Sensor

The Corsair Ironclaw RGB Wireless uses the same sensor as current high-end Corsair mice. The PMW3391, manufactured by PixArt, is an excellent sensor, truly among the greatest ones currently available. It's raw, responsive, and provides true 1:1 tracking. But a great sensor needs great firmware to work properly, which Corsair hasn't provided and you can see for yourself in the tests below.

Now for some technical specifications: the nominal acceleration and maximum tracking speed values are 50 G and 400 IPS (10.16 m/s). You can set the resolution from 100 to 18,000 in steps of 1 CPI. The only available polling rate is 1000 Hz, which translates into a nominal response time of 1 ms. Lift-off distance can be configured in the driver software, and I would strongly recommend doing so as the default value was way too high for me.

Battery and Wireless Data

The Ironclaw RGB Wireless has a 1000 mAH Li-Po battery inside, which is enough for up to 16 hours of continuous use with a single charge if all three lighting zones are on in 2.4 GHz mode. With Bluetooth, battery life extends to 24 hours. Reducing the amount of lighting can result in a vast increase, and enabling power savings leads up to 50 hours of use. It typically takes two hours to completely re-charge the battery.

Paint Test

There is no jitter on the reasonable CPI steps, unwanted angle snapping (you can turn this on in the software, but I would highly advise against it), or sensor lens rattle.

CPI Divergence

CPI divergence is pretty much the same as on the wired Ironclaw, meaning the values are a tad higher than average. If you come from a mouse with pitch-perfect CPI accuracy, you might need to change your in-game sensitivity accordingly.

Perfect Control Speed

Perfect control speed (or PCS for short) is extremely high on this sensor. There is just no way of hitting it while gaming with even incredibly low in-game sensitivity. Nominal perfect control speed is 400 IPS, which is around 10.16 meters per second. The PCS values don't correlate with the set resolution, which means 100 and 18,000 CPI both hit their limits at the same value.

Speed Related Accuracy Variance

This test shows the sensor's accuracy at different speeds. You can see me doing a fast swipe to the right before I slowly slide the mouse back to its original position. There is no acceleration or deceleration; any displacement in this test is almost entirely caused by human error.

Polling Rate, Stability

Only a polling rate of 1000 Hz is available, which translates into a nominal response time of 1 ms. The polling rate seems relatively nice and stable as there are no periodic drops. However, some stability shenanigans are going on, which can clearly be seen in the graphs. They are all spiky and generally don't follow the simple hill curve as they should.

But what could cause such instability? If you ask me, I would say it's most likely due to the LEDs (especially their frequency). This was the case with the CM MM830 before, and it produced very similar graphs, but they are not identical. It can also be due to poorly written firmware. Since it happens both in wired and wireless modes, it can't be because of the wireless technology. These spikes weren't really detectable in-game. My characters turned where I wanted them to, and there was no pixel skipping or any acceleration, which the SRAV test confirms. I don't know whether these spikes really impact performance or not as it's a bit of a gray zone in this case. I would love to check on it at a lower polling rate as well, but the software unfortunately doesn't have any options to change it.

A small disclaimer—when I see something I like this, I don't just save the graph and put it in the review. I first check for any software or firmware updates, try without the software, reboot the PC, check it on another PC, etc. Only if there is no change do I put the corresponding graph into the review. Naturally, I did go though my procedure with the Ironclaw Wireless as well. Please note that I have a freshly built PC with a fresh Windows 10 install, and the other PC I do my testings on has different components with a different Windows 10 version. If the anomaly occurs on both machines, it's clearly the device's fault. All my baseline mice work as intended with both configurations.

Wireless Latency, Input Lag & Smoothing

Wireless latency is low, but not as low as on the Logitech Lightspeed-equipped mice, or the ASUS ROG Gladius II Wireless I've tested before. It's more on par with the SteelSeries Rival 650. This means it sits at around +2 ms in comparison to a wired rodent (which was a CM MM530 in this case). Is this value negligible? It depends on what you use the mouse for, I would say. For competitive multiplayer gaming at the highest level, I would probably go for something faster, but it's perfectly fine for anything else. I would much rather use a wireless mouse with +2 ms latency than a wired model with a stiff cable that generates a lot of resistance.

As for input lag and smoothing, there is a minor amount of smoothing that doesn't even reach +2 ms by 18,000 CPI, so it's quite negligible; I couldn't detect any in wireless mode.