Corsair Ironclaw RGB Wireless review: An ideal mouse for a palm grip

November 27, 2020
Corsair Mouse, Gaming mice

Price Fairness

Quality

Performance

Design

Gear-Rating

82.25

PROS

Fair price
Very good shape
Impressive sensor

CONS

No wireless charging
Heavy
Not ideal for claw grip

The Corsair Ironclaw Wireless is a truly impressive mouse. It has decent battery life, a spectacular spec sheet and is also designed very innovatively. It lacks some major conveniences like wireless charging, but exactly this is the reason why this gaming mouse can be offered for an out-of-competition low price point. With a price tag of about $ 79.99 it actually counts towards the cheapest models of wireless mice of this quality.

With this model, Corsair is especially focusing on people that are using the right-handed palm grip – which is the most used grip overall. And at doing so it actually delivers. If you find yourself being a right-handed palmer, this mouse might just be the best choice for you.

Design

The shape of the Corsair Ironclaw lets your hand directly relax into a perfect fit of the right-handed palm grip and supports this stance very well. The mouse is a relatively chunky boy with a height of 1.6-inches (40mm) and a length of 5 inches (127mm) on its big side. The width comes to a maximum of 3 inches (77mm) on its widest part across the base. The size totals up to a weight of 0,3 pounds (130g).

Part of the reason for this weight is because of the battery inside of it. It delivers up to 50 hours of gameplay in normal mode, or about 24 hours in the 2.4 GHz wireless mode.

The top part of the Corsair Ironclaw is made of a single piece of plastic with a matte-black soft-touch finish. The left side of the gaming mouse features an ergonomic thumb grip with a rubber finish. There’s also a rubber finish on the right side, which also allows your fingers to comfortably rest.

Right above the thumb rest you’ll find the usual back and forward buttons. The forward button is easily accessible with the tip of your thumb and the back button with the inside of your fingerprint. There’s also another button right between/above those two. Even though still very comfortably accessible, the third button requires you to lift your thumb a bit. This slightly impairs your control over the mouse since you’re not using your usual supporting stance. Hence the button should not be used in situations where accuracy is required the most.

Unlike the design on most of the gaming mice, the Corsair Ironclaw holds the CPI control switches right next to the left mouse button. There are neither up nor downsides to this, but it’s always nice to see a different approach.

Right behind the mouse wheel (where usually the CPI control buttons sit) are two additional, customizable buttons. On standard, you’re able to change mouse profiles with those, but they are customizable in the iCUE software.

The mouse wheel is also clickable, which adds up to a total of 10 clickable buttons on the Ironclaw. All the mouse switches are rated to last more than 50 million clicks.

Everything mentioned concludes with the fact that the whole mouse layout emphasizes the earlier mentioned right-handed palm grip. Obviously, you can use the mouse using a claw grip, but the majority of buttons will be a lot harder to reach.

There are also some RGBs to be found. The Ironclaw features a lit-up Corsair logo on its back. The base underneath the mouse buttons, the inside of the mouse wheel, as well as the CPI setting indicators also shine in RGB. All the non-indicator lights are individually customizable in the software. However, the RGB experience is a bit disappointing, as the positions of the lights are rather odd. Unless you have someone sitting right in front of your mouse, you won’t be able to see much of them. The illuminated mouse wheel is pretty cool, but comes off rather underwhelming at the end of the day.

Performance

The Ironclaw uses the Pixart PMW3391 optical sensor. Corsair usually uses this sensor on their high-end products. The sensor has a range of 100 CPI all the way up to 18.000 CPI and an inches-per-second rating of 450 IPS. The CPI can be changed using single-digit increments, meaning you could change your CPI for example to 801 or 1052.

It has a refresh rate of 125/250/500/1.000 Hz and the lift-off distance is also adjustable in their software. All the movements feel very smooth and the latency was very fast in the 2.4 GHz wireless mode.

Inside of the Corsair iCUE software you get the opportunity to individualize your gaming mouse. You can adjust your lighting settings as well as the possibility to sync the lightning with other different Corsair hardware.

The different CPI settings can be stored in different gaming profiles, meaning you can boot up any game and adapt your settings accordingly within seconds. You can also store the lightning settings in those profiles, to immediately recognize which profile you are at right now. The profiles get saved to the onboard memory of the mouse. This allows you to bring all your stored settings to any place, even if the connected PC doesn’t have iCUE installed.

Corsair uses their Slipstream technology for wireless connectivity. They tested different latency technologies and state their Slipstream to be one of the fastest on the market. It does have an incredibly low latency of less than 1ms (about 0.867ms). This technology uses three different subchannels to ensure to always get the fastest and clearest signal. While using the mouse there is actually no noticeable difference compared to a wired mouse.

You have to keep in mind, that you only get the Slipstream technology when you’re using the 2.4 GHz wireless connection. However, the Ironclaw offers great versatility and can be used via bluetooth connection as well. There is a noticeable difference between Slipstream and Bluetooth, but Bluetooth also only delivers very little lag. One downside is that you can’t connect to the iCUE software using the bluetooth connection though.

When you’re charging the Ironclaw with the braided cable, it can be used like any wired gaming mouse in the meantime. This is obviously great, as it means there is no downtime of gaming when you run out of juice.

Verdict

One of the many things to really love about the Ironclaw is that it does have a lot of personality and is unlike any other mouse you can find. The mouse does have a very striking design and incorporates a lot of functionality into it. The shape is ergonomically and the button placement is intuitive. The specs are top-notch with very good results on the sensor and strong connectivity with no loss in latency. The whole package combined with a battery that lasts up to 50-hours for only $ 79.99 is an insanely good deal.

Obviously, there are better-performing competitors on the market, but for its price point, the Ironclaw is actually top competing.

With a high weight, the mouse might rather be for slower-paced games than for fast-paced FPS. But overall the mouse delivers a strong amount of assets and is a charm to use in a daily environment.

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Price fairness

88%

Quality

88%

Performance

78%

Design

75%