Corsair Scimitar RGB mouse review

There haven't been a ton of MMO mice from major manufacturers lately. There's the Razer Naga Trinity and the Logitech G604 — and until now, that's been about it. 

The Corsair Scimitar RGB ($80) is Corsair's way of throwing its hat into the MMO mouse ring, and by all accounts, the experiment has been a success. The Scimitar RGB is not only a high-quality peripheral with a comfortable design and great performance, but its central "gimmick" is actually useful.

While Corsair's software engine can get tedious, and finding the right physical configuration takes a lot of trial and error, I can't think of any serious caveats for the Scimitar RGB. It's an excellent mouse at a sensible price, and high-level MMO fans would be wise to check it out.

Read on for the rest of our Corsair Scimitar RGB review.

Corsair Scimitar RGB design

Like most MMO mice, the Corsair Scimitar RGB has a plethora of thumb buttons: 12 to be exact. That's six more than the Logitech G604, and equal to the Razer Naga Trinity. Whether you'll actually use them all is up to you (I didn't), but if you need a ton of commands at the tip of your thumb, the Scimitar RGB delivers.

Unlike the Naga Trinity, though, it's very easy to tell the Scimitar RGB's buttons apart. That's because they're divided into four columns, and every other column is textured. As such, there's not much memorization required to know where the buttons are. Your thumb is either on one of two smooth columns or on one of two textured columns. 

My only gripe here is that the buttons are numbered "1, 2, 3" from the bottom up, and the "4, 5, 6" row also starts at the bottom. It would make more sense to go in a zigzag pattern, so that your thumb would already be right next to the "4" button by time you reach "3." But you can reprogram the buttons any way you like, so it's a minor inconvenience.

What's cool about the thumb number pad, though, is that you can move it around. The Scimitar RGB comes with a small, straight hex key that you can use to loosen a screw on the underside of the mouse. When you do, the whole thumb pad can slide back and forth about two inches. 

This little tweak has solved one of the MMO mouse's biggest problems: namely, that it's hard to tell where any one player's thumb will rest naturally. While finding the right thumb position on the Scimitar RGB required a lot of trial and error on my part, each new tweak took only about 15 seconds, and when I found the perfect fit, I never needed to use the hex key again.

Beyond that, the Scimitar RGB is a large mouse (4.7 x 3.0 x 1.9 inches) with a high profile to accommodate all of the thumb buttons. It's good for claw- or palm-grip players, but there's not much appeal for fingertip grippers here. 

In addition to the 12 thumb buttons, there's a right button, a left button, a clickable scroll wheel and two buttons in the center of the mouse's face. By default, one of those last two controls profile selection and the other controls dots-per-inch (DPI) sensitivity, but you can change these if you like. The mouse is comfortable to use for long periods of time, particularly if your hands are on the large side.

Corsair Scimitar RGB features

The thumb pad is the Scimitar RGB's main selling point. To get the most out of the thumb pad, you'll have to grapple with the Corsair Utility Engine (iCUE) software. 

I've gone back and forth many times on the iCUE software, and this Corsair Scimitar RGB review will be no exception. Sometimes, I'm incredibly impressed by just how versatile and deep the software can be. At other times, I feel like there has to be a simpler way to reprogram a button or change a color pattern.

For the Scimitar RGB, I skew toward the latter feeling. With this many buttons, there should be an easier way to reprogram them all. 

Instead, you'll still have to create a new action, go through a bunch of menus to determine what kind of action it is (it defaults to macros, for some reason), choose the action from a list, then match the action with the desired button. 

And yes, if you want to do this for each of the 12 buttons, you'll have to go through the process 12 times — or more, if you want multiple profiles. Why this is supposed to be more intuitive than just clicking on a mouse button and punching a letter or number on the keyboard, I couldn't say.

Despite the steep learning curve, iCUE pretty much does what it's supposed to do. You can link profiles with games and applications as well as with other Corsair devices, if you want to sync the lighting options. 

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Speaking of lighting, you can also program RGB patterns for the scroll wheel, palm rest and thumb pad. Since there are a lot of buttons, some of the more complex options like Rainbow Wave are actually satisfying to watch here.

Corsair Scimitar RGB performance

Corsair advertises the Scimitar RGB as a MOBA/MMO mouse. As such, I spent most of my time testing it with World of Warcraft. 

Using the thumb pad instead of the keyboard took me a little time to get used to, but once I got the hang of it, I realized that I could tackle combat almost entirely with my right hand. This meant my left hand was free to focus on movement, which can be crucial in some of the game's more difficult quests.

I also tested the mouse with Overwatch, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition and Pathfinder: Kingmaker to see how it performed with other genres. (An $80 mouse should be able to tackle just about anything, I reasoned.) The Scimitar RGB was fine in every case, although I found the mouse's size to be a bit cumbersome. 

The size wasn't really an issue in Pathfinder, in which I had time to plan out each one of my party member's actions, but it didn't fit the twitchy movements required by Overwatch quite as well.

Corsair Scimitar RGB review: Verdict

The Corsair Scimitar RGB is a welcome addition to a class of mice with very few contenders at the moment. It's not quite as good as the Razer Naga Trinity, as the Trinity allows you to swap out parts, but it's also not as expensive. If anything, the Scimitar RGB is slightly better than the Logitech G604, thanks to the Scimitar's moveable thumb pad.

I don't have a strong recommendation among these three mice. But MMO gamers should take heart that they have three excellent choices.