User Review: Roccat Kone Gaming Mouse

[matty-hodgson]

Roccat Kone Gaming Mouse
By Matty-Hodgson

The Roccat Kone:
“Stuffed with technology and design innovations, our first gaming mouse ROCCAT™ Kone is the only tool to unleash your hidden skills and develop your existing ones to the max.”

Specification:
• True 3200dpi laser sensor
• TCU – Tracking Control Unit
• 1ms response time; 1000Hz polling rate
• 16-bit data channel; 7080fps; 6.4 megapixel, 20g acceleration
• 72MHz TurboCore processor unit
• 128kB memory, update-/flashable
• 1.65m/s(65 inch per second)
• Extended USB cable, cable diameter: 3mm

Package Contents:
• Roccat Kone mouse
• Weights system and case to store them in
• A mission book with Roccat ID Card
• Driver CD
• Quick Install Guide

Features:
• 3200 DPI Pro-Aim Gaming Sensor
• TCU (Tracking Control Unit)
• Integrated Turbocore (72MHz)
• Customizable lights system
• Onboard 128KB memory
• 4 Weights (5, 10, 15 and 20g)
• 8 programmable mouse buttons + left and right click
• Ultra quiet teflon feet

The Review:
Firstly, we’ll start with the packaging and contents. The packaging of this mouse is actually very nice, based upon an all blue and black design with silver and white font. The box has a clear window on the front to show the mouse in all its glory. The box displays all the information you will need to know about the mouse and it’s all organised very nicely.



The box also has an opening window on the front, this reveals testimonies from pro gamers and allows you to see the mouse much more easily.



Around the back of the box there is a lot of information on the features of the mouse and basic explanations of what each feature actually does. There’s also a lot of “award stickers” stating which awards the mouse has won, this list is quite extensive though which can only be good.

Once you’ve opened up the box and start taking your new mouse out, you’ll soon realise it’s very well packaged with a few nice little extras. The Box contains a Quick Install Guide; this guide does exactly what it says on the tin. There’s also a Mission Book included; this book seems to just want to make the mouse seem like some kind of mystical object, but I’d just like to remind everyone, it’s just a mouse. Also included it a very handy Weights System inside of a storage case.



They also keep the driver CD in here, and no, those weights aren't just huge, that's a mini-disc.

And the best included feature of all definitely has to be the Roccat ID Card. They all have a personalised number on, and yeah, check out those last 4 digits. Oh yeah!



Now that we've covered the included extras and the box, let's move on to the mouse.

Firstly, can I just say, this thing is lovely!

How it feels:
One of the main things that Roccat were aiming for was a comfortable mouse, and I can definitely say they've done that. It seems to fit my hand perfectly, and is very very comfortable for a 3 hour session on Crysis Warhead. The texture on the mouse is very similar to an Xbox 360 controller too.

How it looks:
This mouse looks fantastic, matt black with some clear plastic bits too. There's also a light system with 5 totally adjustable lights, you can choose from 38 different colours for each light and then you have the selection of certain effects to go with that. The mouse really does look amazing, it just looks so grizzly and mean.



How it works:
This mouse is fantastic, It's amazingly accurate, even the slightest of movements and it recognises the movement and makes your pointer move.
I played on Crysis for about 3 hours with this mouse without a break and what a lovely thing it was to use, It was very comfortable and the extra buttons were very useful for headshotting some ugly Koreans.
The mouse is really good in Windows too, all the buttons are fully programmable in Windows to do certain tasks such as play/pause, skip forwards/backwards, or even set up an infinitely long macro.
The TCU on the back of this unit is also really good. This thing is essentially a very basic camera that scans the surface it's been placed on to calibrate to the surface for the best results, even when placed on a sheet of glass this mouse worked perfectly after the TCU had been re-calibrated.

Now that we've covered everything about the mouse and it's casing, we're going to move on to the driver.
The driver supplied on the disc doesn't work with Windows 7 so I had some trouble getting the mouse to work at first, but once I'd downloaded the latest driver, we were rocking and rolling.

The first thing that strikes you is the colour scheme of the driver, all blue and black, just like the box, lovely! Once you've got the driver opened up and all running, you'll notice you have a huge amount of customization, ranging from sensitivity to polling rate; there really is no end to the customization.



Here we get all the main controls, this is where you can assign macros to certain buttons on the mouse, or set buttons to do specific tasks. You can also change the mousewheel scroll speed and the sensitivity of the mouse. There's also the option to disable certain DPI options on the mouse, saving you precious time in a game flicking through DPI options that you don't want or need.



Here is where we control the colour of the mouse, and all the effects that come with that colour. There's 38 colours to choose from for each LED inside the mouse, meaning there's over 79Million combinations of colour on this mouse, there's also an option to just select a random colour for the mouse to display. The colours aren't very accurate though, some of the colours just aren't what you picked and end up being a totally different shade.
The effects you can add are also really nice, especially the pulsating one, where it quickly fades on and off.



Here are the advanced settings, a number of variables suited for the pro gamer, which not being the former, I left well alone! Such as Y-Axis and X-Axis sensitivity, Mouse Acceleration and Polling Rate, this is also where you calibrate the TCU to get the most out of your mouse.


