Software

As expected, the Sabre RGB Pro Wireless is fully compatible with iCUE, Corsair's capable yet incredibly resource-hungry software. Not expected, however, is that the bug whereby Windows pointer speed is suddenly set to 11/11 and "Enhance Pointer Precision" enabled after first running iCUE still hasn't been fixed, more than half a year after I've first experienced it. For whatever reason, the nonsensical distinction between hardware and software mode for CPI adjustment is still present, including the ability to set a sniper button despite the Sabre RGB Pro Wireless not having one. The lighting brightness slider continues to be hidden under device settings instead of lighting settings, where having it would make sense. Apparently, Corsair is well aware that the way these options are laid out isn't the most intuitive, and thus implemented several tool tips to further convey to users how things work. Of course, the more elegant solution would have been to make the UI itself easier to grasp in the first place.

All options are available through multiple list entries. All buttons except the left main button can be remapped to mouse, keyboard, media, or macro functions. CPI can be set for up to five stages ranging from 100 to 26,000 CPI in increments of 1 CPI. Additionally, a surface calibration can be performed to lower the lift-off distance beyond the default level. Further LOD adjustment options are present under device settings, allowing one to choose between three presets (low, medium, and high). Polling rate adjustment (125/250/500/1000/2000 Hz) too is found under device settings, and the device is still restarted every time the polling rate is changed, which can get annoying rather quickly. Curiously, in 2.4 GHz operation, polling rate ought to be adjusted under device settings of the dongle instead of the mouse. Under device settings, one also finds a setting called "Button Response Optimization." With it set to on, proper debouncing is performed, increasing click latency but reducing the likelihood of so-called slam clicking and double clicking. By setting it to off (default), debouncing is no longer performed, which lowers the click latency, but introduces slam clicking and possibly double clicking. Furthermore, angle snapping can be turned on or off. On my system, the software has a RAM footprint of 293 MB on average when running in the foreground, along with a considerable CPU and GPU time cost, neither of which changes when minimized to the system tray. Upon exiting the application, several processes keep running, totaling a RAM footprint of 38 MB on average and taking up CPU time even though iCUE isn't running. In fact, even when setting iCUE not to launch on startup and not launching iCUE, several processes will load nonetheless on startup, including the infamous Corsair headset drivers despite me still not owning a Corsair headset. Lastly, iCUE installs no less than four driver packages, including for non-present devices, not all of which are removed upon uninstalling. Hence, one has to run pnputil /enum-drivers and remove any leftovers manually.

Lighting

The Sabre RGB Pro Wireless has but a single lighting zone, which is the logo at the back. Without iCUE running, four different lighting effects can be set and saved to the on-board memory: Rainbow, Color Pulse, Color Shift, and Static. While running iCUE, a whole slew of lighting effects is available, including shift, blink, gradient, and pulse effects, many of which can be further adjusted in terms of transition speed, direction, and color palette, not to mention the ability to synchronize them with other Corsair devices. Of course, the lighting also can be disabled altogether.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. Here's a short demonstration video in which I go through the Rainbow, Color Pulse, and Watermark Spectrum lighting effects:

Battery Life

Without illumination, Corsair states a maximum battery life of up to 90 hours using Bluetooth and up to 60 hours using 2.4 GHz. No details are provided in regard to polling rate for the latter, so I'll assume it refers to the default 1000 Hz setting. Corsair iCUE includes a basic battery life indicator, but instead of being percentage-based, it merely discriminates between descriptions (I only ever got to "high"), which are essentially useless. As such, I'm unable to gauge anything.

Within iCUE, one can enable sleep mode and define after which period of inactivity sleep mode is entered. By default, this is set to 15 minutes, which is way too high and thus should be lowered to a more reasonable figure, such as two minutes. Furthermore, one can enable Power Saving mode, which merely disables illumination.

Using the included USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable, I measured the charging speed during the constant current stage, which sits at around 0.212 A. The battery has a capacity of 500 mAh.