Don't buy Corsair mice

[McGixxer]

The iCue software is problematic enough that I'm simply tired of fooling with it. There are other mice on the market that are just as good as Corsair mice whose software isn't as buggy. 

If you're on the fence between a Corsair mouse vs another brand mouse, just make it easier on yourself and get the other brand who won't be asking yourself questions like "why wont the iCue software launch THIS time!?"

[Corsair Nick]

That is unfortunate to hear you're experiencing some bugs with iCUE?  What types of issues are you experiencing with the software?  Have you already started a ticket with the support team?

[Nuesh]

Yeah, I have to agree. This software has been a nightmare. There is no reason to buy a mouse with this software when there are others of the same caliber without any issues. After finally starting to get the hang of using the software, it now won't even show the mouse settings options, and everything has reverted. Now I have a painfully slow mouse that I can't configure anything on through iCUE. The software is now just another out of 10,000 hardware trackers with 100 bells and whistles but this one ignores the basic reason I have it. Very frustrating. The program has frozen several times and crashed. This should be really, really simple. I've never had to spend this much time messing with mouse software. It's pretty ridiculous. I think the point this guy is making is it's pretty bad to even have to open a support ticket for something that is smooth as butter with every other brand.

[STOPchris]

The iCue software is garbage. So much so, that I probably will have to start buying my lighting, fan controllers, fans, PSU, mouse and keyboards, RAM, CPU coolers and cases from another company. I literally have all of what I just listed from Corsair, in two computers, and they are going to lose me with their terrible software. I might not mind as much if just the lighting was affected, but when the fans that are controlling your system cooling start being affected, I think it is time to look for another company to buy from.

[Klaus-L]

Yes, I never expected such a bad kbm driver software from Corsair.

We do not expect very much form a kbm driver software. It should be able to control device color and kbm configuration.

ICue makes it, if, and only if it's starting reliable from a boot. But very often, it doesn't startup correctly. Mostly a second or third reboot makes the job.

We resigned on autostarting iCue, because then failure starting up is more often. We start it manually, after boot has finished.

I tried various settings, disabled unneeded services, search in discussions. Nothing helped, I only found, that others have similar problems.

With the next new devices, we will resign on Corsair products, as we did with Razor products before, because they have driver problems too.

Other brands do not have these problems, they have developers, able to programm reliable drivers. Sad. Sry, but the truth.

 

[Klaus-L]

Problem still exists. We will start to sell our Corsair products. It's a nogo, to boot several times to get this **** driver working correctly.

 

Bye,Bye Corsair

[brickson98]

On 5/13/2022 at 12:36 PM, Corsair Nick said:

That is unfortunate to hear you're experiencing some bugs with iCUE?  What types of issues are you experiencing with the software?  Have you already started a ticket with the support team?

I know you, personally, may not understand how buggy this software is overall, as you're likely in a customer engagement role at Corsair, and not in software development. But responses like this really sends the message that Corsair, as a whole, doesn't see any problems with their software. This isn't a one person kind of issue. If you browse around, you'll see post after post, from dozens of people having the exact same issues with iCUE. Posted on the Corsair forums, Reddit, and other tech related forums. It isn't a small subset of users. It's the vast majority. Of course, the majority of Corsair customers likely never say a word anywhere, and just live with iCUE's bugs, or simply replace their Corsair peripherals. But others of us like to voice our concerns before giving up on a product, in hopes that it'll get fixed. But I'm getting to the point where I feel that iCUE will never be properly fixed.

I've been using iCUE since it launched, as I've stuck with Corsair peripherals for close to 10 years. I've loved the hardware. It's great stuff. But iCUE is the Achilles' heel of Corsair products. To be completely frank, it's junk. My left alt key on my Corsair STRAFE (pre-RGB) quit working. I was just going to re-solder a new switch on it, but I've decided I'll be finding a new keyboard from another brand, because I can't stand iCUE.

Here's a few issues I, personally, have. But I've seen dozens of other posts mentioning the same issues:

1. Getting iCUE to open in the first place. Half the time you try to open it, it just won't. And when it does, it usually takes an eternity. Many times, you have to open task manager and kill all iCUE related processes before you can open it. Then, you have to wait an excessive amount of time for iCUE to reinitialize all your devices' profiles. Sometimes you simply lock your computer, and iCUE refuses to reload software profiles after unlocking.

2. Device detection. Sometimes it just refuses to detect devices. Sometimes unplugging them and plugging them back in fixes the issue. Sometimes restarting all iCUE processes fixes the issue. But, many times, nothing but a reboot fixes the issue. I've even had times where a reboot doesn't fix it, and I have to wait for an iCUE update to come along before it'll recognize some of my devices again.

3. Device firmware updates. Why does it take 20-30 minutes to download and apply a keyboard or mouse firmware update? It's ridiculous. I can install a whole copy of Windows in just over that amount of time. It wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to babysit the download to wait for the UAC prompt to come up so it can finalize. But if you try to get up and do something else while it updates, you'll come back to an un-updated device because it timed out waiting for UAC authorization. Not to mention, sometimes firmware updates just fail for no reason.

4. Extremely unintuitive UI. The UI is extremely clunky to navigate. It's easy to make accidental changes, or to get confused as to whether you're in software vs hardware profiles. Sure, it looks pretty in screenshots, but it truly is a pain to actually use.

5. Device profiles not saving or applying correctly. Sometimes a hardware or software profile won't apply correctly. For example, because I know iCUE has major issues restarting software profiles after unlocking the computer, or upon boot up, or randomly, I tried to set my mouse's hardware profile to have the same DPI settings as my software profile. I prefer the software profile as I'm able to link a lighting action upon click between my mouse pad and mouse. But if the software profile isn't working, I want my DPI to remain the same. But no, it doesn't want to take. So whenever iCUE decides to take a crap on me, my mouse is painfully slow. It wouldn't be such an issue when it fails to load software profiles if the hardware profiles would apply correctly, so I could continue using my computer as normal, just without the nice synced up lights on my devices.

 

Those are just a few issues I run into consistently. But I've seen worse less consistently, like having iCUE completely and utterly stop working to the point where I have to uninstall, search my system for any leftover iCUE files and delete them, and then reinstall. I understand that the whole industry neglects its peripheral customization software, but c'mon Corsair. You guys can do better than this. Your hardware impresses me time and time again, but your software is pretty much junk, sadly. I mean, my Logitech peripheral customization software from back in 2013 worked 100x better than iCUE, and wasn't such a resource hog. I'd love to stay with Corsair for my peripheral needs, but as long as iCUE exists in its current state, I just can't consider buying anymore Corsair peripherals when I know I have to rely on that junk to control and customize them.

So, I feel like downplaying all these concerns by asking if they've contacted support is kind of ignoring the fact that many, many, many users are all having the same issues. That doesn't point to a one-off issue that support could fix. That points to an issue with the software itself. All support is going to be able to have you do is, at the most, uninstall, wipe all files and registry keys, and reinstall. Probably remove all drivers and reinstall those too. Which many of us more tech-savvy individuals have already done with absolutely no success. I understand that it is likely your job to engage with customers in the manner you have, but it's generally unhelpful with these kinds of issues, which stem from poorly written software. So, I'm not faulting you, I just hope these concerns reach the right people at Corsair. iCUE needs some serious work. There's no excuse for 5 year old software to still be this buggy.

[brickson98]

On 5/15/2022 at 4:20 PM, STOPchris said:

The iCue software is garbage. So much so, that I probably will have to start buying my lighting, fan controllers, fans, PSU, mouse and keyboards, RAM, CPU coolers and cases from another company. I literally have all of what I just listed from Corsair, in two computers, and they are going to lose me with their terrible software. I might not mind as much if just the lighting was affected, but when the fans that are controlling your system cooling start being affected, I think it is time to look for another company to buy from.

This is why I always look for motherboards that have a BIOS that supports custom fan curves. When you set it up in the BIOS, you don't have to rely on buggy software to keep your system properly cooled. Updates and other B.S. can't reset your curves on you, without you noticing.

[Sevendg5]

Bought one years ago, high end one, crappy software, never tried again. Feel you man