Corsair Gaming Sabre RGB Optical Mouse
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,469 words · ~7 min read
0:00
In the future, when I look back on 2014, one of the main things I will remember
0:04
will be the inclusion of 16.8 million color RGB lighting on nearly every tech
0:10
product imaginable. And before the year is over, we will be reviewing at least
0:15
one more. Also, I got grilled pretty hard for teasing whole room water
0:19
cooling video in my last review, but then OP delivered, so I'm going to tease
0:24
you again. Whole room water cooling part two coming soon.
0:35
Save on select Intel CPUs, nucks, and SSDs with special Black Friday rebates
0:40
from select retailers. Click now to learn more. First off, we will explore
0:44
the physical features of the mouse, except for the lighting, which we will
0:47
go into more depth later on. It comes with a slightly longer than my wingspan
0:53
nicely sleeved cable which ends in an unusually large USB plug which has the
0:58
benefit of being delightfully easy to identify in a mess of other cables. On
1:03
the other end of the cable is the body of the mouse itself which is fairly
1:06
light at just under 100 g, but unfortunately cannot be adjusted due to
1:11
the lack of an included adjustable weighting system. The Saber Optical RGB
1:15
has eight programmable buttons, including by default left, middle, right
1:20
click, DPI, up and down, forward, and back, and an unbound button just behind
1:24
the scroll wheel. While the finish on the mouse didn't really stand out
1:28
necessarily, it also didn't leave much to be desired. I had no problem gripping
1:32
the mouse, however, I tried to hold it. I held this mouse predominantly in a
1:36
claw grip, however, as I do that with nearly every mouse I have because they
1:40
all seem to be too small for me to be able to actually palm. I asked Lionus
1:45
how it felt in a palm grip, and he assured me that it was a great fit for
1:48
his hand size. Under the hood, the mouse features dual Omnron switches for your
1:52
left and right click, along with a Pixart S3988 sensor, which I'm happy to
1:57
say doesn't seem to have any of that acceleration or any junk like that. You
2:01
may be familiar with this sensor as it has been used before in recent versions
2:05
of the extremely popular Razer Death Adder. One thing that I must point out
2:10
before moving on to the software and lighting modes is a little OCD pet peeve
2:14
of mine. This is a neutral toned looking mouse with customizable lighting modes
2:19
so that you can make it match almost any color setup you have. But then the
2:23
Corsair logo has yellow on it. It's not the worst case of this since my hand
2:28
would be on it most of the time so I wouldn't be able to see it. And Corsair
2:31
is not the only brand guilty of putting unchangeable colors on a product
2:36
designed to be color adjusted by the user. But it's frustrating nonetheless
2:41
because if I was buying it to color match everything in my setup down to the
2:46
mouse even, I would be driven crazy by the fact that there's a little random
2:50
patch of yellow sitting there and I couldn't easily change it. It's just
2:55
frustrating. Moving on, we of course there's Q software. Changing the mouse's
2:59
performance is a breeze. It comes with a whopping five custom DPI levels, which
3:03
you can quick swap on the DPI up and down buttons while you're gaming. Five
3:08
lift height settings and four pulling rate settings are also included for
3:11
those of you that wish to tune their mouse just a little bit further. Also,
3:15
just as a quick note, leave enhanced pointer precision and angle snapping
3:20
unchecked, especially if you're a gamer or a human. All eight of the
3:25
programmable mouse buttons are easy to take advantage of in the actions tab.
3:30
You're able to get these buttons to do basically anything from input macros,
3:34
text inputs, single keystrokes, shortcuts, DPI changes, timers, media
3:39
control, and even mouse input for whatever reason. All of this in the
3:44
software is very powerful and gives you a huge amount of granularity to your
3:48
options, especially once you get to the RGB settings. But this is also where
3:52
things got a little weird. That whole easy to take advantage of thing that I
3:57
brought up earlier doesn't really apply to the RGB lighting functionality.
4:01
Corsair knows this and so do you if you've watched Lionus' video on the K70
4:06
RGB keyboard and Corsair is working on making improvements to their software,
4:10
but as of right now it's kind of a mess. They have something like nine videos on
4:15
their channel alone just to help people set this up and all coming from an HCI
4:21
or human computer interaction standpoint. It's ugly. I mean,
4:25
aesthetically, sure, it looks great, but in forms of usability, it's pretty
4:30
rough. Having tabs in different places with the same name doing drastically
4:34
different things, and having options hidden away in right-click menus that
4:39
should really just be buttons are just
4:42
the tip of the iceberg. If you manage to read the massive 140 pageish manual and
4:48
trudge through their forums for a while, you can get the hang of it and do some
4:52
really cool stuff. But for people wanting a super quick setup, your
4:56
options will probably be limited to the quick select modes. Even just the
5:01
inclusion of being able to click on a lighting zone and have an RGB color
5:06
wheel pop up and allowing you to select a color manually or even put in a custom
5:10
RGB code would have been a huge
5:14
redeeming point, but alas, no dice. The
5:17
Saber wasn't made for board games, though, so we don't need dice. And this
5:21
conclusion is pretty straightforward. If you're a PC gamer, not a tabletop gamer,
5:26
the mouse is physically quite standard and with a reputable sensor and
5:30
switches. The setup is then augmented by an extremely powerful software package
5:36
hampered by an attractive but also
5:40
limited UI. It still needs its usability
5:43
tweaks, but Corsair seems to be building an extremely powerful RGB ecosystem for
5:47
a consumer base that obviously wants it.
5:51
It's just unfortunately not quite there yet. That being said,
5:56
thankfully none of these problems will affect the raw performance and since
6:00
they are all softwarebased, they could be there. They could be there and fixed
6:04
in the future while you have fun with the rest of your mouse. Now, speaking of
6:08
things being pretty straightforward, if you love watching anime, you should
6:11
definitely check out Crunchyroll. With Crunchyroll Premium, you can watch as
6:15
many episodes of your favorite anime shows as you want, anytime, anywhere.
6:20
They have shows like Attack on Titan and an anime series that I personally really
6:24
enjoy called Sword Art Online. They also have the most current episodes of shows
6:29
like Fate Stay Night straight from Japan, which they also will have
6:33
professional subtitles on as soon as 1 hour after they premiere in Japan. With
6:38
Crunchyroll Premium, you can watch as much anime as you want adfree in
6:42
beautiful HD on a variety of devices for only $7.95 a month. But if you use our
6:47
link, that's crunchyroll.com/lininus,
6:51
you can get a 30-day trial of their service absolutely free. So, be sure to
6:55
check them out in the link in the video description down below. All right, guys.
6:59
Don't forget water cooling day part two will be coming soon. Part two, day two.
7:03
I don't remember exactly what it is. It will be good. I actually really liked
7:06
the first one, so I expect you guys will like the next one as well. The like and
7:10
dislike buttons are down below if you want to express your feelings. Also, don't forget to stay subscribed for all
7:14
the rest of our latest tech tips content. Comment in the description down
7:17
below what you think of this mouse and what you think about the trend of just
7:20
RGB on everything. Or jump over to the
7:23
forum and comment there. If you don't like the ads on the forum, become a contributor. Click the support us button
7:28
to change your Amazon link so that we get a small kickback whenever you buy anything. And there should be a link in
7:32
the video description down below this video to buy an awesome Linus Tech Tips
7:36
themed shirt. I don't know, but I think our Keep on Digging shirts are even
7:40
still for sale. Thanks you guys for watching and I'll see you next time.