We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. You have to do quite a bit to make a wired gaming mouse stand out in 2019. Corsair's latest, the Nightsword RGB, has a few fancy features on its resumé: 10 buttons, a powerful sensor, customizable weights, and an extended thumb-support "wing." Despite having all the pieces, though, the Nightsword hasn't quite won us over. Its performance is sharp, but its large build feels unwieldy, and its shape tends to allow your mouse hand to slip off the side more than usual. It may be a relatively minor gripe for some, especially people with larger hands, but you'll want to try out this mouse for comfort before you buy. Ready for Big Paws The Nightsword is a right-handed 10-button mouse. You might classify it as a first-person shooter (FPS) mouse because of its extended thumb support, which I call a wing, and a resolution-dropping "sniper" button that's meant to rest directly under your thumb and allow for pinpoint aiming. Corsair also pitches it as a mouse for MOBA players. In terms of button inventory, the Nightsword has five on top: the two main click buttons, a clickable scroll wheel, and two profile-switching buttons just below it... In addition, on the side, it has two pairs of macro buttons. One pair's accessible with your pointer finger, and by default they change your DPI settings. The second set, positioned slightly below and behind the first, have slightly pointed tops to make it easier to catch the buttons with your thumb. The last button is the sniper, which juts out from the left side near the top of the thumb wing. The Nightsword is a big mouse. At 1.7 by 3.4 by 5.1 inches (HWD), it's longer, wider, and higher than most mice you're going to find from major manufacturers. For me, someone with small to average-size hands, the size and shape are a bit of a problem. Sliding my hand into the correct position, with my thumb on the sniper button and the base of my pointer finger resting on the highest point of the mouse's base, I find myself choking up on the mouse in an awkward way that reduces my maneuverability. Given my grip size, I have to be open to the idea that the Nightsword simply may not be a good fit for me. That said, I've used and even reviewed other mice with similar dimensions, including Corsair's own Ironclaw RGB Wireless, and wasn't put out by the experience. On the contrary, using a larger mouse, if it's shaped to support your hand, can still feel comfortable and effective. While I'll leave the larger question open, my feeling after using the Nightsword for about a week is that its shape leaves something to be desired. The slope of the mouse's "heel" (the portion closest to your wrist) is low, so it's hard to find the sweet spot for your hand to rest and drape over the mouse. Even if my fingers were too short and I would have needed to shift my hand to reach certain buttons, that spot is generally clear. In this case, its absence leaves my hand positioned uncomfortably flat, and prone to occasionally sliding off the right side. It doesn't help that the Nightsword's ornate, rubberized grip is mostly ornamental. It looks great on the mouse's base and thumb wing, but the rubber coating is rather slippery, and the markings on it don't do much to keep your hand from shifting as you move. Despite my quibbles with the shape, the Nightsword has some undeniably smart features. If you remove the panel covering the sensor on the underside of the mouse, you'll find placement for up to six removable weights in a hexagonal array. At 4.2 ounces, the Nightsword doesn't really need additional weight. (Most mice are shooting to be lighter, not heavier, these days). But there's more to adding weight than total mass. You can also adjust how the mouse handles by putting extra weight in certain places. Using iCUE, Corsair's configuration software, you can see how the Nightsword's center of gravity shifts when you add weights in different positions. Once you have a feel for how you want to hold the mouse, you can use the weights to optimize for your grip. This kind of tuning has been an inherent benefit in any mouse with removable weights (this is not a new idea), but the software integration makes it easier to understand the nuances of it through visualization. Adding and removing weights shows up on the fly, so it's easy to adjust, compare graphs, and figure out what works. Also, the lighting placement is the best I've seen on a Corsair product. The mouse shell has four light-up spots: the usual logo under your palm, a light under the scroll wheel, and multi-panel light zones at the front and rear of the mouse. The lighting is relatively subtle, given the amount of coverage. I'd go so far as to call it elegant. iCue the Music iCue, Corsair's configuration software, remains one of the better companion programs for mice and keyboards. It's intuitive, easy to navigate, and visually minded. Most of the time, it is easy to see the changes you make to button mapping, lighting, and sensitivity in the software so you can better understand and test these aspects. iCue lets you take advantage of the Nightsword's PMW3391 sensor, which can track your movements at up to 18,000 dots per inch (dpi). In iCue you can set three tracking-resolution options that you can rotate through using some of the macro buttons on the mouse, plus set the resolution for the sniper button. You can customize all four settings in intervals of a single dot per inch. That's a lot of tweaking potential for anyone who wants to optimize as much as possible. In terms of lighting, the Nightsword has access to the same array of effects that many Corsair mice offer, including full RGB spectrum customization and 10 "lighting link" effects. You can customize each of the Nightsword's four cosmetic lighting zones, which gives you plenty of options if you want to mix and match. Another nice touch: You can set static colors for the DPI-setting indicator lights, which change color when you press and hold the sniper button. In addition to the weight-customization companion feature, which we already discussed, the Nightsword's software offering rounds out with a surface-calibration option. It's a nice touch, but I generally don't get much out of these features: Some companies limit you to calibrating for specific surfaces (like their own mousepads), and even when they don't, I rarely notice a tangible difference in accuracy. You can create as many configuration profiles with different combinations of these features as you want, so you can optimize for each game, and switch among all or a subset of them using the profile-swapping buttons on the top of the mouse. You can store three in the mouse's internal memory, which is a bit low versus other high-end mice out there now, but it does allow you to at least carry your basic settings over from system to system for a few games. The Choice Is Yours... The Nightsword RGB gets a lot of things right. The weight-tuning system is useful, the grip and lighting look good, and it has excellent internal components. And if you're a marathon gamer, we bet you love a good thumb rest to keep fatigue at bay. Unfortunately, some of the fundamentals are swings and misses here: the slippery grip, the unaccommodating shape. And given the $79.99 MSRP, this definitely falls into the class of high-end wired mice. For that kind of money, any such mouse should feel great to use. On the other hand, the Nightsword RGB has more than its share of great features and, within the sub-genre of high-end wired mice, it is slightly less expensive than some other flashy options, such as the SteelSeries Rival 710. Ultimately, the Nightsword RGB could be a great fit for the right person—but that person has to have the "right" right hand. Bottom Line: The Corsair Nightsword RGB has the flash and features of a best-in-class wired gaming mouse, but its unwieldy shape may keep you from enjoying them.

weiterlesen: RSS Quelle öffnen