Software

Much like all recent Glorious releases, the Model I 2 Wireless is compatible with Glorious Core. The first tab houses the lighting settings, which are detailed below. The second tab includes button remapping. All buttons can be bound to mouse, keyboard, media, or macro functions. The third tab has performance settings. CPI adjustment ranges from 100 to 26,000 CPI in increments of 50, for up to six color-coded levels. CPI values can be entered manually on the slider, and any non-native values are automatically truncated to the next native value. Lift-off distance can be set to either 1 or 2 mm. "Debounce time" effectively controls click latency, with lower values decreasing it while increasing the likelihood of eventual double-clicking. The selection ranges from 0 to 16 ms and can be adjusted in increments of 2, with 2 ms being the default. Polling rate can be set to 125, 250, 500, or 1000 Hz. In addition, MotionSync can be enabled, which synchronizes SPI reads with USB polling events at the cost of up to an entire interval of added motion delay. Additionally, several further settings related to wireless functionality are available. Illumination brightness can be set independently for wired and wireless modes. Furthermore, there is a setting that disables lighting after a set period of inactivity, which is the only sort of dedicated sleep mode available on the Model I 2 Wireless. Core also includes a wireless device pairing utility. Lastly, macro support and profile management are included, too.

All setting changes, including macros, are saved to the on-board memory, so the software does not need to be running (or be installed) all the time. On my system, the software had a RAM footprint of 150 MB on average when running in the foreground, which doesn't change when minimized, be it to the taskbar or system tray, along with considerable CPU usage when having the lighting tab open, which goes down when minimized. Upon exiting the application, all processes are terminated, as they should be.

Lighting

The Model I 2 Wireless has two physical zones for RGB lighting, which are the two LED strips on the sides. A total of eight pre-defined lighting effects are available in the software: Glorious Mode, Seamless Breathing (RGB), Breathing, Single Color, Breathing (Single Color), Tail, Rave, and Wave. For most effects, brightness and the speed of transitions can be adjusted. Of course, the lighting can also be disabled altogether.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. Below is a short demonstration video in which I go through the Glorious Mode, Seamless Breathing (RGB), and Tail lighting effects. Please note that illumination was set to 100% brightness:

Battery Life

Without illumination, Glorious states a maximum battery life of up to 110 hours in 2.4 GHz operation and up to 210 hours using Bluetooth. No details are provided regarding the polling rate, so I'll assume it refers to the default 1000 Hz setting for 2.4 GHz and the applicable maximum for Bluetooth, which is 133 Hz. Glorious Core includes a battery charge status indicator with single-digit percentage granularity, and compared to the Model O 2 Wireless, its accuracy is markedly improved. In 2.4 GHz wireless operation, at a polling rate of 1000 Hz, and with RGB lighting enabled at 60% brightness, for every three hours of continuous use, the indicator went down by roughly 20%. Hence, a total battery life of around 15 hours can be expected with these settings.

By default, after 10 minutes of inactivity, illumination will turn off. This value is user-configurable in the software. At some point prior to that, the sensor will enter a sleep mode, though the value for this is not user-configurable.

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 0.300 A when lifted and 0.281 A when not lifted. The battery has a capacity of 450 mAh (3.7 V) and utilizes a 3-pin JST connector.