A well-rounded gaming mouse for gamers on a budget.
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The Corsair Harpoon RGB (See it on Amazon) sits on the bottom rung of Corsair’s mouse line-up, but it is not without its charms. Corsair makes smart sacrifices to hit a very reasonable $29.99 price for the Harpoon RGB. Like its name suggests, the mouse features RGB lighting along with precise performance with five DPI settings, plus a useful sniper setting you won’t find on other budget mice. We put it through its paces to see how it stacks up to other budget gaming mice:
Design and Features
The Corsair Harpoon RGB Gaming Mouse looks and feels more expensive than it is. It’s light but not to the point of feeling cheap and flimsy. The build quality and ergonomics are excellent. The mouse features textured, molded rubber side grips that have a concave, scooped-out shape that lets you get a firm hold on the mouse that won’t slip. The sides flare out toward the bottom, creating a slight platform to rest your thumb and fingers.
The Harpoon RGB is a right-handed mouse. It has a pleasing curve to it that fits the palm for right-handed mousing. To accommodate the flared sides, the mouse sits up a bit higher than other gaming mice. Its height and rounded shape make it a natural fit for those of you who are palm grippers, but I employ a claw grip and loved the feel of the mouse, mostly due to the scooped-out shape of the sides and their grippy feel.
The mouse feature six programmable buttons. On top, there’s the right-and-left mouse buttons, a clickable scroll wheel, and a DPI settings button just behind the scroll wheel. On the left side are forward and back buttons. The side buttons are perfectly located just above where your thumb rests; they are easily accessible but kept out of your way when not needed.
Like the sides, the scroll wheel has a rubberized, textured feel that adds to the mouse’s feeling of solid build quality.
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The build quality and ergonomics are excellent.
The Harpoon RGB has a design quirk in that the mouse does not close around the scroll wheel. Instead, there is an open gap between the right-and-left mouse buttons. It doesn’t have any effect on the mouse’s performance or click-ability; it just looks a bit different is all. At the very least it probably makes dislodging any dirt, crumbs or grime from the scroll wheel region a bit easier.
Unlike other budget mice, the scroll wheel lacks lighting. The only lighting you get with the Harpoon RGB is under your palm with the Corsair logo, so you won’t be able to enjoy it when you’re using it.
One of the features most budget mice sacrifice to hit a low price is by ditching onboard memory, but not so with the Harpoon RGB. It has onboard memory so you can take your settings from one PC to another, so you can be plugged in and gaming in no-time.
Software
The Harpoon RGB works without any additional software or drivers, but it’s worth your time to install the free Corsair Utility Engine (CUE). With it you can tweak the DPI settings and RGB lighting effects and set macros and other actions.
The CUE app lets you enable up to five DPI settings that range from 250 DPI to 6,000 DPI, which is an average range for a budget gaming mouse. On a mouse like the Harpoon with only one button to cycle through the DPI settings (as opposed to two buttons that would let you move up or down through a range), I usually disable all but two DPI settings for a FPS: a low DPI setting for controlling a sniper scope and a higher setting for general action, whether I’m wielding a shotgun or knife. I don’t want to have to cycle through extra DPI settings when I’m switching from shotgun to sniper or vice versa. With the Harpoon RGB, however, gamers get the best of both DPI worlds because it has a separate sniper setting.
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The Harpoon RGB works without any additional software or drivers.
On the DPI page of CUE, you can enable between one and five active DPI settings, each of which you can customize with a DPI figure of your choosing. There’s a separate Sniper setting, but you can’t enable it on the DPI page. Instead, you’ll need to head over to the Actions page and remap one of the mouse buttons to use it (I chose to remap the forward side button). With the sniper setting separate from the DPI button, you are free to keep as many DPI settings active as you find useful while still having the sniper DPI a single button press away.
On the Lighting Effects page, you can select the color and pattern of the LED lights for the Corsair logo. And if you’ll return to the DPI page with me for a moment, I should note that you can set a color for each of the DPI settings. When you switch to a DPI setting, it will flash to its color for a few seconds, which helps you keep track of which DPI setting you are using. The DPI lighting indicator would be more useful, however, if the scroll wheel had lighting because in order to see the logo flash the color of the DPI setting you selected, you must lift your palm to peek at it.
Gaming
To test the Corsair Harpoon RGB, I fired up Battlefield 3 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. On both games, the Harpoon felt accurate and responsive. It glided smoothly, whether I was using it on my mouse pad or directly on top my desk. The buttons are well laid out and easy to click, and each click offers a satisfying feel that’s neither too stiff nor too loose. The rubber side grips let you keep a firm grasp during the action without the worry of slippage.
Being able to change DPI settings on the fly enhanced the experience on both games. On a 27-inch, 1440p display, I didn’t need the highest DPI setting. I settled on two settings, 1,500 DPI and 4,500 DPI. The lower setting gave me a bit more precision and control, and the higher setting allowed me to have smooth, side-to-side coverage across my monitor. Anything higher than 4,500 DPI felt jittery, but it’s nice to know I have a little DPI overhead should I upgrade to a larger monitor in the future that might necessitate a higher DPI. In addition to the two main DPI settings, I also used the Sniper setting at its 250 DPI setting to line up sniper headshots.
Purchasing Guide
The Corsair Harpoon RGB Gaming Mouse can be purchased directly from Corsair’s website for $29.99, but is available at a slight discount on Amazon. It drops to $20 occasionally, but $30 is more typical:
The Verdict
The Corsair Harpoon RGB Gaming Mouse is a well-rounded budget mouse for gamers. It boasts accurate performance, a comfortable design, six programmable buttons, and excellent DPI settings that include a helpful sniper setting.
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