Roccat Kone AIMO RGBA gaming mouse review
Roccat Kone AIMO gaming mouse
£69.99Pros
- Comfortable wide body
- Easy Shift more useful than you'd think
- Great accuracy
- Easy to use software
- Great lighting
Cons
- Size and weight not for everyone
Gamers love RGB. That seems to be the given fact. So, welcome to the Roccat Kone AIMO gaming mouse.
I do enjoy learning things though this site. Things like, Roccat actually being responsible for the introduction of RGB lighting to peripherals 10 years ago. Coincidentally enough, this happened when it launched the original Kone mouse.
The Kone mouse has since secured its place in the company’s lineup. Naturally, we have seen it evolve over the years.
This latest iteration features AIMO. This is the name of Roccat’s new RGB lighting ecosystem that’s designed to automatically configure itself and adapt to your behaviour over time.
Roccat Kone AIMO design
The Kone range, tweaks aside, have kept the family looks. They are right-handed wired pointers with four buttons and a wheel on top, plus two more side-mounted thumb buttons.
However, the newcomer adds in a third button on the side. This is, by default, dedicated to the Easy-Shift function. More on that later.
If you met last year’s Kone EMP, the Kone AIMO will feel familiar to you.
Switches
Up top you’ll find your two main clickers. These have mild contours to keep your fingers in place and sit atop Omron switches rated to 50 million clicks. This is a fairly standard inclusion for mice in this price bracket, they feel crisp and precise.
Between them is a rather nifty Titan scroll wheel. Roccat describes this as being 4D. I was excited to test out its time travelling abilities but, sadly, this is not the 4th dimension they meant. However, the wheel does move in four directions (five technically, but let’s not get picky). As well as the usual scroll up/down and click functions, you can tilt it left and right as well.
The two buttons behind the mouse wheel are set up to control the DPI settings of the mouse by default. You can configure and toggle through up to five DPI settings per profile.
Over on the left side of the mouse we have the usual forward and back buttons above a thumb divot. Down on the bottom of the thumb divot, the one dedicated to Roccat’s Easy-Shift.
You may have noticed that there aren’t any rubberised grip areas on this mouse. Some might miss these but after owning a white Corsair M65, I now how grubby and worn these can get.
Sensor
Roccat’s Owl-Eye is based on PixArt 3361. This is a world leading optical mouse sensor. However, this one is modified to higher and exacting standards that are expected from the company in their product. This Owl-Eye sensor features staggering 12,000 DPI that can translate your movements on monitor screen with the accuracy level of 1:1.
Under the hood is a DCU, or distance control unit, and 512 kb of on board memory allowing 5 separate profiles to be save. Additionally, there’s an ARM Cortx-M0 MCU enabling rapid executions and storage.
Lights
As you’d expect from a product being marketed mainly on the strength of its lighting, the RGB LED illumination on the Kone Aimo is bright and vibrant. Moreover, it’s totally tune-able.
Roccat Kone AIMO performance
The Roccat Kone AIMO is first in the series of products by the company that’s been designed with intuitive RGB lighting. This system learns as well as adapts naturally to your interaction.
This is all very well, pretty lights and all, but gamers need performance. Also, the ability to switch through different DPI on the fly. Well, this mouse does it swiftly thanks to the quick DPI switching button close to scroll wheel. When tested this gaming mouse on different games from MMO to FPS it never let me down.
The company is using the tagline of “speed of light” for this mouse, which seems fitting. The reasoning is, thanks to Easy Shift and the Owl Eye sensor techy, everything you need is easlily and quickly to hand.
Feel
The mouse has been constucted using high quality plastic and the engineering design appears to be very durable.
Although it is slightly bigger than the Rival 700 it does remind me of the Corasir mouse in size. It is very comfortable and the 13o g weight didn’t hinder hours of gaming.
The pair of mouse buttons have an extremely short throw. This makes every selection feel very sharp and responsive. as good mouse buttons should. The third mouse button (the mouse wheel click) also feels crisp.
The scroll wheel is equally precise. I was worried about the side-clicking wheel but actually found it to be very intuitive. My worry of scrolling whilst side-clicking was unneccessary. I was able to tilt the wheel in either direction easily without incurring accidental scrolls or clicks. This, then, becomes a really handy addition whether gaming or even productivity – depending what actions you connect the side clicks to.
The wheel itself is rubberised for grip and has high resistance and very obvious notches for each step. I like it.
Also, the thumb buttons are comfortably placed. Like all the other buttons, they feel fantastic. The Easy Shift button is a downward press rather than sideways. This makes it very easy to hold while using the other buttons, and that’s a good thing given its intended purpose. I guess now is a good time to talk about Easy Shift.
