Roccat Kone Pro Air Wireless Mouse Review
NOTE: Roccat graciously sent me an early retail production unit of this mouse to review at my discretion alongside marketing assets and technical information. I don’t get anything if you decide to buy one, and none of the links in this article are affiliate links. I had full editorial control over this article. Click here to see my reviews policy.
When I got the Roccat Kone Pro Air (and its wired brother)in the mail, Roccat PR also sent me one of the most confidently proud statements I’ve ever received from a gaming company. They told me to “feel free to test the Kone Pro against any mouse. We’re confident that we will beat it.”
I raised my eyebrows, and then I got really excited. Was Roccat’s confident statement warranted?
Well, I’ve had the pleasure of spending almost two weeks testing the Roccat Kone Pro Air. In that time, I’ve put it up against the HyperX Pulsefire Dart, the Roccat Kain 200 and Burst Pro I reviewed recently, and a whole host of Razer and Logitech mice that live in my parts closet.
I’m delighted to confirm that they weren’t too bold in their statement. The Roccat Kone Pro Air is a brilliant mouse.
In fact, this is the best mouse I’ve ever used, for either gaming or productivity. If you’re looking for a new wireless mouse, it should be the first one you consider. It more than lives up to its flagship price and premium place within Roccat’s lineup, and in my opinion it’s the new standard to beat in the gaming mouse world whether you’re looking at comfort, performance, aesthetics, features, or overall design. It even has an awesome mouse wheel that made me more excited about mouse wheels than I ever thought I could be.
The Roccat Kone Pro Air sells for $129.99 (official site here), and it’s available in both “Ash Black” and “Arctic White” colors. It has three different connection options: Roccat’s “Stellar Wireless” via a USB dongle, Bluetooth, and wired USB connection via the included “PhantomFlex” cable. Battery life is super impressive, at over 100 hours with the lighting turned off and around 60 hours with it turned on. I only had to charge the mouse one time in two solid weeks of testing, and it has a quick charge function providing 5 hours of use after ten minutes on the cable.
If you’re looking for an ergonomically-shaped mouse, this is perhaps the most comfortable choice on the market. The shape is backed up by 14 years of in-house research on different hand sizes, and felt immediately comfortable in my medium-sized hands. It’s perfectly suited to palm, fingertip, or claw grips, and I had no trouble switching between them. The 75g weight is lighter than other mice of this size, and in spite of its large profile it has so many thoughtful contours that it should fit all hand sizes equally well.
The back is flared out wider than the front, and swooped a little bit on the right side, with comfortable grooves for both your thumb and non-clicking fingers. The side buttons are carefully placed to be centered regardless of grip style. The back hump area isn’t a perfect curve, but has a precisely-sculpted shape to better fit the bumps of a human hand. And the main buttons have just a slight slope following the shape of the mouse to help your fingers find the perfect clicking location immediately.
Coating-wise, this feels similarly smooth and inviting to the “performance coating” on the Kain 200, and after two weeks the white model they sent me still looks pristine. The sides have a subtle horizontal texture that helps your hand stay in place without feeling rough. Clicks are powered by Roccat’s Titan Optical switches, and while they aren’t quite as loud and authoritative as other “Titan Click” mice in their lineup, they still have a snappy and perfect response. I didn’t have a single mis-click throughout my testing.
And now, here’s an entire paragraph where I gush about the amazing “Titan Wheel Pro” mouse wheel. The mouse wheel on the Kone Pro family is hilariously incredible and great. It’s made out of aluminum, and has a firm response to both its click and scrolling that’s better than any other mouse wheel I’ve ever used. It feels like it’s going to be monstrous and thick, but then when you look at it from the side profile, it’s thin and light and wonderful. The use of this special aluminum design simultaneously improves player feedback to a noticeable degree, and cuts weight from the mouse. I can’t say enough good things about this mouse wheel.
That goodness echoes through to the rest of the mouse’s performance. The 19,000 DPI OwlEye sensor is more than up to any aiming task you want to throw at it. I normally only play around 1000 DPI myself, and although I’m often skeptical when manufacturers say that their new mouse design will improve your aim…this mouse improved my aim. I spent hours with Outriders, Borderlands, Valheim, Doom Eternal, and a number of others, and found I had an easier time aiming with this mouse than any other I’ve put on my testing desk over the last few years.
The combination of a light weight, amazing ergonomic feel, and perfectly balanced buttons and mouse wheel are simply unmatched. Aesthetically, I also love the look of the AIMO RGB lighting sitting under the buttons. I can’t think of any other mouse that’s ever had such pleasant-looking programmable lighting this far forward in the body, and if you’re hooked into the Roccat ecosystem it perfectly syncs up with their other gear through the Swarm software. You can also enable an energy saving mode that will trim light brightness automatically to help save battery life.
If you’re stuck deciding between the Kone Pro Air and the wired Kone Pro, the standout feature that makes the Air worth the extra money is the variety of connection options. The Air has an included USB dongle (with a little storage slot on the bottom of the mouse) that provides wired-like performance, and although it doesn’t include the small dongle dock from the Kain 200, I had no signal issues. You can also toggle to a Bluetooth mode if you’d like to take this mouse on the go for a laptop without bringing the dongle. Finally, there’s a flexible USB cable included that’s 1.8 meters long and it’s just as nice as the cable on the wired version of the mouse. The USB port on the front of the mouse doubles as its charging port, and while it is specifically sculpted to perfectly fit the included cable, it’s not so proprietary that it’ll prevent you from finding a replacement.
The lone detail I could see some being bothered by here is the lack of a DPI button on the top of the mouse. Fortunately, there’s a profile toggle button on the bottom, and if you insist on having quick access to multiple DPI settings, you can use the Roccat software to remap that button to DPI switching instead, or create a different custom mapping of your choice. Again, I only use one DPI setting for the vast majority of my gaming, so this isn’t really an issue for me personally.
I love everything about this mouse. It has the coolest mouse wheel I’ve ever used, and it made the wheel on the also-excellent Roccat Burst Pro feel disappointing in comparison. Every other feature here, from the design to the comfort to the performance, lives up to that standard of design excellence. The $129 price point makes this very competitive value-wise against other flagship wireless mice, and none of them have quite the same aesthetic excitement or years of careful iterative engineering on their shape.
The Kone Pro Air is the perfect mouse to sit atop Roccat’s lineup, and it does essentially everything right while also being a brilliant refinement of the long-running Kone design. Between this and its excellent wired brother, Roccat is now the company to beat in the gaming mouse market, as far I’m concerned. I refuse to let these mice leave my desk any time soon and look forward to writing a long-term update about their durability later this year. I have no doubt they’ll still perform brilliantly.
