Corsair
Corsair Nightsword RGB: a complete and comfortable gaming mouse
Aprox. 79€ - see price -
See specificationsAmong Corsair's wired mice dedicated to FPS and Moba, the Nightsword RGB is more compact than the Ironclaw model and more comfortable than the M65 of the same range. With its adjustable mass, it mainly competes with the Logitech G502.
Positive points
Excellent optical sensor, fast and precise.
Comfortable grip.
Good build quality.
Many buttons, well placed.
Neat backlight.
Bad points
Slice buttons too soft, not very reactive.
USB cable too rigid.
Our review
Presentation
Nightsword, or "sword of the night" in French, this is the name chosen by Corsair for its new gaming mouse dedicated to FPS and Moba. The manufacturer persists in the use of names referring to knives and the Nightsword comes after the Saber, Harpoon, Scimitar, Glaive and Ironclaw. So let's see if its cutting edge is as effective as that of its predecessors and worth the € 79.99 requested when it was launched.
Precision
Already seen on the Ironclaw model, the PMW3391 optical sensor from Pixart is also used on the Nightsword. Derived from PMW3389, it supports accelerations up to 50 g and speeds up to 10.16 m / s. Top-notch performance that guarantees foolproof tracking, even with very sudden and large movements, typically performed by FPS players who use fairly low sensor sensitivities.
This does not prevent the sensor from being able to climb up to 18,000 dpi, which, however, is still just as useless today. Remember that moving the mouse over 1 cm at 18,000 dpi almost suffices to make the cursor cross the width of two Ultra HD screens. In a video game, it is guaranteed to be dizzy and loss of precision guaranteed. At more reasonable sensitivities, this sensor nevertheless proves to be very precise and benefits from an impeccable optical tracking, without smoothing or acceleration which could disturb the fidelity of the movements. We would simply have liked to be able to set the height of the sensor drop to a slightly lower level, to eliminate even better the small parasitic movements that can occur when we lift the mouse to center it.
The recognition of surfaces is also very good, although glass and other reflective or transparent materials should always be avoided. We will in any case only recommend too much the use of a good mouse pad, so as to optimize the precision and the glide while reducing in passing the wear of the pads.
Conclusion
The Nightsword narrowly misses the 5th star, mainly because of its too disappointing edge buttons in a very competitive segment which leaves no room for error. It is however a very pleasant to use, precise and comfortable mouse, which fulfills its overall contract and will delight players with large hands who find the size of a G502 too narrow. If we add to its equation its devastating design, this can be enough to convince a good number of users who will be able to put up with small faults.
Specifications
Reviews
Good potential, but LOD is a killer
Corsair has really outdone themselves with this mouse, I come from the G502 as my main and it's been difficult to find a competitor as far as form factor, feel and quality but i believe that Corsair has done just that.
** Pros **
1. I really enjoy the fact that it has the same layout as the G502 only slightly larger which is a major plus for me because even though i love the G502 it always felt a little small in my hands keep in mind that I do have larger that normal hands too.
2. I like the fact that it has the sniper button like the M65, I don't use this button to actually snipe I always rebind it to a melee attack when playing Apex Legends rather than having to somewhat search for the key.
3.The lighting zones on the mouse are really great and stand out at night while utilizing the mouse.
4. Braided cables for me are always a plus.
5. Adjustable weights make changing the CG a plus.
6. The large skates make moving the mouse large distances effortless and drag free.
7. Stiff side buttons, not a fan of mushy feeling buttons I like the resistance do I can feel the press.
** Cons **
1. Not a fan of the profile change buttons on the mouse behind the scroll wheel, I can see how they could be useful but when I setup my profile for a specific application or game I have no intention to switch it while using that application. To Corsairs credit however these buttons can be rebound and if you accidentally hit one of the profile switch buttons you can easily switch back by up or down shifting. I disable them while gaming.
