The video’s a little longer than the others because I… I mean you love hearing my voice.
It’s another one! For our fourth mouse in the glorious Mouse Review Week here at CrunchGear, it’s the SteelSeries Ikari laser mouse. Sounds serious! We’ve already handled mice for the large-handed and small-handed — will this be the one for the rest of us? Let’s find out. Death from above, text from below! I mean video from above.
I’m using SteelSeries’ own pictures at the moment because I left my flash drive with the pictures at home. I’ll update it later with my own shots.
So — SteelSeries’ flagship mouse. SteelSeries likes to talk about their gear as if secrets of design have been passed down generation to generation. They certainly had the right idea with the 7G keyboard, but as we’ll see with the Ikari, it’s a mixed bag.
The mouse is well-put together, although it looks more tanklike than it really is. It’s in fact pretty light; I expected it to be of the same mold as the heavyset 7G keyboard, but it isn’t, for better or worse. It is however still of excellent build quality.
The shape of the mouse is such that it is meant to accommodate a hand at rest, which isn’t the way I grip my mouse but certainly is a legitimate grip once you get used to it. The thumb buttons are very well-placed, although the sensitivity button is a bit out of the way, probably intentionally. It’ll switch you between user-set high and low sensitivity settings, and you can change it in the mouse as well by holding down the button and then scrolling to adjust the DPI. A niche capability but a cool one.
Installing the mouse was incredibly fast and easy (no restart). Configuring is simple, although it would have been nice to just have a list of common functions (back, forward, double click) instead of just the macro option. I understand their target demographic is not people who need the easy way out, but it might be nice just for quick switches. There’s a spot for changing the amount the mouse smooths your motions (remember in the Avatar it did it too much) but from what I can tell it didn’t affect anything much, if at all. And that brings us to the Ikari’s biggest problem: its wonky tracking.
When doing large movements I found the Ikari to move naturally and go where I thought it would go — to the region of an icon or button or enemy, whatever. But any kind of medium-or-small-sized, controlled movements get messed up. You’ll end up where you want to be, but that cursor is going to take a few detours along the way. A little up, a little down, maybe a little zig or zag in there — I couldn’t make it go in a straight line to save my life. I double checked for competing mouse drivers, switched up native sensitivity, changed the DPI, changed the mouse pad to a SteelSeries one, nothing I did could make it stop wiggling. And then there was the telltale wobble of the cursor when at rest, continually appearing on screen during a movie that hides the mouse when not in use. Changing the DPI had no effect on the Ikari’s nervous jitter.
The Ikari is well-built, fits my hand well, has nicely-placed buttons and a few handy features. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t use the mouse for what I needed to do. Editing video review in Premiere was a battle against the mouse’s lack of precision during small movements where every pixel counts. I’m hoping this issue can be fixed because otherwise it’s a really great mouse. If they release a revision with a less finicky sensor, I’d recommend it without hesitation, but unless you feel a real affinity for this thing after trying it out, I’d caution you against getting one for now.
Devin your video reviews are legit, keep on keeping on.
Been watching a number of your reviews lately, including the zune. They seem pretty good. Useful.
BTW, is that pepsi can on the desk product placement or what? It really looks like it.
Devin is definitely very knowledgeable and has obviously studied this mouse carefully – thanks for the thorough review. I learned something today!
Thanks for the self-esteem boost, guys… these videos are fun to make so I’ll keep doing em. As long as you keep watching! Keep an eye out for the contest stuff too, I know you want that death adder.
Mouse Review Week here at CrunchGear. What’s up with the Mouse review stuff. Couldn’t you have computer review; laptop review; printer review. An entire review for a mouse. And it looks ordinary and dull too!
Mouse Review Week here at CrunchGear I am happy. These reviews are insightful and skilledfully written.
does the wobbly-with-small-movements have anything to do with the FreeMove software? What happens when you turn that on? Does it help with drawing lines?
regarding the ikari laser of course..
I know it was like a century ago that you guys held the contest, but I just posted my Citizen Review of the Ikari on BFF:
http://www.crunchgear.com/bff/?p=296#more-296
Since Devin beat me to the punch (it’s been a tough few weeks working for a firm that was partnered with Lehman) I made my review more of a supplement to Devin’s fantastic hands-on and video. Over there I address a few of the items Tim mentioned as well.
Enjoy, and thanks for the great video Devin!
you can’t draw straight lines with the Ikari is because its technically more accurate than other mice. Most mice have some sort of mouse correction that lets you draw a straight line even even if you didn’t draw it perfectly. When you draw a line with the Ikari it shows the exact motion you made including all the little jitters. I understand that there are reasons you might want mouse correction, but to claim that it has wonky tracking because of this is untrue
You didn’t click apply for mouse when you tested to draw the line, so the prediction was totally off. :P
I use the MX Revolution under Mac OS X 10.4.11. It pretty happy with it, but I would like something with more precision as I use the mouse with high speed and sensitivity.
I am looking between the Razer DeathAdder and the SteelSeries Ikari Laser. Considering that the former is Mac compatible is very tempting, but I have heard good things about the latter too.
I use ControllerMate for all my controller programming needs, and I know the DeathAdder is 100% compatible. The Ikari seems to be HID compliant, so I should be able to program it with ControllerMate.
Considering the possibility of a defective Ikari unit and the improper use of the prediction option (did not press ‘Apply’), I am interested in seeing an updated version of this review.