Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

When most people look at the mouse attached to their PC, they just see it as an input device, as ubiquitous as your keyboard.  I mean, it is there to click through your games, and make sure that you move accordingly on-screen.  However, some companies have found that more response and programmability are needed for the hardcore gamer.  So many companies have come out with new mice that will up your frag count.  For SteelSeries, the culmination of this development is the Xai Laser Gaming Mouse.  It’s simple and sleek design hide a beast of a mouse, with endless programmable options, and convenient ambidextrous functionality.

The Xai mouse is rather unassuming as you open its packaging.  It does not have a bunch of fancy lights or even an abundance of buttons.  It is a rather unassuming mouse that fits comfortably in the palm of your hand, and is very light to the touch.  It lacks the ergonomic design of a mouse that is contoured for a specific hand, opening up use to lefties and righties.

The power of the mouse comes from its two main features – the ability to configure sensitivity on the mouse itself, without the need of drivers, and the unique way that it measures mouse movements.  Designed with competition in mind, the mouse has the ability to switch sensitivity, or even profiles, but flipping over the mouse and using the on-board LCD interface to setup the mouse.  Yes, you read that correctly, there is a small two line LCD display on the mouse itself that allows for configuration without drivers.  This is driven by the need for competition gamers to use a mouse without the ability to install software on a competition machine.  You can select CPI (counts per inch), or from one of the five profiles you can create with software, or from downloading off of the SteelSeries website.

As for the CPI measurement, that is a complicated beast.  Most mice seem to measure DPI, or dots per inch, when referencing the sensitivity of their optical mice.  With the Xai, SteelSeries opted for counts per inch, which basically has the mouse counting off distance, and allowing for more accuracy in its measurements.  I was a bit confused by the whole thing, and there are countless documents that can explain it far better than I, but it is safe to say that the optics in this mouse are extremely sensitive, and can be configured quickly to match the performance that you need.  The mouse can also match the refresh rate of your monitor, to allow for flicker free mouse movement, which almost eliminates any of the mouse jitters that you can see sometimes when moving your mouse.

If you want to set up profiles, you will need the software, but a neat feature is that you can take someone else’s configuration from a website, download it, and then upload it to your mouse.  Several of the pros that have used the Xai Laser Gaming mouse have put together profiles for certain titles, and it is neat to see what the pros do when configuring their mouse for select games.  Whether or not it will make you a better gamer is debatable, but it opens up a new way to play your games, and who knows, maybe it will help score that extra kill that has been eluding you in your Counterstrike, or Team Fortress 2 games.

I played around with the settings and went through a handful of games, testing out the performance of the mouse.  With RTS games like the StarCraft II Beta and Red Alert 3, I never saw a huge improvement with the mouse, although it was a little peppier at moving around the map.  In first person shooters like Team Fortress 2 and Metro 2033, the mouse easily upped my game.  The response was far better than my previous mouse, the Microsoft X5 Mouse, and it was far smoother in movement.  I did notice my control of shots was very precise, most likely due to the superior optics of the Xai.

The Xai attaches to your PC via a nylon wrapped USB cord.  This was the first time I had ever noticed a mouse using a nylon sheath, instead of the standard plastic covering.  It made the cord far more durable, and seemed to make it less prone to sticking to something on my desktop.  Also of note, you will need to hook the Xai up to a direct input on your PC, as passive hubs will not power the device.  This is most likely due to the storage needs and high power needed for the laser optics, but buyers should be aware of this.

Another concern for some will be the price, and it is hard to get around this issue.  The Xai is well designed, perfectly balanced and great at FPS performance, but beyond that, it is a vanilla mouse.  It lacks the bells and thrills that some people might want in their mouse.  And with a $90 price tag, some might feel a bit left out in the cold when looking at other mice that have a little more flair for design and frills.

All in told, the SteelSeries Xai Laser Gaming Mouse excels at what it is designed to do – play games with a top notch response rate, and allowing a myriad of user configurable options.  Sure it looks plain, and lacks a lot of bells and whistles, but it performs as advertised, and it does excel your performance.  Aeropause gives the SteelSeries Xai Laser Gaming Mouse a 4.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out SteelSeries Xai Laser Gaming Mouse and other PC Hardware  reviews at Test Freaks