To judge the performance of the Kone XTD we paired it with a Taito mousemat, also produced by ROCCAT. This 3mm-thick, 400mm x 320mm mat with cloth surface and rubberised backing is designed for long-life durability in gaming. Whilst not quite being the thickest pad on the market it's more than enough for smooth, comfortable mousing and long gaming sessions. The rear in particular is surprisingly grippy, resulting in no slipping on the desk, and the overall thinness make it a small enough to comfortable pack it for a LAN. This mid-size close to the maximum comfortable size for most desks without moving to the very large mats bordering on a meter wide.
General Performance
Mousing over the Taito mousemat is extremely smooth with the Kone XTD. It's light enough, even with all four weights inside, to never really tire your hand out and the three teflon pads do their job exceptionally well. Those not blessed with a high-quality mousemat will also be pleased to know that ROCCAT have done a great job in keeping the teflon pads level, ensuring that mouse doesn't rock on an unyielding surface. Long sessions at your terminal are not uncomfortable from an ergonomic perspective, and the mouse doesn't accumulate much sweat even when used for extended periods.
Slightly negatively, we did note that the noise of button presses, especially on the LMB, RMB and scroll wheel buttons, is a little more frustrating and would be extremely distracting in an communal office environment. Furthermore, users of the Kone XTD with larger-than-average hands will likely begin to default to a claw grip in long-term use, whereas smaller-handed users will tend to use the Kone XTD with a palm grip.
The Kone XTD is not at its best in an office, but nor is it badly suited to the task. It's down to the user to judge whether the productivity advantages of a tilt wheel and plethora of macro options sufficiently mitigate the downsides.
Gaming Performance
The Kone XTD comes into its own when gaming. The button layout is logical and sensible, allowing the two main, three wheel and two shoulder buttons to be pressed without any real issue. It would be useful for the shoulder buttons to be differentiated a little more sharply; infrequently it's possible to loose track of either one when under the thumb and large hands with a more forward thumb position may find this niggle particularly acute. Thanks to the Japanese-made Omron switchgear button presses were as responsive as you could wish, with no part of the button feeling loose or rocking in its housing.
Those who stream their gameplay should be aware that button actuation on the Kone XTD is pretty loud and could be easily picked up on a standard headset microphone. This is especially the case with the two major buttons and mouse wheel tilt function, which approach being loud. Mechanical keyboard users will no doubt shrug this off given the 'clicky-ness' of those switches, but those comfortable with a more subtle click from their peripherals will find it slightly jarring.
One feature which is lacking on the Kone XTD is a clear visual representation of DPI. The software allows for five DPI presets per profile, and although setting up lighting to differentiate between each profile is easy, the same cannot be said of DPI. There is an option to enable an audio cue for DPI, which calls out "1600 DPI" etc. in increasingly more urgent tones as DPI increases, but to put it mildly this breaks flow during gaming.
MMO gamers will be particularly receptive to Easy-Shift[+]. ROCCAT's modifier function effectively doubles the button assignments possible for each mouse button, with the exception of the one bound to Easy-Shift[+] itself. Combined with macros - both at the driver level and in-game - this option allows a wild variation of commands to be available at your fingertips in fractions of a second. In general nine different easy to access operations (button presses or mouse wheel movements) can be modified, allowing eighteen different operations without considering profiles. When active, Easy-Shift[+] will change LED colours to a light blue.
By contrast, FPS gamers will be less enamoured with Easy-Shift[+], but ROCCAT's driver software does allow you the flexibility to use not use it. A more relevant technology is ROCCAT Talk, which allows optimum use of Easy-Aim in conjunction with a ROCCAT Isku keyboard. This allows you to use your left hand to situationally change DPI to a more suitable level, speeding up the changes between DPI in fast action gameplay similar to 'sniper' buttons on other mice. Easy-Aim is also available as a mouse button assignment, but isn't particularly optimal because it makes your grip a little less stable.
Overall, the Kone XTD is a very strong gaming mouse which is a little less suitable for office and general use down to the noise and wider travel button travel distance.
