Yesterday, peripheral manufacturer SteelSeries announced the SteelSeries Rival 5, a nine-button mouse designed for versatile use across different genres, coming to Australia and New Zealand by July.
The Rival 5 features nine programmable buttons, four on top (including the mouse wheel) and five quick-action buttons on the left side, along with a toggle switch “for fast and efficient in-game actions”. It’s designed to strike a balance between the different needs of different genres, from ability-heavy MMOs to shooters that need quick, responsive buttons that don’t interfere with precise mouse movements.
It’s also got customisable RGB lighting divided into ten zones, with software intended to make it easy to set up colour schemes that adapt to different environments. The TrueMove Air Sensor allows for “true 1-to-1 tracking with 18,000 CPI, 400 IPS, 40G acceleration”, and the buttons are rated for 80 million clicks (“3X the durability found in other gaming mice”) with improved dust and water resistance.
The SteelSeries Rival 5 will be available in New Zealand and Australia “by July”, at AUD $119 from key retailers. It’s already on sale in North America, a standard price of USD $69.99.

Here’s an overview of the Rival 5’s key features, from SteelSeries:
Fit – Building on SteelSeries’ history of innovative mouse design, the Rival 5 fits like a glove. Crafted with a universal ergonomic shape, it delivers superb comfort for any hand size and grip style and provides easy access to the intuitive side buttons for lightning-fast decisions in any game.
Function – When you switch from Fortnite to Hitman 3 to Apex Legends, this mouse is ready to go. Featuring 9 programmable buttons, each fully customizable for the player’s most important hotkeys, and the 5-button quick action side panel layout features a toggle switch for fast and efficient in-game actions.
Fashion – Like a chameleon, players can change their color scheme to adapt to specific games. Brilliant PrismSync Lighting provides 10 zones of 16.8 million beautifully crisp colors that bring RGB to the next level. The color schemes can be easily synchronized with other SteelSeries products, and even react to in-game cues.