I’m not certain how Corsair’s gotten the Sabre v2 Pro quite so lightweight – and I suspect magic might be involved.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Astonishingly light | Battery life isn’t high for a gaming mouse |
| Doesn’t rely on iCue for configuration | No Bluetooth connectivity |
| Very light. Lighter than you’d think was feasible. | Corsair Web Hub only supports some browsers |
Score: 4.5/5
In this review
Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse Design
Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse Performance
Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse Conclusion
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Ethical disclaimer: The Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse used in this review was provided to me by Corsair so that I could review it. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think they’re going to ask for it back. For some, that might present a picture of compromised journalism, because freebies, right?
Nope. I’ve never let, and will never let whether a product is a short term loan or a “free” gadget influence my reviews in any way at all. I calls them likes I sees them, if you want it simply. For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse: Design
If you just looked at the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse, you might think it a rather unexceptional device. Available in white or black, it appears to be a relatively regular optical mouse, with two primary mouse buttons, scroll wheel and just two side buttons. Hardly the stuff that gaming dreams are made of.
The Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse has a secret, however, and it’s one that only becomes apparent when you pick it up, presuming that you didn’t spot the word “Ultralight” hiding right there in the product name, that is.
“Ultralight” might be understating matters.
The very first time I picked it up, I genuinely thought it was a in-store sample product of the type that’s typically hollow so if it gets nicked by miscreants, little of value is lost.
I was wrong; that was the complete Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse, weighing in at an astonishingly light 36 grams.
36 grams is ludicrously light for a full mouse. To give that some mousing context, the Corsair Scimitar Elite I recently reviewed weighs in at 114g, probably because of all those buttons adding heft, which means that it’s nearly triple the weight of the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse.
Also Read:
Corsair Scimitar Elite Wireless Review
Or to put it another way, I grabbed a set of Apple AirPods 4 – a set that nobody would think of as “heavy” – and they’re actually heftier than the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse is.
Only one of these truly fights in the super featherweight class… and it’s not the one you might think.
True, it’s only by 4g, but put them side by side, and few people would pick the mouse as being the lighter option.
Also read:
Flip the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse over and it reveals its optical sensor and a single position power switch. At the front there’s a USB-C port for charging or connecting as a wired mouse if that’s your preferred style.
Corsair provides a USB-C cable in the box with the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse, and it too is heavier than the mouse it works with. I think you’re getting the idea that this is a very light rodent, right?
The only thing in the box that is lighter than the mouse is its 2.4Ghz receiver. Most peripheral receivers are simple USB-C plugs, but here Corsair has taken a different approach.
The Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse’s receiver is a small rectangular block with a USB-C socket in it; the idea is that you’ll use the supplied cable to connect to the receiver, rather than having to dig around behind a desktop or find a spare laptop port to use it with.
There’s a slight downside here in that there’s no support for Bluetooth connectivity, though that’s not usually a desired connection methodology for the gaming crowd owing to higher potential latency. It would still be nice to have, because if you do lose the adaptor at some point, you’re stuck purely with a wired approach for connecting it to other devices.
My other concern in the middle of all this lighweight goodness revolves around durability. If you’re the kind of gamer who really thumps their mice during a hectic gaming session, or if you ever get tempted to hurl your mouse at the wall after you lose, it does feel like that might end badly for the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse. The downside of being this thin is that you have a rather thin shell.
I didn’t have a spare Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse around to do any kind of heavy duty durability test to speak of, but there’s an obvious slender nature to its construction that does give me pause for thought in this respect.
Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse: Performance
The Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse will work as a regular mouse across both PC and Mac just by plugging it in, though out of the box it will (if my review sample is any indication) require a little charging before it’s good to go. It will work while charging, and once it’s got enough power, you can unplug it from the USB-C cable, plug the receiver into the cable and switch it on to start using it.