And now, finally, I've finished my review, so now there's just one last thing to do, and that's to bring the whole thing to a conclusion.
This mouse is brilliant, by far the best mouse I've ever used and one of the best looking mice I've ever seen as well, the functionality and comfort of this mouse is amazing and the build quality seems very good too.
The driver is also amazing, it works perfectly, even after constantly changing all the settings and colours, the driver still stayed solid, it's also all very well laid out and easy to understand.

All in all, I'm gonna give this mouse a 10/10 because it's amazing, it just works, and very very well at that.

Definitely getting a double thumbs up from me!

[Disturbedguy]

Dude that is one heck of a review, very well written and presented..i was in the market for a new mouse..hmmm contender? me thinks so!

[0iD]

Top review Matty, well proud

[Pob255]

Nice, love the led settings and the drivers "look" very nice, ie not a really ugly skinned interface and a lot of very useful options.
What's the resource damage in terms of active exe's and memory?

although £43-50 puts the cost too high for my pocket.

[PeteSmith]

Looks like they went to town on the packaging - in a very similar fashion to the razor lachesis i currently use. Nice review.

[matty-hodgson]

Nice, love the led settings and the drivers "look" very nice, ie not a really ugly skinned interface and a lot of very useful options.
What's the resource damage in terms of active exe's and memory?

although £43-50 puts the cost too high for my pocket.

The .exe uses 2.3mb of memory. This is mainly due to the fact that it's all processed on the mouse with the internal memory and processor.

[matty-hodgson]

Dude that is one heck of a review, very well written and presented..i was in the market for a new mouse..hmmm contender? me thinks so!

Thanks . I'd definitely say it was a contender if you're in the market for a new mouse, Roccat have put some serious man-hours into developing this mouse and it's really paid off for them.

Top review Matty, well proud

Cheers mate . Just hope it actually helps someone in their decision to purchase.

Looks like they went to town on the packaging - in a very similar fashion to the razor lachesis i currently use. Nice review.

Yeah, the packaging is brilliant, it's totally different to the packaging that all the other reviewers received though. and thanks

[Haiku32]

Nice detailed review, cheers. I like that you can change the colour of the LED's. The lights in my case are blue, the light behind my monitor power button is blue, my volume controller light is blue ... would be nice to make the mouse blue as well .

If I had the money to splash out on a new mouse then this would definitely be a top contender.

[matty-hodgson]

Nice detailed review, cheers. I like that you can change the colour of the LED's. The lights in my case are blue, the light behind my monitor power button is blue, my volume controller light is blue ... would be nice to make the mouse blue as well .

I have mine white on the top two LEDs and blue on the bottom three, looks really nice imo .

New keyboard next week too. After I've paid for car tax.

[Fornowagain]

Thanks for that.

[Pob255]

The .exe uses 2.3mb of memory. This is mainly due to the fact that it's all processed on the mouse with the internal memory and processor.

Nice to know, considering some of the drivers I've seen that's decent.

I take it the dpi change buttons are moveable and not fixed?
And is there any form of dpi indicator?

[PiXxX]

After this review seriously thinking of getting one to replace my dying lachesis.

If im a lachesis person do you think this will suit me?

[matty-hodgson]

Nice to know, considering some of the drivers I've seen that's decent.

I take it the dpi change buttons are moveable and not fixed?
And is there any form of dpi indicator?

All of the buttons on the mouse are totally changeable, apart from left and right click.

EDIT! That was all a big lie I just told you there, sorry. There is a DPI Indicator, but it doesn't tell you when you change the DPI, you have to assign a seperate button to display the DPI. This works in Windows and In-game.

But yeah. With the drivers using so little memory you're gonna get absolutely no performance hit at all

[synaesthesia]

Good review - but am I the only one thinking it's absolutely identical to some of Logitech's efforts?
Short of the obvious features - looks wise it's a Mazda 121 next to a Ford Fiesta.
Not that it's a bad thing, there's going to be a generally best-accepted design for a mouse as far as shape and button placement goes. Now I could just do with finding one to play with locally - one of the worst things you can do is buy mice online if you don't know what it feels like

[MadduckUK]

Good review - but am I the only one thinking it's absolutely identical to some of Logitech's efforts?

which was no bad thing, as it was an extremely comfy mouse, although im going to start calling mice that let your whole hand sit perfectly "lazy" mice, perfect for a work mouse but gaming needs a little less comfort

Short of the obvious features - looks wise it's a Mazda 121 next to a Ford Fiesta.

actually, that proton that was like the astra but smoother in the 90's its obviously the same but tweaked to a more modern take. sorry dont know the name dont really like protons

Not that it's a bad thing, there's going to be a generally best-accepted design for a mouse as far as shape and button placement goes.

yup, this will be a hell of a lot more advanced on the inside

[SuPerNoVi]

I just wanted to thank Matty for his review on this mouse.

I've been after a new mouse for ages, ever since my MX Revolution suffered random freezes I went back to my Logitech MX510. It's years and years old and showing its age.

My first thought was to get another Logitech but I was disappointed to find that that the MX518 has some weird blotchy silver design and the G500 looks like some weirdo splattered paint all over it. I was at a loss, I even looked at the G9 and was close to buying it until I realised it's now the G9x which has a silver fascia. SILVER on a black mouse wtf!

So I went searching for a decent mouse, Razer looked like a good contendor but there was always some negative to every mouse I liked. It was then that I stumbled across Roccat and on a google search came across your review which convinced me this was my best bet. As a Logitech mouse lover that hates their current frankly terrible efforts this Roccat Kone was perfect for me and I love it. Thanks again Matty.