Steel Series

One of our favorite trips every year at CES is always to the SteelSeries’s suite. I’m not sure if it’s going there to be made fun of by Celebrity Kim Rom or the products that keep bringing us back. This year I went solo to hide my tears and to hog all of the cool toys to play with to myself.'

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

For CES this year SteelSeries introduced three new mice, a new variation on their Siberia v2 headset, a smaller headset, and they also showed off a product they are hoping to introduce later this year that will without a doubt get old school gamers excited.

Both of the mice introduced share the same shape as the popular Sensei gaming mouse, but they don’t share the same price. The purpose of their new mice is to fill in both size and price gaps in their product line. Up until now they only had the original Kinzu, a mouse that was based off of the Xia. They are replacing it now with the Kinzu v2 and the Kinzu v2 pro edition’s. The third mouse introduced was the Kana, some of you may remember the Kana from the social networking voting done recently to select the final color design. Both mice lack the screen on the bottom from the Sensei and also sport Optical sensors. The new simpler design will help them keep the costs down also.  The three models are priced as following.

Kana $49.99

Kinzu v2 pro edition $44.99

Kinzu v2 $39.99

The new Siberia variation is just a style update based on the same lighting that was added to the Diablo 3 headset. The real exciting thing in audio from them is their new Flux Headset. Perfect for both gaming and listening to music on the airplane with your wife, the Flux has a lot of flexibility. They accomplish that by giving you the option to plug the microphone in on either side. When not using the microphone you can use that same port on the bottom of each earcup to plug in a second headphone for a partner. The big question is how many flux’s can be daisy chained before it no longer works.

Last but not least, SteelSeries showed off their upcoming Ion controller. The Ion will be a wireless controller around the size of a deck of cards that will work through Bluetooth with your PC or mobile devices. I saw photos of the Ion before our meeting but had no idea how small this controller really is. Surprisingly the weight of the Ion feels great giving it a quality feel.