Easy Shift
Roccat’s Easy-Shift+ function essentially makes that lower button act like the Shift or FN key on your keyboard. That means every other key gets a secondary function while the Easy Shift button is depressed. For example, the scroll up and down functions will change system volume instead of scrolling a page when it’s held. It’s a powerful feature.
Snappy
The exclusive switches by Roccat gives you up to 50 million clicks of life span. Not only should that reassure you of the device’s longevity, it also should calm your fear of the double click problems that seem to occur with every mouse after a whik.
The Kone AIMO uses customised Cherry MX switches which are the best in the market. The click feel is very similar to my SteelSeries daily driver.
The buttons can obviously be customised using Roccat Swarm. You can also tweak the lights too.
Lights
There are five RGB lighting zones altogether: the scroll wheel, two thick outer strips, and a further two thin inner strips which run from the middle to the back of the body. These are multi-LED.
The AIMO lighting system is described by Roccat as one that
reacts fluidly and organically, and grows based on your gaming behaviour and compatible connected devices”.
Basically, this means you are able to implement a cross-device spectrum effect that changes colour and speed based on your inputs. All acheived without the need for any fiddly manual configuration.
Regardless of what lighting you have, all lights change to a cool blue whenever Easy-Shift+ is activated. Sadly, there’s no way of indicating DPI by colour, although audio notifications are available.
In terms of lighting quality, it’s bright and vivid in all zones. Although, to my eyes, the scroll wheel’s white appeared to take on a pinkish hue.
Software
Roccat’s Swarm software is really nice to use.
Mine needed a little update but navigation remains simple and intuitive. Thanks to onboard memory, the Kone AIMO supports five onboard profiles, and these are always easily accessible at the bottom of the window. The profile manager is used to swap profiles in and out of memory and set auto-switch options. This allows you to have an FPS profile configured that’s automatically switched on whenever you launch one of your installed and assigned FPS titles. Awesome!
Settings
The Settings tab controls Windows mouse settings and DPI levels. You can enable or disable up to five individual steps easily.
Button Assignment
Guess what the Button Assignment tab does? This was also exceedingly simple to use. Roccat actually offers a few preset setups, but all are easily customisable.
Two menus provide settings for normal use and Easy-Shift+ use. Then, each button has a dropdown menu with masses of options including shortcuts to programs, media controls, and much more.
Each menu highlights the button or command you’re changing on the button map. Additionally, with the multidirectional scroll wheel, you have 12 options per menu or a maximum total of 20 possible custom functions (23 minus the obligatory click, right click, and Easy-Shift+ activation).
Also, remember, this is all per-profile as well, so you can actually have five times this number if you really go to town. Mind thoroughly boggled.
Advanced Settings
Polling rate, angle snapping, and lift-off distance are can be found in the Advanced Settings tab. Regarding the former, 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, and 1,000Hz are all offered on a per-profile basis.
Illumination
The Illumination tab is a bit of fun amongst all those serious adjustments.
As well as AIMO, where control is handed over to Roccat, there are five simple effects to choose from.
The two longer lighting strips, being multi-LED, can be set to gradients rather than just single colours. Now, I might be doing something wrong, but I kept on losing my custom settings. I’d be happily playing around with one of the effects and then set a new one. However, when I go back to the one I had, it had disappeared. It might just be me and I might just need to spend more time with it.
Gaming
[amazon_link asins=’B075FW4X8V’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’gadgnews-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=”]Whilst spending a good amount of time touring the mouse and software, it’s actual game play that matters, right?
I am happy to report that, once my hand had reacquainted itself with the grip that this style of mouse requires, I was back on form. Lift off sensing was swift, and would shut off the sensor at less than the depth of a CD. I know, technical measurement there.
I really loved this mouse in first person shooters. When I had more time, I used to play quite a lot of CS:GO with my old Corsair mouse and the Kone AIMO brought all of that back. Having the Easy Shift option enables more actions to be taken care of on-mouse rather than having to bring extra keystrokes in to play which could slow you down.
It is also a very comfortable mouse to use.
Roccat Kone AIMO review conclusion
The Kone mouse already has pleny of fans and I can see why. The feature that gives this latest iteration its name is an interesting idea.
I have seen similar on other brands and this is something that will only come in to its own once you have multiple peripherals. Luckily for me, I have just received the Khan AIMO headset too.
The comfort and sensor are extremely difficult to find fault with. I have got used to the Easy Shift function and the tilty scroll wheel much faster than I thought I would.
Swarm is also an impressive bit of software that’s also so easy to use. I have to admit, that the Kone’s size and weight means it won’t be for everyone, but that goes for most mice. However, if you favour a fuller figure and a bit more weight under their palm, the Kone AIMO is a quality bit of kit.
Roccat Kone AIMO price and availabilty
You can buy the Kone AIMO RGBA mouse right now for £70.
It is available in black, white or grey.
