Steelseries Aerox 5 & Aerox 9 Wireless mouse reviews

These days just about everyone has some sort of flashy RGB gaming mouse on the market, almost to the point of oversaturation, and to be honest they are all starting to feel the same… Till Steelseries sent a couple of their new Aerox 5 and Aerox 9 gaming mouse my way. While their design looks a bit off-putting to most people with the hecatomb design, once you get a chance to use these two types of gaming mice, you’ll find it hard to go back to your old regular gaming mouse.

Product Name: Aerox 5 & Aerox 9 wireless mouse
Product Type: Gaming Mouse
Manufacturer: Steelseries
Compatible With: PC
Available: NOW (USA) / mid-2022 (AUS)
Price: Aerox 5: $255AUD / Aerox 9 Wireless: $268AUD

What’s Under the Shell? (Technical Specifics)

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Fast, Accurate, and Lightweight (Positives)

Deciding to jump into the deep end, my first experience with the Aerox series of gaming mice started with the Aerox 9 wireless version, which has 12 side buttons that you can use for just about any shortcut you can think of. As an MMO player, this mouse was PERFECT for me. Jumping into Final Fantasy XIV I was able to use my full tanking rotation with my Paladin with only pressing the side buttons on the Aerox 9, it actually was able to speed up mob gathering and boss aggro control a lot more than when I was just using my number pad on the keyboard. The quick response time for the Aerox 9 did start as a bit of a learning curve, but after only an hour, I was doing better than I ever dreamed I could do. So, for any FFXIV tanks out there, get yourself one of these and learn those side buttons for an amazing difference in gameplay.

Another thing that surprised me was how clean the Aerox series was. Given the more open nature of the design, I was expecting them to get dusty overnight or have food or water get into the main mechanics of the mouse, causing damage. But after a month of using these two gaming mice every day, I did a pass with compressed air and they returned a 100% clean result. Another thing that was really well done was how easy it was to change the speed of the mouse movement on the fly. A simple click on the lower middle button and you can change your speed as you need to, so you can easily have a slow pointer movement for daily use or ultra-fast reaction speed for PvP combat in games. Plus, all Aerox gaming mice have pre-set game settings so you don’t have to go and rebind all your buttons, though you can go and rebind them to something else if you need to.

As a daily use mouse, I found the Aerox 5 to be a lot more efficient than the Aerox 9 wireless, as I don’t need 12 buttons for all my programs in daily life, so going back to 3 side buttons with the Aerox 5 felt a lot better as I was able to use just what I needed, and stopped accidentally hitting something that causes YouTube videos to rewind, jump around, or change websites completely. I know it sounds weird, but I would recommend getting both mice and swapping them around as you need them. Both the Aerox 5 and Aerox 9 wireless use USB-C as a cable, with the Aerox 5 needing a direct connection whereas the Aerox 9 wireless-only needs it for charging (The Aerox 9 wireless comes with a dual USB-C dongle so you can plug the included wireless dongle into a powered connection if you don’t have a USB-C slot on your PC).

Gaming Mouse That Requires A Learning Curve (Negatives)

The downside with both Aerox series gaming mice is the interface that you have to use from Steelseries, called Steelseries GG. The Steelseries GG program isn’t exactly user-friendly, with the options to change any setting to do with the Aerox mice being hidden in the “Engine” section of the program, and just about every other section being some form of shop or advertising for Steelseries products. I know… Brands gotta have marketing, but when you hide the main point of your program away in favor of getting information about customers or advertising other products and pushing the storefront, it makes you wonder if you should bother tweaking the mice to your playstyle at all… Also, there is no ability to swap the sides of the buttons, so left-handed mouse users are out of luck with these products.

Speaking of hands, while I did like the functionality that I eventually got while playing Final Fantasy XIV as a tank, using the Aerox 9 wireless, which is designed more for MMO players, it didn’t really work too well with my Bard (Ranged DPS) class as the rotations are more complex. While this might be ok for people who play 24/7 and have spiders for hands, for someone more casual and human-like myself, I found playing that class to be too cumbersome to use the Aerox 9 with, as my fingers would fumble around hitting the wrong things over and over, reducing my DPS a lot in some critical boss fights.

The Lightweight King of Gaming Mice? (Closing)

Overall, I am quite happy with using the Aerox 5 and Aerox 9 wireless gaming mice as my preferred gaming mice from now on, the learning curve of a 12 side-button mouse might be a bit much for the casual market. As I mentioned above, it would be best to buy one of each of these mice (or the other ones in the Aerox series product line) and swap them around as you need them. The Aerox 9 wireless is a great MMO mouse once you get used to it, and the Aerox 5 is a great daily use mouse. If there was some way to combine the two together, maybe some form of interchangeable side buttons, and add a left-handed side panel too, then you would have the ultimate gaming mouse for all uses.

Review Disclosure Statement: Aerox 5 mouse & Aerox 9 Wireless mouse was provided to us by Steelseries for review purposes. For more information on how we conduct and handle reviews here, please visit our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info. Thank you.