Roccat Gaming Gear Trio Review

The Kone Pure is one of the newest offerings in the Kone family, designed for those who may not necessarily want to pay for, or need, all the customization options available, but still want a gaming mouse with some core features that do make it stand out as a "gaming" mouse.  Desirable features, such as macro and profile recording, adjustable dpi, high polling rates, and a nice amount of side buttons are all built standard into the Kone Pure line.  The Kone Pure line comes with either a Laser or Optical sensor to suit your preference.   

Outlined below are some additional key specs for the Kone Pure Optical.

4000 DPI Pro-Optic (R3) Sensor
Omron switches
1000 Hz (1ms) polling rate
20G acceleration
16-bit data channel
32-bit Turbo Core V2 72MHz ARM based MCU
576kB on-board memory

Another function that comes built in with the new Kone Pure is both the Roccat Talk, and their newer Roccat Talk FX protocols.  Roccat Talk allows a Roccat keyboard to communicate and share Easy-shift functionality with a Roccat mouse, letting you activate your mouse's second set of buttons from your keyboard, and vice versa.  Roccat Talk FX allows games and programs to give feedback through the color display of your keyboard and mouse in creative ways, such as your keyboard pulsing white to the countdown before a round starts, or light up red if your character is ever low on health. 

Some features seen in other gaming mice are only accessible through Roccat Talk however, like the sniper or headshot button, to throttle down the mouse sensitivity when lining up precision shots.  Roccat mice do have that capability, but only if you're holding down a key on a Roccat Talk enabled keyboard.  This is great if you happen to have a Roccat keyboard to compliment the Kone, and slightly offsetting if you don't.

The Kone Pure Optical utilizes the Pro -Optic R3 sensor, which is the sensor that is also used in Roccat's Savu line of mice, and can be adjusted on the fly with five different sensitivity levels.  While the optical IR sensors may have always lagged a bit behind laser mice in terms of raw sensitivity, polling rates in today's equipment, (how often the mouse updates its position on the monitor with the PC) are roughly equal now, so the technology is reaching a point where either sensor can work very well and accurately with today's HD displays.  Optical sensors can also offer more reliability, as they tend to use less moving parts, and generally offer more forgiveness and less skipping if debris crosses the sensor.     

My initial observation holding the Kone were about the contoured soft black plastic sides which makes the Kone very smooth to the touch without feeling overly slippery.  The left side of the mouse also sports a deep thumb well to improve the ergonomics, and it does help it sit nicely in the hand.  The Kone Pure is slightly smaller and narrower than the original Kone, so users with larger hands may have trouble comfortably gripping the Kone Pure for extended time.  It should also be noted that the ergonomics support right-handed mouse users only.

The Roccat logo on the back of the mouse is a clear plastic, and this is where the multi-LED display shines through.  Up to 16.8 million color combinations are available to be displayed, all adjustable through the software.  There are also a few lighting effects that can be selected as well, offering either an always-on function, along with a pulsing glow effect.

The scroll wheel on the Kone Pure has been improved as well.  Roccat has strengthened the axis shaft, improved the encoder, and retained other popular features such as the rubber ratchet pad on the face. Renaming their design as the Titan Wheel, they appear to be solidly addressing that this new generation of scroll wheel should stand the test of time.  The Titan wheel is two-directional only in the Kone Pure, but does have a switch built in to serve as your Mouse-3 button.  The DPI adjustment switches ride discreetly behind the scroll wheel, and while there is no on-mouse display for the current DPI setting, it will notify you of the new sensitivity through your headset if the audio notifications are enabled through the software.