Roccat KONE Pro Gaming Mouse Review

Peter Donnell / 4 years ago

A Closer Look & Performance

First impressions of the KONE Pro are certainly interesting, as I’ve been a long time fan and user of Roccat gaming mice. I’ve had 6 Kone mice, then I went through a couple of their XTD edition, and then I had two Tyon mice, which I still use! I think we’ve still got a couple with the laptops, but since lockdown, I haven’t looked in that bag. My point is, I know what a Roccat mouse should feel like, and in some ways this does, and in one very important way, it certainly doesn’t.

The size and shape of it are classic Roccat, so if you love that, you’ll love this. Plus, I like Roccat as the shape fits my larger and wider hand shape really well, and that hasn’t changed. However, the materials, the surface finishes, the feel of it, and the weight of it… it’s all-new. At just 66g, it’s one of the lightest of the new generation of ultralight gaming mice. This leads you to feel like the mouse is more fragile. However, give it a grip, a squeeze, press down hard on it, and it’s just as robust as you would hope, and that’s pretty impressive.

Down the left side, there’s a big swell for your thumb to rest on and two large side buttons. They have smoothed edges, so you can slide your thumb over them for easy control. The switches are really nice and responsive too, with a sharp click and no pre-travel at all.

Around the back, things look super clean and tidy. But, I’ve just realised as well, there’s none of that hard rubber coating Roccat used to use, which admittedly used to wear out anyway. However, you do get this light texture with lines through it, but it’s purely aesthetic.

The mouse is right-handed only, so do keep that in mind. However, as you can see, the mouse is nicely shaped on the side to make it very easy to grip and manoeuvre.

The mouse uses a thinner top panel to reduce weight but an inner honeycomb structure to keep things nice and durable. Honestly, it feels as robust, if not more robust, than their older models. Plus, as we saw on the box, there’s RGB under the LMB and RMB, which should shine through that honeycomb design.

The mouse deploys their latest Titan Wheel design. However, while older models had a lot more metal and a weighted design, this is a large aluminium ring with three spokes, drastically reducing the weight and maintaining its strength thanks to the black anodised aluminium they’ve used.

This is what the wheel looks like when removed from the mouse.

The bottom of the mouse has a cool profile button that’s recessed into the body. This can be used for changing all your profile settings or just flicking throw the DPI profiles; it’s up to you. Furthermore, there’s that stunning OwlEye 19,000 DPI optical sensor in the middle. Why so blue? That’s just a protective layer they put on, and you’ll want to remove this before you use the mouse.

There are three PTFE surfaces on this mouse, two large ones, then that little ring around the sensor. The mouse glides like it’s on ice. The combination of it being so light and having so much low-friction material on the bottom. Honestly, if your desk isn’t perfectly level, the mouse will casually slide to one side… maybe.

The mouse is well suited to both a full palm rest grip style and a claw grip, and you can use a hybrid of the two, of course. Despite the ultralight design, it’s a nice and big mouse, making it well suited to just about any hand size.

It fits snug in my palm, and I can grip it very lightly and still be able to pick it up easily. If you’re using a low DPI setting and a lift-off technique, this will be a big advantage.

The mouse is a little nose heavy. Grabbing it at what I would say is the middle, it drops its nose down quite sharply.

However, if you grab it at the 1/4 point, where the natural finger resting position would be, then it actually is well balanced.

The sensor on this mouse is freaking awesome, super-accurate throughout the entire DPI range, and it’ll accelerate faster than I’ll ever be able to move it, so it never skipped a beat. So I did some testing (in red). I just followed shapes at various DPI and hand speeds to see if I could stay within the targets, and I had no issues, or more accurately, the mouse had no issues. Plus, the straight-line test and zig-zag showed no sign of sensor acceleration or angle snapping; the mouse delivers true 1:1 tracking.

The RGB on the KONE Pro is hard to ignore, it’s really quite magical to look at. As is typical of a Roccat product, the colours are super rich, with an almost candy quality about them. They’re really vivid, with nice transitions and a surreal look, since the only lights are in the nose of the mouse. There are no side lights, under lights, RGB logos, etc.