Corsair Sabre Optical RGB

A solid performer at a reasonable price.

The Sabre is very lightweight, moving easily across any surface, and changing direction with minimum effort. It’s fairly low and wide, designed for claw grippers, but is more forgiving to the palmer than the Xornet II. There are eight programmable buttons, including the wheel, with Omron switches rated for 20 million clicks, and a very nicely braided cable that stretches 5.9 feet toward your USB port of choice.

The optical sensor resolution tops out at 6,400dpi and there are no weights to increase the heft. The smooth top surface makes moving between the narrow main buttons and the wheel simple — there’s no doubt where one ends and the other begins when all you’ve got to go on is the feedback of your fingertips. Below the side buttons sits a recessed groove for your thumb, but these buttons aren’t of the angled type, which can be pressed by rolling your thumb up — you have to move it to push them. A shame, as the presence of the groove is crying out for such a movement-saving design.

Lighting is configurable across four zones, which can display the same or different solid colours, as well as changing patterns. It’s all programmed with the PC software package, and the mouse contains a small amount of storage to save profiles to.

Such a basic model thankfully sells for a reasonable price. The Sabre is a solid, if unremarkable, performer at one of the most contested price points — its selling point is probably its light weight, and we’re not sure that’s enough to make it stand out.