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The MMO gaming mouse is usually easy to spot from a distance; just look for the telltale multitude of buttons, a feature that the Razer Naga made popular and was copied, much to the Razer's displeasure. When the Corsair’s Scimitar was revealed last August, the CEO of Razer, which names it’s mice after snakes, spewed venom online by posting, “If I see yet another company ripping off the Naga again I’m going to puke”.
The Scimitar marks Corsair's latest foray into this space and it is now making its way to India by the end of this month. While the Scimitar does sport the Naga button grid, it does bring a few new things to the table.
Design and Build Quality
The Corsair Scimitar RGB retains some of the DNA of its predecessor, the M95, as well as a bit of the M65 on the left hand side. On the right, it adopts a curved ergonomic textured ring finger support. The mouse is all black, all plastic, with that rubberised soft touch grippy finish. The left side has a really neat yellow accent and the plastic used here is a glossy, very premium Lego-like finish. The button grid sits on a movable island around your thumb area.
At the bottom of the Scimitar, around the sensor, is a brushed metal area that looks convincingly metal. If you look far into the button island on the left side too you can spot a bit of this same metal like plastic. The mouse is all plastic, but of an extremely good quality and it’s tough to boot.
The buttons - 12 in an all in 4x3 grid - are small and mechanical. The rows 2 and 4 are textured, and slightly angled while in a curve, so your thumb can feel them out. In the box, you get an Alan key-like tool, with which you can unlock and lock the moving mechanism of the panel. The plastics on the buttons feel a bit less sturdy than the plastics on the rest of the mouse though.
Because of the plastic, the mouse is light and despite its large size, the lightness makes it easy to use. The cherry on top is the RGB illumination, available in four zones with 12.5 million colours. Lighting is available for the mandatory Corsair sail logo, mouse wheel illumination, on the right front, and our favourite, one big accent light around the button grid island.
The Scimitar looks great, with sturdy plastics and a lot of buttons – 12 in the grid and five around the mouse. The left and right buttons are big, with a nice audible but not loud click. The button grid's mechanical buttons do feel good, but don’t feel as reassuring as they display a bit of play.
Ergonomics
The Scimitar is big, like all Corsair mice. While the M65 was massive, the right hand side mould of the mouse fit neatly into the cup of the palm, leaving the pinky and ring finger enough grip to hold it steady. While this mouse is light, a weights system would have been helpful to anchor the mouse down or to add a little weight to the left or right of the mouse, like Logitech's Proteus Core.
The button array is a handy feature if you use a claw or fingertip grip, and you can adjust this so either your thumb can cover the whole array of buttons, or you can keep a row or two just out of reach to avoid accidental clicks. It's helpful that the buttons are illuminated, but in the heat of the battle, there is a lot of furious tapping which ends up in two buttons pressed at one time. So there is a bit of a learning curve here. One thing we did notice is that when lifting the mouse up, usually in battle, there were no buttons clicked, even though there is usually an exertion of grip on the left, around the area of the buttons.
All in all, the Scimitar is comfy with a really premium feel to its clicks. It feels nice, solid and dependable, as well as grippy. The button array is best for those who are familiar with it and it's clear, despite Razer's venom-spewing, that Corsair has done a great job with the movable unit.
Performance
At the core of the Scimitar is a 12000 DPI zero acceleration optical sensor, and it is superb. At the highest DPI setting, the pointer flies around, almost unmanageable, so chances are for normal use, you will be at a good 6000 DPI without tweaking. Now, that does not mean 12,000 DPI is not usable.
The Scimitar is all about tweaking, and for that you will need to spend time in Corsair's settings, which are powerful but messy to say the least. There are no tooltips and you will need to refer to the manual to make full use of the macros and customisations offered. You can set profiles for everything, from mouse settings to colours. You can set up to five custom DPI shifts and you can set DPIs for each game. There are actions and macros you can engage, but the interface is a bit too complex. Oddly though, the RGB lighting was the best designed part of the whole software, making it super easy to make the mouse look like a yellow and black cab with the colourful disco lighting you see plying at night.
Performance-wise, the mouse was fantastic. We did not try it with FPS games, though it is usable there. We tried it in games like Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition and Pillars of Eternity, both running on an Nvidia GTX 980 using SuperResolution at 3840x2016, which increased the playable area a lot by shrinking the HUD a bit.
Remember we mentioned the 12,000 DPI was too fast? Well, we switched to that and lowered the speed of the mouse pointer in the control panel. So the mouse is tracking at a sensitivity of 12000 dots per inch of screen, which is pretty damn accurate and by lowering the speed of the pointer, we were able to control the mouse like it was on 6000 DPI except that it's at full sensor capabilities.
The result was really accurate selection of units, even when zoomed out to maximum and when there were too many sprites on screen. Divinity's combat system is a lot slower, being turn-based, than a MOBA’s, but moving around felt easy and very accurate, and the buttons were extremely useful.
Next, we booted up The Division, which we just got for review. The Scimitar was a godsend here, as we mapped all the grenades, skills and med kits to the button array. The targeting was pretty accurate and we found locking and shooting up targets pretty easy. However, there were times when we wished for a sniper DPI drop button, which may have been in the settings, but after lots of searching, we gave up.
The heft of the mouse, coupled with the nice weight balance and ergonomics, really went a long way. It's hard to find a fault with a mouse this good. The only big glaring issue is not with the mouse, but with the software. Clean it up, Corsair. Even Steelseries upped its game.
THE VERDICT
The Scimitar is just making its way to our shores, and it’s about time Corsair opens an official channel here for its gaming peripherals. Pricing for the Scimitar is not known as yet, but is expected to be around the Rs 7,500 mark.
