During my testing, these mice felt responsive and snappy, with the sensor holding up to pretty much everything and never missing inputs. The two main buttons might be a bit light for some heavy-handed gamers, but have a crisp “click” and short travel distance that’s both responsive and enjoyable without being overstated.
Both of these mice come with two sets of feet: A smaller, arc-shaped set installed from the factory, and a larger, semicircle-shaped set. Like with the Sabre v2 Pro, I have no clue why these mice come with the smaller feet installed from the factory when the larger ones feel more stable, smoother, and easier to control. I can only guess it’s done to marginally reduce the published weight.
The other major improvement on these mice is the inclusion of Bluetooth connectivity. The original Sabre v2 Pro was 2.4G-only, a decision that was likely made to save a gram or two of weight and reduce complexity. Since these mice both have less of a single-minded focus on weight savings, with more emphasis on usability and build quality, they can connect to your computer without any need for the awkward USB-C dongle. This means they’re both great options for a portable gaming mouse. This is especially true for the carbon fiber model, which includes a hard carrying case in the box.
Corsair has upgraded from their iCue software to their new in-browser “Web Hub” software. I typically dislike moving from locally-installed software to web-based, since it poses risks to long-term support, but the lack of software running in the background and stealing processing power is often worth the tradeoff. As far as customization software goes, Corsair does a good job with its new Web Hub. Nothing stands out as great or ground-breaking, but nothing stands out as bad, either. Setup is simple, customization is seamless, and all the settings are in logical locations (although I wish the adjustment for polling rate was on the default page instead of only being under the “device settings” pop-up menu).
With Web Hub, the DPI button on the underside of the mouse can also be customized. Both the number of stages and DPI of each one can be adjusted, with up to five possible stages ranging from 100 DPI to 33,000. Each stage is color-coded, with the singular LED between the two mouse buttons illuminating to indicate which stage is active.
Be Careful Disassembling
Photograph: Henri Robbins
Both of these mice share nearly the same construction: A top half made from an exotic material, a bottom half made from plastic, a main motherboard attached to the bottom shell that contains the scroll wheel, mouse buttons, and battery, and a secondary board attached to the top shell that houses the two side buttons and LED power indicator. The two halves are attached together using plastic clips around the edge of the shell, which are then screwed together in four spots underneath the mouse feet.