The Roccat Kone Aimo is a $79.99 (£69.99, $AU119) wired gaming mouse. There’s numerous competitors within the class, together with the SteelSeries Rival 700 and Razer Mamba.
Like a lot of the fashions from larger names at this worth, the Roccat Kone Aimo is a good mouse. Little doubt about that.
It’ll solely be an ideal match when you don’t have small palms and aren’t after a NUM pad on the facet. However it certain can placed on a light-weight present.
Design
The Roccat Kone Aimo is outlined by two key traits. First, it’s a bigger mouse. It’s out to fill your hand, and isn’t the form of mouse you grip flippantly together with your fingers, palm hovering above.
Then there are its RGB lights. The Roccat Kone Aimo has a number of the most distinguished lighting of any gaming mouse. It’s brilliant and the LED diffuser strips are thick, not simply skinny strains that ring across the scroll wheel.
Its look is much less low-key than one thing just like the Logitech G703 too. The massive Roccat insignia and people brilliant lights received’t attraction to everybody.
We just like the Roccat Kone Aimo’s form, however principally as a result of the prescriptive contours match our hand nicely. There’s an awesome thumb grip that looks like dwelling inside minutes.
The plastic elements you contact in use are textured for an nearly gentle end. Its look could also be aggressive, however the Roccat Kone Aimo really feel is clean.
Not like an easier, much less button-packed design, you do have to observe the Roccat Kone Aimo’s strains, although. In case you don’t you liable to by accident press one of many extra buttons. As such, it’s solely appropriate for right-handed use. There’s no lefty model.
Stick with the curves and the additional buttons aren’t intrusive. You should utilize this as a day-to-day work mouse, no downside. We have now.
If you wish to use the Roccat Kone Aimo to its full potential, it’s good to familiarize yourself with its “straightforward shift” button. This sits just below the thumb groove and acts as a technique to entry programmed secondary features for each button on the mouse, together with the usual left/proper buttons.
Efficiency
The Roccat Kone Aimo has 10 programmable buttons or gestures in additions to the usual left and proper buttons. For instance, the scroll wheel doesn’t simply depress, it leans to the left and proper too. There’s a strong click on to every motion.
All of those options are programmed utilizing the Roccat Swarm app, obtainable for Home windows however not OS X.
The default roles for these buttons are smart. Two little buttons behind the scroll wheel allow you to alter dpi sensitivity on the fly, useful if you wish to use totally different settings between the desktop and a sport. A pair of buttons above the thumb groove are used for again/ahead within the browser.
Utilizing the Swarm software program you may go as deep as you want, although. You’ll be able to manually programme-in macros, use some pre-defined instructions for present (if ageing) video games, launch purposes and even hibernate or shut down your PC.
We’d wish to see extra pre-made features for current video games. Included single-player titles are fairly previous however on-line favourites like Overwatch and League of Legends are right here.
The Roccat Kone Aimo has 4 profile ‘slots’ for various picks. They’re totally different personalities for the mouse, when you like. Use all 4 and also you’re committing to some fairly severe muscle reminiscence work.
Nonetheless, establishing these profiles is sort of intuitive, and the Swarm app is straightforward to make use of when you get your head round which button is which.
In the meantime, the Roccat Kone Aimo’s lighting system has 5 customized zones, however go to city on its LEDs and you may make it seem as if there are eleven. How?
There’s one zone underneath the scroll wheel, a fats zone to both facet of the mouse after which a skinny strip that outlines the Roccat Kone Aimo’s three plastic sections. These strips can show four-color gradients, letting you pack 11 totally different colours onto the Aimo when you like.
Why would you wish to? If that leaves you stumped, the Roccat Kone Aimo might not be the mouse for you as gentle is a giant a part of the attraction.
There’s additionally a “dwelling gentle” preset that reacts to your inputs. It cycles by colours, and also you’ll see little sparks within the thinner LED strip as you press buttons.
You get full management over the extent of all these lights, which is useful because it’d in all probability show distracting when you sport in a dimly lit room.
So as to add to this proprietary mode and the extremely customisable static one, which we’d in all probability choose, there are a number of basic modes too. These embrace “snake”, the place a single gentle chases across the Aimo’s zones, heartbeat and respiration, each of which pulse the lights.
The Roccat Kone Aimo’s LED system provides it the potential to be brash, however the stage of management means it doesn’t should be.
App configuration
The Swarm app additionally provides you complete management over a number of the Roccat Kone Aimo’s options. You’ll be able to change the polling charge between 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz and 1000Hz. Most received’t have any cause to modify from the usual 1000Hz, although.
DPI (dots per inch) sensitivity will be tweaked too. The usual vary of the presets accessed utilizing the on-mouse buttons solely makes use of lower than half of the Aimo’s max sensitivity, which is 12000dpi.
That Roccat makes you dive into the app to really use this sensitivity tells you it’s solely actually there as a result of the PixArt 3361 optical sensor is able to it. Roccat recommends sticking to a “400 – 3000dpi vary” to your presets. And judging by our expertise, we are inclined to agree.
Nonetheless, having the scope there for many who wish to tinker is welcome.
Verdict
The Roccat Kone Aimo’s brilliant lights and enormous dimension make it initially seem to be fairly a hardcore gaming mouse. Flashy stuff apart, the breezy ergonomics of its buttons have an actual attraction.
No, it doesn’t have the macro energy of a Razer Naga Chroma or Corsair Scimitar Professional, which have tiny mini-keyboards on their sides. Nonetheless, the Simple Shift system and bigger buttons used right here don’t demand as a lot finger constancy.
Given the mix of ease of use and depth, it’s a disgrace there aren’t extra up-to-date pre-programmed macros for video games. We’re certain some persons are nonetheless enjoying Mass Impact 2, however most of us have moved onto newer titles. That mentioned, when you are inclined to play on-line aggressive video games, a lot of the biggies are represented right here.