Considering its rival - the Naga - is sold at that price, Corsair would be a bit too greedy if they priced it any higher, even if the Naga doesn't have a movable panel or the yellow accents.
IGN India Review: Corsair Scimitar RGB gaming mouse
The Scimitar marks Corsair's latest foray into this space and it is now making its way to India by the end of this month. While the Scimitar does sport the Naga button grid, it does bring a few new things to the table.
Design and Build Quality
The Corsair Scimitar RGB retains some of the DNA of its predecessor, the M95, as well as a bit of the M65 on the left hand side. On the right, it adopts a curved ergonomic textured ring finger support. The mouse is all black, all plastic, with that rubberised soft touch grippy finish. The left side has a really neat yellow accent and the plastic used here is a glossy, very premium Lego-like finish. The button grid sits on a movable island around your thumb area.
At the bottom of the Scimitar, around the sensor, is a brushed metal area that looks convincingly metal. If you look far into the button island on the left side too you can spot a bit of this same metal like plastic. The mouse is all plastic, but of an extremely good quality and it’s tough to boot.
The buttons - 12 in an all in 4x3 grid - are small and mechanical. The rows 2 and 4 are textured, and slightly angled while in a curve, so your thumb can feel them out. In the box, you get an Alan key-like tool, with which you can unlock and lock the moving mechanism of the panel. The plastics on the buttons feel a bit less sturdy than the plastics on the rest of the mouse though.
Because of the plastic, the mouse is light and despite its large size, the lightness makes it easy to use. The cherry on top is the RGB illumination, available in four zones with 12.5 million colours. Lighting is available for the mandatory Corsair sail logo, mouse wheel illumination, on the right front, and our favourite, one big accent light around the button grid island.
The Scimitar looks great, with sturdy plastics and a lot of buttons – 12 in the grid and five around the mouse. The left and right buttons are big, with a nice audible but not loud click. The button grid's mechanical buttons do feel good, but don’t feel as reassuring as they display a bit of play.
Ergonomics
The Scimitar is big, like all Corsair mice. While the M65 was massive, the right hand side mould of the mouse fit neatly into the cup of the palm, leaving the pinky and ring finger enough grip to hold it steady. While this mouse is light, a weights system would have been helpful to anchor the mouse down or to add a little weight to the left or right of the mouse, like Logitech's Proteus Core.
The button array is a handy feature if you use a claw or fingertip grip, and you can adjust this so either your thumb can cover the whole array of buttons, or you can keep a row or two just out of reach to avoid accidental clicks. It's helpful that the buttons are illuminated, but in the heat of the battle, there is a lot of furious tapping which ends up in two buttons pressed at one time. So there is a bit of a learning curve here. One thing we did notice is that when lifting the mouse up, usually in battle, there were no buttons clicked, even though there is usually an exertion of grip on the left, around the area of the buttons.
All in all, the Scimitar is comfy with a really premium feel to its clicks. It feels nice, solid and dependable, as well as grippy. The button array is best for those who are familiar with it and it's clear, despite Razer's venom-spewing, that Corsair has done a great job with the movable unit.
Performance
At the core of the Scimitar is a 12000 DPI zero acceleration optical sensor, and it is superb. At the highest DPI setting, the pointer flies around, almost unmanageable, so chances are for normal use, you will be at a good 6000 DPI without tweaking. Now, that does not mean 12,000 DPI is not usable.
The Scimitar is all about tweaking, and for that you will need to spend time in Corsair's settings, which are powerful but messy to say the least. There are no tooltips and you will need to refer to the manual to make full use of the macros and customisations offered. You can set profiles for everything, from mouse settings to colours. You can set up to five custom DPI shifts and you can set DPIs for each game. There are actions and macros you can engage, but the interface is a bit too complex. Oddly though, the RGB lighting was the best designed part of the whole software, making it super easy to make the mouse look like a yellow and black cab with the colourful disco lighting you see plying at night.
Performance-wise, the mouse was fantastic. We did not try it with FPS games, though it is usable there. We tried it in games like Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition and Pillars of Eternity, both running on an Nvidia GTX 980 using SuperResolution at 3840x2016, which increased the playable area a lot by shrinking the HUD a bit.
Remember we mentioned the 12,000 DPI was too fast? Well, we switched to that and lowered the speed of the mouse pointer in the control panel. So the mouse is tracking at a sensitivity of 12000 dots per inch of screen, which is pretty damn accurate and by lowering the speed of the pointer, we were able to control the mouse like it was on 6000 DPI except that it's at full sensor capabilities.
The result was really accurate selection of units, even when zoomed out to maximum and when there were too many sprites on screen. Divinity's combat system is a lot slower, being turn-based, than a MOBA’s, but moving around felt easy and very accurate, and the buttons were extremely useful.
Next, we booted up The Division, which we just got for review. The Scimitar was a godsend here, as we mapped all the grenades, skills and med kits to the button array. The targeting was pretty accurate and we found locking and shooting up targets pretty easy. However, there were times when we wished for a sniper DPI drop button, which may have been in the settings, but after lots of searching, we gave up.
The heft of the mouse, coupled with the nice weight balance and ergonomics, really went a long way. It's hard to find a fault with a mouse this good. The only big glaring issue is not with the mouse, but with the software. Clean it up, Corsair. Even Steelseries upped its game.
THE VERDICT
The Scimitar is just making its way to our shores, and it’s about time Corsair opens an official channel here for its gaming peripherals. Pricing for the Scimitar is not known as yet, but is expected to be around the Rs 7,500 mark.
Considering its rival - the Naga - is sold at that price, Corsair would be a bit too greedy if they priced it any higher, even if the Naga doesn't have a movable panel or the yellow accents.
IGN India Review: Corsair Scimitar RGB gaming mouse
