iCue Nexus - pretty damn disappointing

Picked up my Nexus today, I was really excited to see what it could do for £90.

 

I knew the screen was small, I read the specs and saw the promos, but damn... it’s TINY. You have to pretty much squint to be able to see anything meaningful on the display.

 

Speaking of the display... who @Corsair quality checked this product? This display has worse quality than a Fitbit. The colours are muted, the black isn’t even black it’s just grey so looks VERY cheap and there is absolutely no viewing angle other than straight on that works. The touch sensitivity is also pretty bad. It’s very reminiscent of a first-gen iPod touch in terms of responsiveness and picture quality (awful).

 

Not only that, the iCue UI is for the Nexus is confusing at best, and requires quite a lot of thought, messing around and figuring things out to even find anything useful to include on the screen. I wish there were some kind of presets.

 

I think I’ll be returning this product unfortunately as much as I love Corsair for many other components. I’ll likely wait until they release one with a usable screen size with a display that doesn’t look like it came off an AliExpress smart watch.

 

Interested to get anyone else’s thoughts on this?

The touch sensitivity is also pretty bad. It’s very reminiscent of a first-gen iPod touch in terms of responsiveness and picture quality (awful).

 

I haven't noticed an issue with the sensitivity. I've been using mine for a few hours and don't really have any issues to report. Stupid question but did you remove the little thin layer of plastic off the front of it?

 

 

Not only that, the iCue UI is for the Nexus is confusing at best, and requires quite a lot of thought, messing around and figuring things out to even find anything useful to include on the screen. I wish there were some kind of presets.

 

I think I’ll be returning this product unfortunately as much as I love Corsair for many other components. I’ll likely wait until they release one with a usable screen size with a display that doesn’t look like it came off an AliExpress smart watch.

 

First off I laughed at the aliexpress part lmao.

 

Second, I generally hate the iCUE software because of how buggy it is. That's the main reason I swapped my keyboard, mouse, and headset to Logitech. That said, I genuinely think the options for the Nexus are really straightforward, if not a bit barebones. It takes a little playing around but it's quick to pick up and play with. That said, I'm disappointed at how few options there are to play with. It would be cool to get MSI afterburner integration for FPS monitoring and overclock control. Or, at the very least, an FPS counter widget

I think of buying one. But now I have to wait. I still using part of Logitech keyboard screen G19 which has 320x240 screen and Corsair Keyboard. I'm using aida64 and they said on their forum what once they got nexus they maybe release their version of the app to the nexus. So I have to wait how it will work. But for 100$ it should have not 260k colors screen and 640x140 pixels. It looks old in terms of specs from the beginning like maybe the 2013-2015 year release, not 2020.

Yeah I'd agree with OP - very underwhelming. The display quality is awful, and I can't even get icue to recognize it. It's stuck on some kind of download icon when I plug it in, and it doesn't show up anywhere in icue. To top it off (as the OP indicated), there doesn't even seem to be a dedicated forum for it on Corsair's website despite numerous people having issues with it. I'll probably just end up sending mine back.

 

I say all this as a big corsair fan - I have a corsair keyboard, mouse, cpu liquid cooler, graphics card, RAM, power supply, half a dozen fans, and a few other myriad peripherals, including a stream deck, mic, and led lights from elgato (if those count).

 

Between the awful display, giant bezels, and issues with it taking up so much cpu percentage that many have reported (and which I admittedly haven't experienced since I can't get the thing to work in the first place) among other things, the nexus seems like an embarrassment of a product, and I'm not sure why it was released in its current form.

I agree.

This is WORSTEST VIEWING ANGLE. And WORSTEST BEZEL.

even when i see center, I cant see side icon well.

A bit disappointed with the higher CPU usage and lack of presets at the start. Niether my 2 x LS100 or LT100 lighting can't be controlled directly and the lighting link button just cycles through modes - yes it syncs everything, but it's pretty pointless if you can't select from colours or even lighting profiles. Being able to control the lighting from a touch screen on the keyboard would be extremely useful.

 

I'm pretty sure I've read that you can assign any iCUE command to the Nexus, but I can't fathom how to do this. Again, I'd like to be able to control lighting etc, but I can't even figure out how to recreate the lighting link for example. So much potential for tying into Corsair's RGB ecosystem. I'd like to see more there, or even detailed instructions on how to do it. The Use guide is all physical setup. Nothing software-related.

I think the biggest problem is the cheap LCD panel. Honestly it's not worth $100. Even when attached to the keyboard the angles on it are so poor it gets washed out like a $99 walmart TN chromebook.

 

I've tried adjusting the brightness for this but the settings are this:

- black

-barely visible

-too bright

- Blinding

 

And all settings have the white washed effect at every angle except head on.

After few day, I have to say I'm totally agree with this thread. Nexus was a great idea, and I was very excited about it, but it's poorly executed...

 

Yes, the screen is tiny, but it's okay. What is not okay for me tho, is the quality of the screen, which is really, really bad, regardless of the angle you watch it. It's definitly not worth 99€ to my point of view. And one more thing is bugging me, you can't even configure profiles in iCUE (even if the functuniality was announced in the corsair website).