Other than that like I've stated if you're coming from a g502 and looking for a slightly larger version of that then you will be at home with this mouse or the g502 but I love it and it'll be my daily driver for a minute.
*** UPDATE **** 2/19/20
After owning the mouse for a few months and really playing around with it I've dropped my rating from 5 to 3 stars. The reason I chose to do so primarily is because 1. The LOD on this mouse is horrible, I literally lift this mouse up a quarter to half an inch and it still tracks, on top of that the LOD isn't adjustable and the integration with iCue is really hit or miss which gets annoying pretty fast. With the release of the Razer Basilisk V2, it in my own opinion overshadows this mouse hands down and if your looking for an alternative to the G502 then I'd highly recommend the Razer Basilisk V2 mouse. I'm a little disappointed with Corsair for the fact that it seems that iCue has been a real pain to get it to consistently identify their own products which causes issues for me as a gamer when I attempt to boot up the cpu load a match of MW or Apex Legends and figure out mid game that my profile hadn't been loaded into my hardware.
A couple major flaws that made me get a G502 instead
I really wanted to like this mouse. Let me say that the mouse is nice and wide and a good shape tall. It has a nice shape that allows your hand to hold the mouse. I have average to smaller size hands. However there are a couple flaws that made me return it to get the Logitech G502 instead. One being the scroll wheel is very mushy and bad. It doesn't have a very distinctive clicky feeling when moving it up or down. So I doubt myself if I moved the wheel far enough when changing weapons etc. Also over several hours of testing it would kinda get half way to a complete click and it would unintentionally trigger a scroll, thus changing my weapon. Not ok! I like the rubberized scroll wheel over the metal (and slippery) scroll wheel of the G502.
Secondly, the 3rd "sniper" button on the mouse is to far forward for my thumb to comfortable reach it. I have to choke up on the mouse at a weird angle to reach it. Not ok.
The cord on the mouse is very rigid and even after trying to straighten the cord, it wouldnt lay flat or hand bends in it.
Lastly the rubber coating on the mouse is not grippy at all. So I found my hand rolling down the back of the mouse and losing position on top of the mouse.
The RGB on the mouse is cool though, and has a nice look. Again, if the things above werent so bad, I would have kept it.
Maybe if you have super long thumbs this would work for you, and if you dont care about scroll accuracy and feedback.
Poor software, Poor product
Software so bad, continually telling me to update firmware only to abort every time I try. Pitiful
Update - 1 week later the update worked. For now it is working
Update - 2 Software will not stay working. Last Corsair product for me. Chinese junk.
Amazing Performance
EDIT: While the grip was quite crumbly early on, it has smoothed out nicely with the same grippy feel, though it took a month. Pretty weird. Up to 4 stars because everything else is great.
This mouse is near-peak performance for just about any kind of keyboard-and-mouse gaming. If only the thumb grip didn't crumble under one's thumb after two weeks of moderate use. I'm incredibly disappointed in the quality of the rubbery grip that felt so comfortable.
The exact part of the grip that is already falling apart is not the thumb rest near the bottom, but where my thumb presses against the side of the mouse.
Beside this issue, the weight tuning is super easy, the surface calibration seems to work, and the larger size feels very comfortable in my hand.
At first, the press of the main two buttons didn't feel loose enough, like I had to press too hard to get it to click not far enough, but I think this is just a slight difference between this and the Steelseries Sensei Wireless I 'd been using before.
Overall, great mouse, but I can't give more than 2 stars if it's already crumbling.
Big Hands Mouse
The build quality and weight of the mouse are great, but as with other reviewers, the mouse is too large. I thought I had larger than normal hands but according to this mouse I am wrong. My hands do not feel comfortable at all. The size forces my middle finger to constantly hold right click all the time. So when your holding right click it won't left click. Additionally, the movement is so precise, when you click on something and you move THE SLIGHTEST BIT you find your constantly having to click and click again to avoid the click and drag. I will eventually buy a new mouse when I recover the cost of this one and my ego recovers from the fact that I have small hands.