The Steelseries Sensei Raw is a fantastic ambidextrous mouse, and that surprised me, because I don't think its big brother, the Sensei, is a great mouse. But the Sensei Raw is a rare example of minimalism in the gaming mouse space. By cutting out some of the Sensei's unneeded features and slashing the price, the Sensei Raw becomes a lean, mean headshotting machine.
I first used the Steelseries Sensei in 2013 and criticized several things about it. Its ambidextrous body design means it’s never going to contour to a right-handed grip as well as the Deathadder. The metallic surface of the regular model Sensei is slick to the touch and offers a poor grip, and it can quickly grow slippery with palm sweat. I sometimes found myself accidentally hitting the buttons on the right side of the mouse while I was gripping it.
But the big killer was Steelseries’ driver software, which was laggy and prone to crashes. The Sensei didn’t need that software to work, but it was still a negative element of using that mouse. At $90, the Sensei definitely wasn’t a contender for best gaming mouse.
The $60 (£43) Sensei Raw is a different story. Even its glossy finish feels much better under the hand and isn’t a sweat magnet, though I’d recommend the rubberized version. The Raw drops the Sensei’s built-in processor, which makes it a much cheaper mouse, and it doesn’t lose much in the process—you can still adjust the CPI in software and switch between two CPI settings on the fly. Steelseries also released a new version of its Steelseries Engine software that’s much improved—when I used it with the Raw, it was more responsive and never crashed.
While I still find that I sometimes accidentally hit the right-side buttons on the Sensei Raw, that’s going to be a problem in almost any ambidextrous mouse design. The buttons do feel great to click, and the Sensei has a fantastic shape and extremely light body. My biggest criticism, in fact, is that it’s so light, the mouse cord (rubber, rather than the lighter braided nylon) can actually move the mouse across the pad by itself if it has a kink in it. This is more of a problem with the cord than the mouse weight itself, and it never affected me while I was gaming—it can just be annoying to see the cursor crawl across the screen when your hand isn’t touching it.