Software

As the product name indicates, the CORSAIR iCUE NEXUS is compatible with their iCUE software drivers. You can find the installer on this page, and version 3.31.79 was the latest public release available at the time of testing. The installer takes up 382 MB, with the installed version taking up much more than that—as we have seen before in other CORSAIR product reviews.


Once installed, and with the iCUE NEXUS connected to iCUE through the USB cable from the base or the other peripherals as you have them, the products are all immediately recognized and listed on the homepage. As we saw before with other compatible CORSAIR products, this is where you can use the Instant Lighting function to have every connected RGB LED on the various products light up in the same static color of choice without creating a profile. The settings tab allows for global brightness control over the iCUE NEXUS screen in discrete steps only, as well as firmware updating when applicable.

As expected, the device-specific controls are all about the screens you can set up on the iCUE NEXUS. If you have no other iCUE product, you are greeted with the default CORSAIR/iCUE screen that has a GIF background, and you can then create a whole host of other screens that make use of buttons and/or widgets. These are dependent on your system, and on my aging laptop it was mostly CPU and GPU load/temperature data for monitoring, in addition to the usual actions we see associated with their keyboards. You can rename the screens as well as the buttons, in addition to choosing between a preset of icon shapes for each. The background for each screen can also be changed to a different static color, a different image altogether you can upload (640x48), or even a simple GIF. Since the screen has no onboard memory, you can in theory have an infinite amount of screens that are passed on to the iCUE NEXUS via iCUE.

With other connected devices, more options pop up automatically. There are device-specific screens which get added to the iCUE NEXUS, but these are unfortunately in "read-only mode" in that you can not change their associated buttons/widgets, so what you see is what you get. With peripherals, this can range from changing the DPI of a mouse or having volume controls on a keyboard. With DIY products that are supported by iCUE, such as some of their RAM and PSUs, widgets for monitoring pop up and can be added to a screen as you see fit. There is also the option to toggle screens off and re-order them as you want, as you use a single finger to swipe between them. All edits made in iCUE take effect without any need to save/apply to the device, which is just a compatible screen that has the geometry iCUE powers. I will say that this was the first and only time to date that I experienced transfer delays in actions set in iCUE for the iCUE NEXUS, as well as certain actions from the touch screen taking a few seconds to actually work even with no other device connected. The latter also included swiping from one screen to another, and my aging laptop on Windows 7 may be to blame here. Others I have spoken to confirmed no such problem, all of whom had newer CPUs and also Windows 10. CORSAIR officially only states Windows 10 support too, but there is clearly Windows 7 compatibility as well. Still, for those who have been complaining about high CPU and RAM usage from iCUE, this won't help convince them otherwise.

Usage

While waiting for the other peripherals to arrive, I set up the iCUE NEXUS on the provided base and got familiar with the screen system in iCUE. It was quite easy to do, and once the aforementioned delays were no longer a surprise, I wanted to better see how the screen worked in conjunction with iCUE. This is where initial impressions were mixed, which remained the case throughout for me. Having a screen that does a variety of different things as a companion to primary peripherals is something I've always wanted, and there are other such implementations that do it to varying degrees of success. The wider aspect ratio is not as bad in practice, although I would have definitely preferred a taller screen with smaller bezels. The overall pixel count also is better than I initially thought unless you get up close, where you can easily count the pixels. The graphs on screen also make fairly good use of the 6-bit colors available, but the lower resolution makes it nearly impossible to distinguish more than just the base colors themselves.

My biggest complaint is the LCD screen, with poor backlighting and max brightness, and also fairly mediocre viewing angles. The standalone base and keyboard brackets are both fixed in their viewing angle, so you really need to adjust the desk and your seating position on the chair to see everything in an ordinarily lit room. I found myself having to turn down the light in the room to better photograph the screen, which is also an analogous representation of my own viewing experience with my eyes. The refresh rate set to 24 FPS is another example of a compromise with the screen, although the size and resolution are more limiting than playing GIFs on this would be. Oh, the screen does turn off when the system is in sleep mode, and the display timeout option in iCUE works as expected with the latest version of the drivers.


Here is a look at the device-specific screens that pop up when they are connected to iCUE. The keyboard screen for the K70 RGB MK.2 has a label widget, volume controls, quick toggle for lighting link, and G-key activity, for example. The headset and mouse have their own screens, and applicable buttons have sub-options, as with DPI controls for mice.


CORSAIR has rightly recognized that limiting this to their own hardware ecosystem will be a hard sell, and they have already put out a button, widget, and background pack for gaming. This includes game genres such as FPS and RPG, as well as more specific options for the partnering game Rainbow 6 Siege. I imagine there will be modders who would make more if the SDK were out, but I still would have liked the option to create transparent buttons/widgets in iCUE at the very minimum already.