the name of the controlled mouse, software version and installed firmware version.
In the Button Assignments tab, we can set a different function for each button on the mouse or disable a specific button; here we can also set the mouse for left or right handed mode:

In the Hardware settings tab, we can configure:

-SteelSeries ExactSense: Generally speaking this setting controls how fast your cursor moves in relation to how much you move your mouse (Counts Per Inch or CPI). With SteelSeries ExactSense you can rely on true hardware based sensitivity settings, freeing yourself from any and all software interpolation,
which will dramatically increase your precision. Its highly recommend setting Windows Pointer Speed to
the 6th notch (which is the default value in Windows) and setting the in-game sensitivity to 1 (1 equals
no adjustment of the movements by the game).
We can set two different values for your sensitivity and switch between them on-the-fly via the CPI toggle button on the top of the mouse.

-SteelSeries ExactRate: Report rate (also known as polling rate) determines the number of reports sent every second by the mouse to your computer. Traditional mice utilize a set number of reports between the mouse and the computer, locked to set figures like 125, 500 or 1000Hz. SteelSeries ExactRate allows us to define a limit to this data and we can allow it to correspond to your in-game frame rate and monitor refresh rate for a homogenous, synchronous and consistently smooth mousing experience. Set this value to correspond to the lowest value in either our in-game frame rate or monitor refresh rate.

-SteelSeries ExactAim : SteelSeries ExactAim offers us total control over the amount of jitter correction
and prediction calculations that are applied to the raw movement data the sensor reads from the surface. This is especially desirable when the mouse is used on a surface/mouse pad that hasn’t been optimized for high precision gaming. The settings range from “pure” sensor data, that will not be corrected and no further calculations will be applied, up to high amounts of prediction calculations which can be useful if the surface the mouse is used on is not gaming grade or if the mouse movements feel too “jittery”.

-SteelSeries FreeMove: Most common mice feature some degree of path correction, to make it easier for the user to draw straight lines, do generic office tasks and similar work. That is great if we are doing office tasks, it’s not so great for gamers who demand extreme precision and consistent accuracy. SteelSeries FreeMove allows the user to determine how much the mouse should ”help” with movements, and ultimately allows us to perform movements without any angle snapping and path correction. We can adjust how much control should be left up to the mouse and how much control should be left up to us- in other words how precise the mouse should be in reproducing our movement.

-SteelSeries ExactAccel: Some games and applications have us working on a huge 2D mousing environment with resolution of 1900x1200 (or even higher), not to mention multi-screen setups. In these specific cases we can either configure the SteelSeries Xai to operate with very high CPI values or
we can utilize hardware acceleration. With acceleration we can bridge large distances quickly, while still being able to work flawlessly in small areas of the screen, without having to switch our CPI with the CPI toggle all the time. The main difference between this setting and Windows acceleration is that this setting is running in the hardware. Not only we are able to turn it on and off, we are also able to set the degree of dynamic acceleration that is applied.

In the Hardware screen we can also set the Brightness and Contrast of the LCD screen under the mouse and when we hit Apply, the new settings are uploaded and applied in a second.

In the Windows settings menu, we can set the scroll wheel speed, double click speed and the pointer speed, settings that are also available in Windows, Control Panel:

In the Options tab, we can see the installed software application version, the current firmware version that is running in the mouse and the language of the interface; here we can also access multiple links like product information, additional downloads or support for the device:

The profiles can be saved or loaded into the mouse and SteelSeries was kind to offer us some settings that professional gamers use, directly from their website:

These settings can be also modified through the mouse LCD screen, without using any applications or drivers at all. Before accessing the LCD menu, the mouse displays the SteelSeries logo:

We can access the profiles by keeping the arrow button for more than one and a half seconds; for moving through the menus we can use the scroll wheel or the lateral buttons; to apply a setting we must press the scroll wheel ( or to advance into the menus ):

In the next menu, we can select and configure each mouse feature:

Like in the software application, by clicking on ExactSense lets us select the CPI value for the LED on and off button:

Further in the menu, we can scroll the wheel to adjust the exact value:

Conclusions:

The mouse feels very smooth in contact with the hand and its very easy to set the DPI you desire right away by using the software application or the LCD screen. The extra buttons are very well placed and I did not meet situations where I would press them by mistake.

I have tested the mouse in both Borderlands and Counterstrike Source. Especially in Counterstrike, I have liked the CPI switch button on-the-fly; with its help we can set a higher CPI value when we are using the Sniper Rifle on an AIM map.

The mouse being driverless is a very good choice because its compatible on any operating system and it does not depend on the manufacturer software for every OS. The only option we cannot set via the LCD screen menu is the LCD brightness and contrast.

The only 2 minuses that I found out while testing this mouse are that the LCD display does not turn off when the mouse is seated on a pad and we cannot see it anyway.
The second one would be that the scroll wheel is a little bit noisier compared to the Kova I have tested previously, but this does not affect a lot of people.
I would like to thank again to SteelSeries for offering me this nice product for review.

Overall, I would like to rate this product with a nice 98%!

[Christopher1]

sounds good to me

[Porter]

Trotsky held the ketchup bottle in his hand and dispensed some of the thick sticky red paste into the bend of his plate, before picking a fire, dipping it in the tomato ketchup and plucking it into his mouth, while saying: