Corsair Mouse Actually Crashes - iCue Extremely Buggy, Barely Functioning Software - Not Even Beta

[BrendaEM]

I am amazed. A few years ago, I made a mistake in buying an Corsair iCue Mouse. It has a been an amazingly terrible experience. I have owned few Corsair Power Supplies that I am happy with. I usually buy Corsair memory, BUT, if I was a the product manager for the iCue software and the mouse, the pinkslips would be coming out as soon as I tracked down whomever was responsible.

To say that I am deeply disappointed by my Corsair Sabre purchase is to put it mildly. I cannot simply believe that a mouse could crash and need to be unplugged and replugged. The rubber coating has been falling off for some time, yet the coating never fell off if my Lenovo computers, in sheets.

As for the iCue software: it has been, and still is trash, full-stop. It may look good in screenshots, but it is buggier than a trip to a swamp on a hot summer afternoon. The software is years old, and if I were the product manager, I wouldn't have released it as beta, because of the shame that it could bring down on Corsair. It needs more than pretty pictures, it needs to work. I have even seen generic video capture devices, a thing I always I always felt were the worst class of commercial device for drivers, but I don't know how, but Corsair has matched them--for a simple mouse, but that's one of the problems: It's supposed to be mouse software, right?

You might say that it's unified, for keyboards too. I wanted a mechanical Corsair keyboard, but after the experience with iCue, not any more. Stating iCue is for mice an keyboards is akin to saying fire is for gas stations and forests.

The software is way too big. Who told you that gamers want fat bloated software? What the heck are you doing with an entire gigabyte for a compressed installer. Have you lost your minds? What is all this crap in it? I don't need a notification system in my mouse driver. Why stop there? Why not put in a word processor, an accounting package? How are my friends going to finish their overdue taxes? What am I going to use to align a satellite dish with a future Martian base--if your software doesn't include it?! There are horoscopes and tides to be predicted! I really need a talking paper-clip to connect all of my Steam friend list--where's that? Because my computer is way to fast, and rather than a smooth mouse packet experience, I need something to watch my processor temperatures, and report them as colors on mouse...err, wait, you already have that.

Keep the profile on the mouse, nah, the EEPROM is likely on the mouse, but we don't want you to be able to use the mouse on more than one machine--unless you download the 1GB of software, remember? Anyway....

A few examples of the current software bugs are: Import of profiles did not work in spite of notification that of success. Button assignments not saved, after repeated attempts. Some buttons are saved, sometimes, others aren't. Profile switching no longer works, well it does one way, for some reason. That's just one of those iCue mysteries.

In spite of how the screenshots may look, and given, they likely look swell, the user interface rots. Although, I will give you a nice passing grade for not committing one of the worst UI sins: "Though shall not steal focus from user," there so much other bad here.

There not many conformations for user changes, which is one of the most baffling mistakes. You can click things and not know if your changes have been saved, or not. Geez, I thought the parachute was packed--don't look! You should be able to edit a profile to your heart's desire, and have a choice to keep or discard changes, with AYS sheets, so if the user makes a mistake as they wade through the tangled iCue mire, at least they can bail out to dry land, climb on a log or a "rock or something", and start over.

There should be contextual links that shows relationships, as in: where am I in the software? Looking at it, which process am I undertaking? If I had to describe what I am doing over the phone, how would I do that? When it's buggy, and your clicks mean nothing, it's really easy to loose track what you were trying to accomplish.

Things should be discoverable without repercussions, and if not, then please don't try so hard to get creative. Paint a picture. Write a poem. Sing a song, then come back to they keyboard anew, and create some logical software. Sometimes, a book without an outline is just a decent into madness.

I feel that your graphic designers were concerned about your brand, so they made the concepts look a certain way. The problem is: while the still images might look good, the movie suffers. iCue, as software, moves badly, kinetically, it's bad, like the rhythm of a heavy wooden box rolling down an old cellar stairs.

Maybe, it would better would better, smoother without the bugs, but after these years, I have to admit that we may never know.
 

Edited November 27, 2022 by BrendaEM

[BrendaEM]

Oddly, writing the above review made me feel a little better about my purchase.
Though, it's "confirmation," actually.