Roccat, a German firm, has been in the business of manufacturing Kone gaming mice for over a decade now. The original was Roccat’s first product. In fact, it was the very first gaming mouse to incorporate multicolored lighting.
Design
In this particular model, Roccat pays a tremendous amount of detail to lighting. Consequently, the Kone AIMO gaming mouse’s lighting is extremely bright. With this level of lighting, it’s difficult to, for instance, lose the mouse in a dark room. This is complemented by the incorporation of a 32-bit ARM chip to bring about responsive handling as well as 512Kb onboard memory.
The mouse’s body features a curvaceous and thick look. It’s designed to press firmly up onto the user’s palm. A deep groove to the device’s left helps to accommodate the thumb, while a ridge at the back provides the necessary support to hold it in good position. The device’s right-hand side also features a similar contour to enable the pinky and ring fingers gain a significant amount of grip. Two additional buttons are included to the rear of the wheel, which is designed with sufficient ridging on the included tire and is also broad. The ridging is essential because any less of it would make it vulnerable to slipping.
The wheel is designed to have nice clicks and tilts as it moves. Nevertheless, there’s a little room for improvement in terms of ensuring it’s firmly held into position. This doesn’t, however, mean that it would easily be moved by mistake. It just feels a bit limp. Some gamers might have preferred that it be positioned a little further to the front on the body, but it’s still fine the way it currently feels.
The included switches are made by Roccat. They boast of a lifespan of up to 50 million clicks. Every button is characterized by a responsive feel. Also, there are no shallow actions or sticky movements that make the user second guess the press registered.
The most striking feature about this gaming mouse is its lighting. Incorporating a lit wheel as well as two stripes extending lengthwise on the body, the mouse generates an attractive glow emanating beneath the fingers while in operation. The high level of brightness is surprisingly not lost for the available colors.
The “intelligent” lighting system is integrated deep within AIMO. It reacts to how the mouse is operated, and derives its enrichment from the apps used. The mouse accomplishes all this behind the scenes. It’s not easy to notice the subtle changes when the user is deeply consumed by the game they’re playing. Besides, the hands block a significant amount of the produced light. Additional lighting modes that are also available within Roccat’s software include “breathing” or simple color shifting.
Swarm Software
Regardless of whether the user enjoys the intelligent lighting built into the keyboard or not, making adjustments via the Swarm software is extremely easy. As soon as it eventually completes updating and installing a brand new module for the mouse, the Swarm software provides the user with a wide range of items, including sensor sensitivity — which is termed the Owl-Eye, and features an optical sensor (12,000 DPI Pixart 3361) that has been subjected to a few adjustments by Roccat—, button assignments, as well as lift-off distance, in addition to a simple yet intelligent shifting system that activates on the bottom thumb button by default, and moves to the next set of programmed button assignments. The user enjoys the freedom to switch between five profiles. In addition, the mouse includes macros featuring built-in profiles for the top games. The mouse is more or less a comprehensive package.
Final Words
This mouse comes with so many desirable features that it becomes almost difficult to criticize it. Given it competes with the likes of Logitech and Razer especially in terms of price, there’s no room for making errors, lest it lose a tremendous amount of sales. Roccat has succeeded in introducing a customizable, controllable, and precise device. It’s impressive to witness this level of commitment and excellence without any gimmicks. Spare some time to check out a more in-depth roccat kone aimo review.