Software and Lighting

This is new for SCUF which previously relied on hardware controls for some end-user customization. The likes of Microsoft—albeit via the Microsoft store which is a hurdle in itself, Razer, and Logitech all have software support for their controllers so CORSAIR purchasing SCUF for its hardware and then using its own iCUE for software support made perfect sense for me. The good news is, at least if you are willing to give it a try, iCUE has improved a lot since the last few times I used it. Indeed, it was quite bloated and hogging system resources randomly at times. Then there was also the part where it seemingly supported like a million products and that just increased the possibility of experiencing bugs. As I pointed out before in my review of the new CORSAIR K70 CORE keyboard, iCUE version 5 has gone the modular route and only downloads software modules for connected devices. It's best to do a clean install although iCUE will recognize the controller and then prompt you to restart the PC to allow it driver access to the controller. At this point you will see it on the home page and be presented with a plethora of options.

If you have used iCUE for mice or keyboards recently then this will seem very familiar to you. I'm going directly to the device-specific page here which has a large render of the controller and starts with controller mapping right away. You have a choice of several presets or go for a custom map involving so many options. Imagine using a controller to enter a favorite chat message or macro, or even having it emulate a keyboard and mouse rather than the other way round as usual. An unlimited amount of such mappings can be saved to software profiles which necessitate iCUE running in the background. You also get three onboard profiles and here there are fewer but still very useful mapping options to choose in the "Hardware Mappings" section. There are RGB LEDs in the Envision Pro so of course there are lighting effects to choose from, modify, or stack up. There are not as many effects as on a keyboard, for example, but this is still about 100% more than what most people usually expect to see on a gaming controller.

More important are the response curves for the triggers and thumb sticks where you have again some preset options or you can create your own using a 6-point curve and a variable deadzone. Left/right controls are separately configurable, as is the vibration sensor in each half. This is where I found the Envision Pro to really show off its potential since the vibration feedback is so critical to a lot of games and having it set exactly how you want on a per-game basis can be a huge improvement to your gaming life. Lastly, the device settings menu allows you to update the controller firmware, set the LEDs to off if you so desire, configure how the battery savings features will be, pair the controller to another Slipstream dongle you may have, and choose the three onboard profiles you want saved on the controller. I don't have experience with all the controllers out there but this is by far the most customizable controller I have ever used and we haven't even spoken about all the hardware features yet.


Before we do, surely you had to expect a few photos and videos showcasing the lighting on the SCUF Envision Pro. It's not really a standout feature but think of the RGB LED bar to also help light up the G-keys in addition to showing you which profile is active and now it can be functional too. There's also a battery level indicator here and a volume mute indicator so don't let the light show distract you from that information.