Here are the two newest pieces of gear in the fiery halls of The Forge, the GWW’s test lab for all hardware, software, and services. I’ll personally be putting the coals on the fire tonight and look forward to having a blast putting these two gaming peripherals through their paces. These are just my initial impressions moments after the unboxing, so please be sure to check back later for the remainder of the full review.
Corsair Sabre RGB Gaming Mouse
The first thing I noticed was the USB connector on the Sabre, which differs from Corsair’s 2015 motif where all of its peripheral USB connectors were blue. It’s molded with a bit of an S-curve swirl to it, which might make it stand out on your desk, but that’s about it. The cord is braided, as you would expect. That’s pretty much obligatory these days to appeal to any gamer’s sense of style and quality. This is an 8-button mouse. The scroll wheel feels nice and rugged and provides plenty of feedback. I cannot stand free-spinning mouse wheels or ones that do not give solid feedback. There are four lighting points on the mouse; one front and pointing downwards, one on the mouse-wheel, another at the palm, and one on the inner side. The specific color of the lights is supposed to be individually customizable via a downloadable app. For whatever reason, this seems to be all of the rage these days.
A few bad things I’ve noticed. The chassis material is totally slick plastic, not non-skid or roughed, and there are no rubberized areas. This mouse may be hard for me to get a grip on and keep it, especially during an endurance gaming session in the heat of the summer. It also feels small in the hand, which is going to cause grip issues as well. It’s not long enough, and I am going to have to used my “fingers cramped” hold. In general, I prefer a mouse that has a longer finger extension and one that I can lay my entire hand on without areas having to float off of the mouse. Otherwise the mouse gets uncomfortable quicker than larger mice.
The Sabre RGB Gaming Mouse is rated at 10,000 dpi and supports 16.8 million colors in its lighting customization. I got the device for $42.99 on Newegg. The device was released near the end of February of this year.
Plantronics RIG Gaming Headset 3.5 mm Dual-mic
This headset came in wonderful, high quality packaging. I love the orange coloring; it reminds of McLaren and other high-quality products. Not sure why Orange has that affect on me and other people these days. There are also orange highlights on the device itself. Again…love it. But the coolest thing about the unboxing was that instead of those gross plastic and wire twist-ties to clamp everything onto the plastic shipping base inside the box, Plantronics used these great velcro sticky tabs. All hardware manufacturers should do this and stop using those irritating plastic tie-tie’s. The tabs made it made easy to get the headset and its accompanying cables out of the box without going into hardware packaging rage.
The headset itself has great soft-pillow earcups. It feels heavy, durable, and of high quality. The headband is wrapped in cloth, which I am hoping will make it comfortable to wear for long periods. The RIG comes with three cables – a splitter for PC’s with discrete mic input and speaker output connections, and then one with the boom mic, and another with an in-line mic (like you might use with a smartphone). I guess this might be for mobile devices if you were playing games but still wanted to take a call, and maybe therefore you didn’t want the boom mic in your FoV if you were not really going to use it. This seems like a convoluted use-case which might make more sense once I am testing the set, but right now I’m not sure what the need for the inline mic is.
The two cables that plug into the headset are flat; nice. The connection port is behind the left ear, and places the boom mic in pretty excellent position for gaming chat. There are guide 
indentions for sizing the headband. If you’re like me, I like to size the headband of a headset or headphones the same every time, so there is no question of whether I am in the perfect-it comfort zone or not.
Newegg lists the RIG as XB1 and PS4 compatible, but the actual product box does not say anything about either. This is an ongoing problem with headsets, and has been since the two gen 8 consoles launched. It seems like headset manufacturers have been very skittish about claiming compatibility with the consoles, much less printing it on their box. I’ve seen everything from post-packaging sticker-labels added on to indicate compatibility, as well as things like this where the website says one thing but there is not a peep about it on the box. Rest assured that we’ll test for both to get real-world data under test.
The Plantronics RIG Gaming Headset 3.5mm Dual-mic goes for $79.99 on Newegg at this time, although I found it later on Newegg in white dress for just under $50. Make sure you check the SKU and data to know that you are getting the latest and greatest model here. There have been a few iterations on this product, but many online retailers call them all the same thing by title, which is why I like Amazon where many products include their availability date. This specific model just launched about a month ago in early April.
Again, keep your eyes peeled here for the final wrap-up review!