However, of course, it’s a gaming mouse, and that means customisation. This would typically fall to Corsair’s iCue software, which I’ve complained about in the past. Like most of its competitors, Corsair has an all-in-one configuration app for the Corsair faithful to synchronise RGB lighting, set buttons and DPI configurations and create macros for a wide range of keyboards, mice, headsets and more. Also like most of its competitors, when it’s working you don’t give it much thought, but when it’s not, it’s the worst, especially for the Mac version of the client software.
At launch, the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse doesn’t work with iCue – which is to say that across both Windows and Mac, while the mouse itself functioned, I couldn’t get iCue to recognise it was there, wired or wireless.
Corsair does have a new play here, by way of a web portal that you can use to more simply configure the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse without requiring any kind of app install.
It offers a more cut-down experience – and to be fair to Corsair, it’s still in beta at the time of writing this review – but the flip side there is that iCue isn’t taking up system resources if all you want is to set custom DPI parameters or in-game macros.
The bigger challenge for the web portal (though your taste may vary here) is that it only works across Google Chrome, Opera or Microsoft Edge browsers. If you’re a Firefox user, it won’t fire up, and those on the Safari side of the fence are similarly left out for now. The Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse is specified as a PC mouse, so that’s maybe not surprising.
Aside from being very lightweight, Corsair’s other big claim here is that the Marksman S optical sensor on the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse allows for up to 33,000 DPI tracking with a polling rate of up to 8000Hz, which means (in theory, if your skills are up to it) that you can match its light weight with some very precise tracking indeed.
My own mousing skills aren’t anything that could be called Pro grade, but the benefit here for more, shall we say, everyday gamers or just mouse users is that you can configure it to be anywhere from very sensitive to really slow depending on your preferences and feel the difference along with that light weight. It has presets so you don’t need the web portal, as well as a slightly temperamental method for DPI switching.
In theory, pressing the right mouse button and back button for 3 seconds should make the light in the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse flash up, indicating a DPI mode switch.
This does work if you’re only using the default button configurations for the mouse, but with any kind of custom button setting, I found it often failed to recognise my desire for a DPI switching session. Putting them back to default got past that, but that’s not desirable — and hopefully it’s something that’ll be smoothed over in a future firmware upgrade.
With the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse being so light, you might have concerns over its battery life.
Corsair rates it as being good for up to 70 hours from a full charge, though there’s a caveat here. That up to 70 hour figure relies on the mouse polling rate being set at 1,000Hz; if you want the full-fat 8,000Hz polling rate with 0.125ms claimed latency you’re going to get less life from your mouse. By gaming mouse standards 70 hours (or less) isn’t a lot, but it’s the compromise you’ve got to live with for the mouse being this lightweight. Batteries add heft, after all.
My own usage has been rather more ad-hoc, and while the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse has run out of power during my review period with the polling rate set to 4,000Hz (0.25ms latency) well before 70 hours of usage, I’ve not tried using it exclusively for indepth gaming to give it a more sustained power usage draw.
I’m sure somebody has the endurance for a 70 hour straight gaming session to find out – but that person isn’t me. Given the ridiculously light weight of the Sabre V2 Pro, I’m kind of astonished it holds any battery power at all — but then I’m repeating myself again, and you probably got the idea that this was quite a light mouse some time back.
Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse: Alex’s Verdict
At $169, the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse is a luxury buy if all you want is a basic mouse.
That pricing does also mean that you’re paying gaming-mouse price for a mouse that doesn’t quite have all the bells, whistles and specifically additional onboard controls or connection methods you might expect.
What you are getting for your money however is a superbly light mouse that is an absolute joy to use.
Of course the pitch here is largely towards hyper-competitive gamers who figure that every gram shaved off their mouse weight lets them spin around faster to snipe their foes – I won’t judge on how much of that might be perceptual vs actual – but as an everyday mouse for more regular productivity work, the Corsair Sabre v2 Pro Ultralight Wireless Mouse is also excellent, with the added benefit of not looking like a “gaming” mouse if you do want to appear more professional when you’re on the everyday 9-to-5 clock.
Unless you’re a pro gamer of course, in which case the hours are (probably) longer and the lack of RGB adornments might be a concern.
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