Software

The Dark Core RGB Pro is fully compatible with Corsair's staple software suite, Corsair iCUE. While a highly capable software with a rich selection of customization options and programming functions, it isn't too intuitive to navigate. Here's a quick rundown of the most important functions. The "Settings" tab in the top bar contains both the iCUE and device settings, including polling rate, lighting brightness, onboard memory clearance, and the firmware update function. I'm still perplexed why brightness isn't part of the lighting settings. Changing the polling rate is also a bit of a hassle as the whole device needs to be restarted every time the setting is changed. Additionally, a simple battery life indicator using verbal descriptions ("full," "high," etc.) is included, which can also be displayed on the system taskbar. Options for a sleep mode timer (default is 15 minutes) and a power saving mode are available too. The latter disables all the lighting.

To the left are several extendable menus. The first is "Actions," which allows one to record and execute highly sophisticated macros. My experience with macro editors is limited, but from what I've seen, this is one of the most powerful—double macros can be created, too. The second menu is called "Lighting" and detailed further below. Both of these have an additional "Hardware" entry, which denotes hardware profile settings. The third menu, "DPI," offers CPI adjustment for up to three color-coded levels and ranges from 100 to 18,000 CPI, in increments of 1 CPI. X and y-sensitivity can be set independently, and a dedicated sniper button is configurable as well. "Performance," the fourth menu, includes Windows pointer settings and an on/off-toggle for angle snapping. Lastly, "surface calibration" does exactly that, though it's exclusively available in wired mode.

As for the onboard memory, it's a bit complicated. When making any setting changes that are tied to profiles (e.g., CPI levels), these are only saved to iCUE. Hence, upon exiting iCUE, any affected profile-dependent settings revert to the default. In order to save changes to the mouse, one of three pre-defined hardware profiles needs to be selected and changed, and the changes need to be saved to the hardware profile by overwriting it. It's not exactly self-explanatory, and a simple "Save to Device" button that performs these actions automatically would be quite handy. Granted, many people will run iCUE anyway for easy access to their macros. However, macros can be saved to hardware profiles and work without iCUE, so having iCUE running all the time isn't required for macro usage.

On my system, the software had a RAM footprint of 485 MB on average, which is massive even when keeping the vast functionality of iCUE in mind. This only applies as long as iCUE isn't minimized to the system tray, however. When minimized to the system tray, RAM consumption goes down to roughly 280 MB in total. Furthermore, even upon terminating iCUE, several processes with a RAM footprint of 55 MB keep running.

Lighting

The Dark Core RGB Pro has no less than nine zones for RGB lighting: scroll wheel, logo at the back, six "side accents," and the CPI level indicator, the latter of which is the only one that isn't fully configurable. Through the software, it is possible to customize these zones independently of each other, either with custom or pre-defined lighting effects. The CPI indicator can only be set to static colors, however. The pre-defined lighting effects are too many to list and describe here. There are 15 different lighting effects in total, including shift, blink, gradient, and pulse effects, many of which can be further adjusted in terms of transition speed, direction, and color palette. Of course, it is also possible to disable the lighting altogether.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. Here's a short demonstration video of the "Rainbow Wave," "Color Shift," and "Visor" lighting effects:

Battery Life

Corsair states a maximum battery life of up to 16 hours in 2.4 GHz wireless mode with full illumination and up to 18 hours in Bluetooth mode. By enabling power saving mode, which disables the lighting altogether, a battery life of up to 36 hours in 2.4 GHz wireless mode and up to 50 hours in Bluetooth mode can be expected according to Corsair. The installed Lithium-Polymer battery has a capacity of 1000 mAh and is made by Shenzhen Sunhe Energy.