SteelSeries Prime Wireless

The box for the Prime Wireless is the same exact size as the standard Prime. It has the same large picture across the front with a grey background and the bright orange stripe. In fact, there are only two differences in the front of the box at all. The RGB lighting on the scroll wheel is more of a blue than a green-blue and at the bottom, the model name has Wireless added to it. The box has a specification listing around on the side like before but it is a much larger listing with more about the battery life, the mouse skates, and the wireless connection. Then around on the back has the same picture of the bottom of the mouse but has the changes that the Prime Wireless has like the different skates and power switch. They have a few key features highlighted again here like the crispy clicks, on-board settings, 100-hour battery life, low latency, and the 80g weight.

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Even though the box is the same size, this box is doesn’t have an inner box. It is a thicker material and the top slides off to show the mouse sitting in its formed plastic tray. You can pull the mouse out of the tray then the tray can be lifted up which exposes two sections in the bottom. One has the cord with the information guide sitting on top of it. The other has the wireless dongle and an adapter for the dongle.

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So beyond the documentation and the mouse itself here is the three accessories that the Prime Wireless comes with. It has a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable. This can be used to hook the Prime Wireless up direction for wired use and charging. It also pulls double duty when combined with the two other accessories to move your wireless receiver closer to you. This card comes with a nice Velcro strap to bundle everything up and the cord has the same black sleeving that the standard Prime has. The cable is the same other than the end with the Type-C connection on it. SO it is flexible and soft which is nice if you end up needing to use the mouse while charging or if you need to run in wired mode at a LAN for example.

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The wireless receiver or what I prefer to call the dongle is 25mm long without the type-c plug on its end. I was surprised that SteelSeries went with Type-C for the dongle, most desktop PCs have just one plug maybe two if you have a front panel as well. But when you combine that with the dongle extender you can adapt this to standard a type-a plug.

 

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The extender is a bigger box with some weight to it and a rubber foot across the bottom. The idea with this is that you can plug your dongle into this and using the cable have it up on your desk for a better signal, then when you need to charge you just unplug the cord and plug it into the mouse.

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The Prime Wireless, just like its wired brother comes in at 125.3 mm long which is similar in length to the Sensei. It is 59mm wide at the front of the mouse and 67.9mm wide at the rear, the rear is the same width as the sensei but the front is smaller. Then for the height, it is taller at 42.4 mm tall at the back of the mouse and 23 mm at the front. This extra height reminds me of an older Deathadder. Overall the Prime Wireless is designed to be used with multiple grip types but for me, that height pushes it to a palm style grip. The mouse comes in black and the entire housing has a slight texture to it but it is pure ABS, they didn’t use any coatings or paints. Being ABS I would expect it to wear smooth in the future, I would have preferred PBT for its longer life. But not using paint or a rubberized coating also means that those won't break down or wear through in the future which is great for longevity. The SteelSeries logo at the back isn’t lit up, they just have it printed on in a darker grey. A cool gloss black would have looked better in my opinion but it will be under your hand either way.

 

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The two triggers on the Prime Wireless are fully independent of the mouse shell, meaning they don’t connect at the back and have to flex like some mice including the Sensei do. SteelSeries went with the same Prestige OM mechanical switches that they used on the Prime for the Prime Wireless. These are magnetic optical switches and I’m looking forward to seeing how they work in our testing. They are rated at 100 million clicks, so they should hold up well. The scroll wheel doesn’t have any side click options, just the bottom click with a traditional mouse switch. The scroll wheel itself has the only RGB on the entire mouse with its light-up right then on the outside they have a rubber ring with groves in it for extra traction.

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The front and back view of the Prime Wireless rally help highlight the ergonomic shape. You can see from the back of the mouse how the shape peaks on the left side and then curves down. The front shows that same heavy lean on the triggers as well. The front of the mouse does show the one difference between the Prime and the Prime Wireless. At the point in the front, they both have a USB connection. For the Prime, it was for the wired cable. But for the Prime Wireless, this is where the charging cable plugs in. The connection here is a Type-C connection, not a Type-A like on the Prime. Because of that it also doesn’t need the oddly shaped end to help protect the cable as well. This is a good time to talk about the wireless part of the Prime Wireless. Unlike the Aerox 3 which I’m also going to check out today, the Prime Wireless doesn’t include Bluetooth as a connection option. The Prime Wireless uses the 2.4GHz wireless connection provided by SteelSeries with their dongle. To keep things running, the Prime Wireless has 100 hours of battery life listed, which is really important for me because I am really bad about remembering to plug my wireless devices in. This is why I hope SteelSeries considers a wireless charging option like Logitech and Corsair currently have. It is also a good way to be able to cut the battery size down, even more, to keep the weight down.

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The side view of the Prime Wireless shows off the same shape of the Prime which features an arch on the left side of the mouse that slowly pulls in and gets skinnier under the arch to give a small ledge and area to grip the mouse without the use of any special surfaces or grips. The arch also features the two side buttons which are both on the one side at the top of the arch. Both can be reprogrammed to do whatever you want in the software. The right side of the Prime Wireless on the other hand doesn’t have anything like the arched area. Most of the right side is much lower to the ground and bulges out. Especially at the rear of the mouse where the Prime Wireless is its widest. Towards the front, from the center point on they do pull in some to give the right side near where you would put your ring finger a small ledge as well for people like me who pick up their mouse when using it.

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The bottom of the Prime Wireless is actually where almost all of the differences between the Prime and the Prime Wireless. The Prime Wireless has the same glider/skate layout but it has been upgraded to PTFE which you can buy as an accessory for the Prime but it doesn’t come with it. There are four skates in total. The two ovals in the front, one ring that goes around the sensor in the middle, then a U-shaped one at the heel. There is a button on the bottom just like with the Prime but it has moved to next to the sensor. This button lets you flip between the profiles and if you hole it you can flip between the polling rates as well if you are having any trouble. The bottom of the mouse still has all of the model information, your serial number, and all of the certification logos all printed on the bottom. Then for the sensor, the Prime Wireless does use a different sensor than the Prime. It has the TrueMove Air which I believe to be based on the PAW 3335. This is an optical sensor like the TrueMove Pro on the Prime and it matches the same CPI but drops in IPS from 450 down to 400 and has an acceleration of 40g. It’s speculation but I would guess that this sensor is used for its battery life over the TrueMove Pro.

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If I haven’t hammered in just how close the Prime and the Prime Wireless are I did get a few pictures of them next to each other. The two mice look the same when the Prime doesn’t have its cord attached except for the black plastic being a lightly different tone between the two. The USB connections on the front for the cord on the Prime and the charging cable for the Prime Wireless are different, but that doesn’t change the rest of the front at all.

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Another interesting aspect with the Prime Wireless is we get to see a direct comparison between the same mouse design with a wired setup and a wireless one. The original Prime was 69 grams and the Prime Wireless was listed as being 80 grams but ours did come in one gram higher at 81 grams. This puts the Prime Wireless right with Logitech’s G Pro Wireless which was also 80 grams and is a full cover wireless mouse. The G Pro Wireless has been out for a while now and they do have a lighter weight version out now as well so while I think the 80/81 grams that the Prime Wireless weighs isn’t bad, it is still catching up with what has been around for a while now.

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