The HARPOON RGB can work independently without the software using its onboard memory profile, but to make any changes the software will be needed.
In any case, Surprise!! The Corsair Utility Engine (CUE) has been given a UI facelift and is now super slick, easy to navigate and use. The HARPOON RGB features 6 programmable buttons, and the macro and program options remains as powerful as ever. This time you can individually select the instances you wish the macro to record. Unfortunately it didn't recognise the mouse side buttons.

We are given a selection of lighting options, but considering it is just the only just the one lighting zone there isn't anything spectacular about it. The colours are bright and vibrant with fairly good rendering quality, though white appears to be slightly blue/violet, but this can be compensated by reducing the blue content in the RGB gamut.

The DPI performance is set to 500/1000/2000/4000/6000 DPI by default and you can assign each setting a colour indicator when toggled on the mouse. DPI increments are in fairly large blocks of 250 for each step but this shouldn't cause a problem for most people.