At a look
Skilled’s Score
Execs
- The 19,000 DPI sensor may be very exact, and the buttons are fast and clicky
- An ingenious design elevates your set off finger prepared to fireplace
- A light-weight physique provides to its pace and precision and prevents fatigue
Cons
- No devoted DPI button means you may’t as simply change DPI settings
- Wired connectivity solely, so that you’ll have to plug it in to play
- The mouse wheel lacks lateral left / proper clicks
Our Verdict
The Roccat Kone Professional is a formidable gaming mouse with a light-weight design that makes it fast off the mark in your mouse mat. It additionally has impressively quick buttons and appears very trendy thanks to 2 dazzling RGB lighting zones.
Value When Reviewed
39.99
Finest Costs At present: ROCCAT Kone Professional
$39.99
Weighing simply 66 grams, the right-hand-centric, wired Roccat Kone Professional sports activities considered one of Roccat’s iconic “Kone” designs, eschewing the symmetry of the corporate’s Burst lineup for extra curves and arguably much more consumer management.
Accordingly, it has wave-shaped grooves on its flanks that present loads of grip, and up prime, a mild left-to-right slant poises your set off finger on the highest level prepared to fireplace. Add to these profitable traits, a really exact 19,000 DPI optical sensor and very fast optical switches, and by advantage, then, the Kone Professional is a particularly efficient gaming mouse for FPS players.
This evaluation is a part of our ongoing roundup of the best gaming mice. Go there to find out about competing merchandise, what to search for in a gaming mouse, and shopping for suggestions.
Roccat Kone Professional: Design and construct
Its primary deserves established, there’s much more to love in regards to the Kone Professional’s design. In truth, you would say it’s the mouse’s greatest asset, offering the correct amount of consolation with out compromising on efficiency. Dimension-wise, the 4.94 x 1.57 x 2.83 inches are smack-on to suit giant to medium fingers, and the form works completely with any of the three primary grip varieties.
The modest eight-button choice can also be ultimate for fast motion video games the place you have got just a few instructions to recollect—so followers of the Name of Obligation, Battlefield, or related franchises, are effectively suggested to take be aware. Along with the 2 primary clicks, you get two buttons on the left-hand facet and a mouse wheel with ahead, backward, and downward performance. An additional button on the underside switches between your onboard profiles.
The Roccat Kone Professional’s prime has a slight left-to-right slant that poises your index finger able to click on.
Dominic Bayley / IDG
The primary buttons are generously proportioned, such that I might simply get two entire fingers on the suitable one. To my delight, I discovered that utilizing an additional digit right here gave me millisecond-faster aiming that made a huge impact on my gaming.
Roccat has carried out extraordinarily effectively giving the Kone Professional a skinny plastic coating. In addition to enabling its 66-gram weight, this outer shell is basically accountable for its gorgeous seems to be. The Kone Professional has simply two RBG zones on the entrance beneath the principle clicks however the skinny casing lets simply sufficient gentle cross by means of it to create a mesmerizing glow impact.
This dazzling RGB bathes your fingers in colourful gentle, guaranteeing you at all times get a spectacle once you look down, irrespective of whether or not you’ve opted for the black or the white shade choice on the checkout.
Easy wired connectivity is one other means Roccat has achieved such a light-weight design. By comparability the wi-fi model, the Kone Professional Air, weighs an additional 9 grams. However the 1.8-meter USB-A to USB-C cable doesn’t really feel low-cost, being each very versatile and powerful. It additionally comes with a helpful cap to stop mud and moisture getting inside.
Roccat Kone Professional: Software program
Swarm is Roccat’s supporting software program app the place, amongst different issues, you may assign features to the eight programmable buttons, make modifications to the RGB lighting, and construct out its 5 onboard reminiscence profiles. The textual content in Swarm generally is a little small and troublesome to learn at instances, however to its credit score the app goes above and past in regard to what you may modify.
For the button task, as an illustration, you may broaden the generic eight instructions to 16 by making one of many Kone Professional’s buttons an Straightforward Shift [+] set off. Doing this allowed me to play (and stand an opportunity in) RPG and MMO video games the place an even bigger command financial institution is an asset, so making this modification was positively well worth the trouble.
You’ll be able to enhance the variety of instructions with Roccat’s Straightforward-Shift [+] setting.
Dominic Bayley / IDG
The choices for assigning DPI are additionally very thorough. You’ll be able to set values between 50 to 19,000 in increments of fifty items, or else make use of a calibration instrument that units you an approximate DPI based mostly in your actions. Regrettably, nevertheless, the Kone Professional lacks a devoted DPI button, so you may’t merely change between DPI settings at will in video games with out organising one other button in Swarm to take action beforehand, or else altering profiles.
That stated, when you’re the sort of gamer that likes to only set and overlook, you could end up spending much more time in Swarm than you’d in any other case need to, which may get a little bit tedious.
Roccat Kone Professional: Efficiency
The Kone Professional sports activities the identical 19,000 DPI Owl-Eye optical sensor because the Roccat Burst Pro Air—one other of our current PCWorld evaluations. Consequently, it could possibly monitor motion at 400 IPS (inches per second) and has an adjustable liftoff distance—a characteristic that professional players particularly will discover helpful.
As this wasn’t my first rodeo with this sensor, I used to be much less concerned with the way it carried out (it’s a ripper) and extra concerned with the way it might carry out in a totally completely different design. To that finish, I fired up Name of Obligation: Black Ops to check efficiency between the Kone Professional and the Burst Professional Air.
My playtesting proved the Kone Professional to be the faster, extra exact gaming mouse, which I attribute to the Kone Professional‘s extra beneficiant PTFE glide skates on its underside, together with across the sensor itself, which allowed for a smoother movement on my neoprene mouse mat.
At simply 66 grams, the Kone Professional additionally required a lot much less effort to wield in comparison with the Professional Air, which is a full 15 grams heavier. This meant I might make a lot lighter and extra exact actions and moreover play for longer than I might with the Burst Professional Air, with none uncomfortable stress in my wrist. Contemplating the Kone Professional at present ships for $35 cheaper, it appears overwhelmingly like the higher worth choice.
The RGB lighting zones sit beneath the principle clicks, so that they bathe your fingers in a stunning RGB glow.
Dominic Bayley / IDG
The Kone Professional’s buttons, that are powered by Titan Optical switches, additionally deserve reward. They actuated immediately and by no means mis-clicked. In truth, at instances they had been so fast that I discovered I’d already relaxed for the countdown to respawn, solely to search out that I’d come up trumps in firefights. Roccat charges them for 100 million clicks, so they need to even be fairly sturdy.
The good thing about the sloping prime can also’t be emphasised sufficient. It supplied the right leverage for my set off finger, thereby permitting me to get a slight pace benefit when firing. A bonus for me was that the buttons additionally felt tactile and surprisingly cool to the contact on sizzling days, which added to my consolation in a giant means when the temperature in my gaming den was pushing 86 levels.
Must you purchase the Roccat Kone Professional?
With the Kone Professional you get a sexy, light-weight, and reasonably priced RGB gaming mouse with a exact sensor and really fast optical switches. True, it could lack a devoted DPI button, and wi-fi connectivity, however an outstanding design that orientates your fingers for the quickest attainable response greater than makes up for these shortcomings. Consequently, if precision and pace are in your gaming-mouse want record, then the Roccat Kone Professional is a superb alternative.