Corsair Darkstar Wireless Review

The Corsair Darkstar Wireless is the long-awaited MOBA/MMO mouse addition to Corsair’s lineup of gaming peripherals. Priced at $169.99, its 15 programmable keys and number of unique features make it quite handy for games like Diablo 4, Battlefield 2042, and more. Although it’s the most expensive gaming mouse Corsair offers, its build quality, features, lighting, and customization options make it well worth the price tag. 

Corsair Darkstar Wireless – Design and Features

The Corsair Darkstar Wireless gaming mouse delivers just about everything you’d want from a MOBA/MMO mouse of this style. Alongside the mouse itself, the box contains its USB-A  wireless dongle and a USB-A to USB-C charging cable. As a nice bonus, the packaging is plastic-free, making it easier to recycle.

The Darkstar Wireless has a total of 15 programmable buttons, including the six on the left side, left and right tilt click, and several others. Almost all of the buttons are perfectly placed on the mouse, although the addition of two extra buttons on top absolutely drives me nuts. They’re programmed to control the default DPI steps straight out of the box, and I can’t help but constantly press them when moving the mouse across my desk. 

Flip the Darkstar Wireless over and you’re met with two giant PTFE mouse skates that offer amazing glide, a slot for the USB dongle, and a switch to change between 2.4 GHz wireless, Bluetooth, and power off.

The mouse is 96g, which is right on par with other MOBA mice, but I can comfortably say that it takes a couple of days to get used to it when coming from a lighter, less feature-packed mouse like the Razer Viper V2 Pro or HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2.

I’ve found other MOBA-style mice to be rather uncomfortable in the past due to all of the buttons, but Corsair managed to make the Darkstar Wireless quite comfortable with textured grips on both sides and fairly low-profile side buttons on the left side.

In my time using the mouse, I found the side buttons to be perfectly placed around my thumb, making them super easy to reach. I was scared that the design would also make it easy to accidentally press them, but I didn’t have any issues at all. 

They’re super useful both inside and outside of games, with iCUE offering the ability to switch to a different profile depending on what app you have open at the time. I personally found them rather useful in Affinity Photo for easy access to my most used tools.

Being a larger man that loves to palm grip his mouse when playing games, the Darkstar Wireless fits perfectly into my right hand without having to adjust for comfort. The weight is well distributed, which allows me to shift from palm to fingertip or claw grip without any issue whatsoever. 

Corsair has brought tilt gestures to the Darkstar Wireless as well, giving users even more ways to control their favorite game, video editing software, or PC as a whole. 

Tilt gestures in the Darkstar Wireless use the same motion tracking that enables instant liftoff detection and tracks when the mouse is moved left, right, forward, and backward to trigger shortcuts that are enabled within the iCUE software. 

I immediately set up the left and right gestures to Windows Snap to help with my daily workflow and absolutely fell in love with the feature. 

The default tilt angle of 20 degrees was a bit too sensitive for me at first, but I eventually increased it by 10 degrees which made it nearly impossible to accidentally activate when picking up the mouse to relocate it on my desk. 

The mouse connects to your PC via Corsair’s Slipstream Wireless dongle, which is also capable of connecting other Corsair peripherals without the need for additional dongles. It also supports Bluetooth 4.2, though with the hefty price tag of the Darkstar Wireless, I don’t understand why Corsair didn’t go with a newer version for better performance.

Corsair Darkstar Wireless – Software

The Corsair Darkstar Wireless unsurprisingly requires the use of the company’s iCUE software to customize the mouse. While it does work out of the box without it, you’re limited to the side buttons being mapped to 1-4 on your Numpad. 

With iCUE, you can make plenty of changes to the Darkstar Wireless. Most importantly, you can remap all of the buttons, as well as adjust mouse sensitivity. 

One feature that stood out for me is the Surface Calibration tool. My desk has a leather mouse pad across the top that was giving me some issues with the Darkstar Wireless’ sensor at first, but they were resolved by calibrating.

All of the menus are easy to understand, and even easier to get the Darkstar Wireless to be almost exactly how you want. Each section is organized with well-labeled steps to customize any of the mouse’s 15 buttons the way you like.

In addition to controlling your Corsair-branded devices, iCUE also offers system monitoring, and supports RGB control for Nanoleaf, MSI, and other RGB ecosystems. I especially appreciated that these additional control options are added as a downloadable plugin, rather than being latched onto (and thus bloating out) the software to begin with. 

Corsair Darkstar Wireless – Gaming and Performance

The Darkstar Wireless features a Corsair Marksman 26k sensor with 50g of acceleration, which I found to be phenomenal with all types of games. I tested it with Battlefield 2042 and Cyberpunk 2077 the most, and didn’t experience a single bit of lag or stutter in heated situations.

The Darkstar Wireless has Omron Optical Switches on the main buttons, which give a very quick response time while also providing plenty of tactile feedback. The mouse wheel button is a bit hard to click at first, but I found it very easy to get used to and it didn’t affect my aim in any games once I did.

I used the side buttons in Battlefield 2042 as a way to access my different weapons and really enjoyed having quick access to things like crouch and reload. 

The added buttons served an even better purpose in Cyberpunk 2077, as I used the side buttons to easily call for my vehicle, perform a quick melee attack, as well as block and aim commands.

The slight click sound when pressed paired with each one’s unique shape helped me make sure the button commands went through. Not once did any of the buttons fail to respond while playing games.

With all the options that the Darkstar Wireless offers, the area where it really lacks is battery life. Corsair rates the mouse at 65 hours on 2.4 GHz wireless and 80 hours on Bluetooth as long as the RGB lighting effects are turned off. In my testing with lighting effects enabled, I typically got around 20 hours on 2.4 Ghz and roughly 30 on Bluetooth.

Those numbers are a bit low compared to others like the Razer Naga v2 Pro, which is rated at 150 hours on 2.4 GHz wireless and 300 on Bluetooth, though I assume those numbers are with RGB off.

Its RGB lights are mainly covered by your hand when it’s in use anyway, but they’re pretty uniquely laid out and I personally prefer leaving them on – it’s just a shame that it has such a massive impact on battery life.