 

I will return mine, and hope for a second generation of this product.

I think the biggest problem is the cheap LCD panel. Honestly it's not worth $100. Even when attached to the keyboard the angles on it are so poor it gets washed out like a $99 walmart TN chromebook.

 

That's the price class you are shopping in and the panels are likely the same design. You can't compare it to $1200 smartphone. Would you still buy this at $600 to get an OLED screen and an ARM chip?

I decided to send mine back. I eventually got it to work (more or less) but yeah between the awful screen and the fact that it eats up more than 10% of my processor makes it a hard pass for me, which is too bad because I was kind of excited about this.

 

I don't buy the reasoning that the nexus eats up processor power due to monitoring because even with icue connected to seven other devices (including a commander pro that itself controls four lightstrips, five rgb fans, and multiple thermometers), it never goes above 5% of cpu power without the dashboard open. While monitoring EVERYTHING in my computer with the iCue dashboard open (all the processor cores temps, cpu load, RAM temperatures, GPU, everything related to my H115i Pro, motherboard temps/voltages, etc.) the cpu power does go higher by about 10%, but whether or not I have my dashboard open or not, the moment I plug the nexus in, the cpu power that icue eats up goes up by 10-12% from where it was (and stays there) just from being plugged in and without any monitoring on the nexus display.

 

While I'm on this point, I must say that I don't really get why system monitoring from iCue eats up so much cpu anyway. While actively monitoring all that stuff and more through Afterburner (admittedly except the RAM temps - I don't think Afterburner can monitor Corsair's RAM temps for some annoying reason), that software never goes above 0.2% even with 20+ graphs actively being tracked.

 

While iCue is generally a vast improvement over the old Cue software, I do really wish the engineers at Corsair would clean it up. I've had issues with it glitching out repeatedly through three Corsair keyboards and one mouse (and on two different computers with multiple Windows installations) - the lighting keeps freezing on the keyboard, and iCue often won't recognize the mouse, regardless of which computer I've had it on or which USB ports I use. Troubleshooted this problem a few times over the years but never came to a solution. And those problems aside, it eats up an inordinate amount of cpu cycles. Just my two cents.

Really useful thread Guys, I was chomping at the bit to buy one. Especially as I need a gadget fix in the absence of a 3080 I can acquire without dropping a wad on a scalper. Having read the above comments, I'll find something else to scratch my itch with.

Well i use it on a k95 keyboard and i love it :)

I can't find one that isn't being sold for double the original price and from reading this thread guess I will pass for now

I can't find one that isn't being sold for double the original price and from reading this thread guess I will pass for now

 

This thread is 6 months old and deals with issue on the first release. The technical issues above are no longer in play. Unfortunately, the world supply/manufacturing issues are very much a current and continuing issue.

This would have been a perfect time for them to include it with the K100 for a bump in the price. To get it out on the market. That way you could have gotten it and if you didn't like it or you did then you had it.

 

Or actually took that Nexus and made it into the K100 since it has such a big empty space on the top, to begin with. But they will have to take baby steps and keep making it better like all the companies have to do.

I was thinking about getting the Nexus for its monitoring capabilities. But I read this review from July and it seems very underwhelming and lacking in functionality. Have any of these concerns been addressed in updates?

 

https://overclock3d.net/reviews/input_devices/corsair_icue_nexus_review/1

Between the awful display, giant bezels, and issues with it taking up so much cpu percentage that many have reported (and which I admittedly haven't experienced since I can't get the thing to work in the first place) among other things, the nexus seems like an embarrassment of a product, and I'm not sure why it was released in its current form.

 

How much CPU does it take up?

Hello,

 

Since the last updates, CPU load went down nicely. On my computer is take ~1.5 to 2.7%, no more

Thing im disapointed the most about the iCue Nexus, is that we keep asking for more things to be fix and added, and they keep saying they are coming. Bit still nothing added.

Been a fair few months now. Will we ever get any updates, not looking likely.

I think its a dead product at this point - Corsair didn't release any meaningful update since release and its a long time already.

 

Cool idea - horrible execution - I will try to sell my unit.

Worried I bought into a product that clearly has not the backing of developers :-( Is there a roadmap for this product or just down to the community? Not even Discord integration :-(

Our development team is working on some planned updates for Nexus, and we'll provide you all with an update once available. Don't have a set time frame on when they will be available, but they are in the works.

 

When you keep saying that then we get no updates for this long, im guessing that really stands for no updates and we are forgetting about the product. Sorry but if you keep saying it and nothing happens, we have no choice but to think its not going to happen and we got scammed buying this product.

So I'm looking for a replacement for my old G15 keyboard and this looks like it was the closest thing. However, for some reason the ICUE nexus can't show basic things like FPS, Working load, Wattage of the GPU. RAM usage, CPU clock speed, etc.

 

Look at what MSI Afterburner can output on the G15 LCD screen and see how robust their options are if you want a list.

 

Probably going to return this until it gets better updates and BASIC features like showing the FPS for the Direct3d device.