SteelSeries Sensei Scroll Wheel Jump
The Problem
After a couple of months (maybe one or two) after using a brand new SteelSeries Sensei, scrolling the mouse wheel DOWNWARD will occasionally scroll the mouse UPWARD which causes a stuttering effect. This issue is particularly annoying when reading block of text and the stutter effect causes you to lose your position on the page.
The Cause
For my mouse’s case, the issue was caused by the same hardware defect as my Razer DeathAdder (It took a couple of years for this issue to arise on my DeathAdder. The Sensei? In only a couple of months). I don’t know if I use the scroll wheel too often, too aggressively or what–but the the mechanical component the mouse wheel is inserted to for detecting and measuring scrolling input just plain sucks. Its design is very prone to wear and tear.
Materials
- Screw Driver
- New Mouse “Skates”
Getting The Skates
I got my Steelseries “Skates” on Ebay from a seller named ITakTech (ebay user named takasta12). They were about 3.99 and shipping was free. It took about a week (which is arguably pretty fast) to receive the item despite the seller shipping from China. This may have been due to the fact that the item was sent in an envelope (regular letter envelope) since the package containing the mouse skates is so small. Though you should not expect fast shipping from China as I’ve ordered O-Rings for my Mechanical Keyboard’s Cherry MX Switches on Ebay and it took about a month to receive them. Overall the skates are just as good if not better than the skates the Sensei came with when I bought it off Amazon.
The skates are necessary since this fix requires opening the mouse. If you plan on opening up your mouse, these are necessary since the screws for the mouse are placed “conveniently” underneath the skates so the old ones will likely become ruined when you remove them.
The Fix
So for the fix, as seen in the picture above, I have 6 red arrows. These are the points in which I used a pair of pliers to squeeze the component (top & bottom, upper left & upper right, lower left & lower right). Do not apply too much force/pressure as you can break the component. As shown in the red circle, one arms of the metal bracket surrounding device appeared to have bent away from the device. This happened to be the cause of the issue on my mouse. After applying pressure to force the metal bracket back towards the black plastic wheel piece, the stutter/jumping from the mouse wheel scroll stopped. Some folk have remedied it by blowing on it very hard, so you also can try seeing if there’s dust lodged in component.
I left my mouse plugged in while doing this so I could test if the stuttering has stopped.
Thoughts
What a stupid mouse wheel.
Long Term Update
Unfortunate for me, the fix was only temporary as the device became malformed after a couple of months of usage. In addition to this, I’ve had the mouse for less than a year and the rubberized material has started wearing out on the edges (where the thumbs rests) revealing a shiny plastic underneath. As a result I felt the mouse overall has a very poor build quality and will probably replace the mouse.