SteelSeries Prime Wireless review: The king of click

The Prime Wireless from Danish gaming accessories gurus SteelSeries is by design a very simple right-handed esports gaming mouse. Now, esports mice are all about comfort, speed, lightness and durability, which just happen to be the four features I look for in all mice. Combine them with an ergonomically ideal shape and a sober design that will look right at home in the office or boardroom and you have a mouse that can do anything and everything and do it well.

There’s nothing exotic about the design of the Prime Wireless. It employs a standard five-button design with two main clickers, has an RGB-illuminated scroll wheel and two side buttons. A button to control the DPI rate (five settings can be selected and user-designated) is located on the underside, along with the power switch.

Power comes from an internal Li-ion battery of indeterminate capacity that you charge via a USB-C port in the nose. If you prefer your mouse to be at the end of a cable, fear not, there’s also a wired version called, as you might expect, the Prime, which is £70 cheaper.

SteelSeries Prime Wireless review: What does it do well?

Without any exotic styling, SteelSeries has built a mouse that is the most comfortable I’ve ever cupped my hand around and has a highly satisfying and positive click action.

The combination of the shape, the weight (80g is nothing for a full-sized wireless mouse) and the ABS plastic body with a finish that SteelSeries describe as “tactile microtexture”, means that, no matter what you’re doing or how long you’ll be doing it for, the Prime Wireless will always feel just right.

If you want a mouse that excels at both productivity and gaming but without any of the eccentricities that often mar accessories designed specifically for one role or the other, you really can’t do any better.

SteelSeries Prime Wireless review: What could be improved?

Where the Prime Wireless falters somewhat is with connectivity. To start with there’s no Bluetooth option, and the design of the 2.4GHz wireless dongle is less than optimal. At 30mm it’s three times as long as Logitech’s USB receiver, it’s rather wide at the bottom so can impede access to adjacent ports and it uses a USB-C rather than USB-A plug.

SteelSeries supplies an adapter block, which allows you to connect the dongle to a USB-A port on your PC using the supplied charging cable, but that’s a rather inelegant workaround.

SteelSeries Prime Wireless review: Should you buy one?

Despite the niggles, the SteelSeries Prime Wireless gets our top award because it excels both for productivity and gaming and everything in between. That’s important because, if you’re shelling out £130 for a mouse, it’s not unreasonable to expect it to be able to do everything to a high standard.

The Prime will let you spend a full day at your desk grafting away without your hand going numb then, come knocking-off time, it will let you dive into your favourite game to blow off some steam. The price, absence of a Bluetooth option and the rather clumsy USB dongle stand against it, but not by enough to counter the supreme usability of the mouse itself.