SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse
Quick Facts
- 3,200 maximum dpi
- 1,000Hz polling
- 50 inches per second
- MSRP: $89.99
The Ikari gaming mouse is from a company that's relatively new on the gaming mouse scene. SteelSeries is probably better known for its line of gaming-oriented mousepads than anything else, but over the past couple of years it has been moving into other lines of gaming gear, including headphones, keyboards, and now mice. The latest gaming mouse model from SteelSeries is the Ikari Laser Mouse, a mouse that purportedly saw its design refined based on feedback from dozens of professional gamers.
Features/Ergonomics
The Ikari Laser has a notably spare design. There aren't any fancy glowing LEDs or ostentatious design features here; for instance, you won't be able to switch out different weights to change how the mouse feels when you move it. Luckily, the spartan design works in the Ikari's favor. Instead of focusing on bells and whistles, the design here seems to emphasize what matters most in a mouse: ease of use and responsiveness.
One notable difference between the Ikari and the other mice in this roundup is the size of the pads that come into contact with your mousing surface: There are four large pads--one on each corner of the mouse's underbelly--each made of the manufacturer's SteelSeries Glide mousing surface. SteelSeries has offered this mousing surface as a set of custom feet for other manufacturers' mice, so the company is obviously confident about it, and probably should be, since the mouse seemed to glide almost effortlessly on most of the mousing surfaces we tried it on.
The form factor of the mouse takes a bit of getting used to; it's exclusively for right-handed gamers and has a bit of a staggered design so that the right mouse button extends farther up than the left mouse button does. Ergonomically, though, the mouse feels great, although it seems to have been designed for gamers who prefer to rest their entire hand on the mouse instead of pushing it around with their fingertips. One noticeable drawback is the sloping curve that your pinky rests on (assuming you keep all three fingers atop the mice at all times). The curve makes it comfortable to rest your hands on the mouse, but it makes it somewhat difficult to pick the mouse up if you need to quickly reposition it. Another possibly annoying feature is the thick and somewhat inflexible mouse cord, which may cause some problems for you if you use mouse clips to keep your cord in place.
Software
The Ikari driver suite is somewhat bare-bones, which fits with SteelSeries' desire for the mouse to be almost driverless and portable. On a Windows machine, the control suite isn't accessible through the taskbar's control panel, which is standard for most mice. Instead, you'll need to track down a desktop shortcut that will let you tweak your settings. The control suite lets you perform most normal actions, including remapping buttons, recording macros, and adjusting the dpi sensitivity of the mouse, which can be adjusted in intervals as low as a single dpi mark.
The Ikari Laser features a single dpi switch, which will toggle between high and low settings. Most of the other mice here will let you toggle between three dpi settings, but for most players, two will be more than enough for most game situations. Oddly, though, the driver suite does not let you adjust mouse pointer sensitivity, mouse acceleration, double-click sensitivity, or the sensitivity of the scrollwheel. Most pro FPS gamers will disregard these settings in favor of tweaking the dpi of the mouse directly, but if you like to fool around with them, you'll need to find the default Windows mouse settings in your control panel to do so.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Sleek, simple design
- Large mousing surface for smooth movement
- Possible to make very fine adjustments of dpi settings
Cons
- Bare-bones control panel doesn't offer many options
2008 Gaming Mouse Roundup
GameSpot takes a look at the latest crop of high-end gaming mice.
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