The main reason the Rival 3 is so much cheaper than other SteelSeries mice is it uses a TrueMove Core Optical Sensor rather than a TrueMove 3.

Having suffered through the subpar performance of some truly cheap gaming mice, it was an absolute pleasure to find that the Rival 3 (with the proper mouse pad) is almost as good as any of SteelSeries' higher-end models, at least for casual play. I took a few minutes beforehand to reprogram the thumb buttons for each title. Overall, the Rival 3 performed well across multiple games, including Overwatch, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales and World of Warcraft. As with the lack of light syncing, this creates a little extra busywork that isn't required for fancier SteelSeries products. When you create individual profiles for games, though, just bear in mind that you can't sync them across multiple gadgets. Programming commands feels simple, and you can cycle through up to five DPI levels. Otherwise, the software is straightforward enough. And lighting doesn't sync with other SteelSeries gear, meaning you'll have to set up lighting profiles manually for each device. Color changes didn't flow very well across the three lighting zones, although the brightness and richness of each color looked pretty good. The LED strip is not nearly as smooth as what you get on fancier SteelSeries mice. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. You can reprogram buttons, create macros, adjust DPI levels and change the RGB lighting options. The Rival 3 runs on the SteelSeries Engine 3 software, which is generally comprehensible and easy to use. The mouse accommodates both claw and fingertip grips, but it's not nearly big enough for palm-grip players, especially those with big hands. At the bottom of the mouse, there's a colorful LED strip there's also a light-up SteelSeries logo on the palm rest.

The Rival 3 has a left button, a right button, a clickable scroll wheel, a dots-per-inch (DPI) adjustment button and two thin thumb buttons.