ROCCAT Kone Pure Optical Review

👤by Tim Harmer Comments 📅13-11-13
Software

ROCCAT don’t include software in the majority of their peripherals’ retail bundles, instead electing to guide users towards the official site and picking up the latest version. That has all sorts of benefits, not least of which ensuring that the devices aren’t bundled with an old-of-date and potentially harmful software version, but it does also mean that you will require an internet connection.

We should note that the software for the ROCCAT Kone Pure Optical is not the same as the Kone Pure. We picked up verison 1.06 and firmware version 1.06, the most current software at the time of writing, as well as ROCCAT Talk v2.1.


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ROCCAT’s software, once again, follows the aesthetic tradition of blue writing on black background within a pretty compact window. UI designs from other manufacturers often take up a huge amount of vertical space, in some cases over 700 pixels, but in this case you’ll have no issue with running it on older 720p or 1024*768 screens.

If you’ve used ROCCAT’s software before you’ll feel immediately at home with the familiar layout. Tab selection is at the top for easy navigation, whilst the bottom is reserved for Profiles and associated tools. Most settings are on a per-profile basis as you would expect, with profiles able to be renamed and saved locally as desired. One can also be selected as the Windows Default, which is handy if you're making use of profile launching simultaneous to application launches. Each profile slot corresponds to a slot within the mouse memory, and backing up a profile can be performed simply by saving it to a new location. If you have any lighting assigned to the profile it is reflected in the small rectangle next to its name.

Five tabs adorn the top of the window, two of which are the strictly non-technical R.A.D. and Update/Support panes. The other three - Main Control, Button Assignment and Advanced Control - are the tools by which the mouse is configured.

Beginning with Main Control, we’re given the option of adjusting a variety of sensitivity options, mouse tilt and scroll speeds, and DPI settings. Unlike the Kone Pure the Optical variant has rigidly fixed DPI levels: 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 3200 and 4000; settings can be allocated any DPI level, and they’re not mutually exclusive. Because DPI navigation is performed by way of a up/down/cycle selector option ROCCAT allow you to disable any inactive setting in order to make switching quicker and where possible use less button assignment slots.

Easy-Aim is a function which can be assigned to any button outside of the main two, and whilst held it sets the DPI to a chosen value. Any value currently allocated to a DPI Setting - active or inactive - can be used. If you’re after a low-DPI ‘sniper’ button for your Kone Pure Optical then allocating 200/400dpi to a DPI Setting and then selecting that as your Easy-Aim value will do the job pretty well.

Note that the horizontal tilt isn’t set to any default location because the Kone Pure isn’t equipped with a tilt-wheel. However it is available as a pre-defined function in Button Assignment, which may be handy for spreadsheet navigation.



Button Assignment is the meat of any mouse configuration utility, and that’s still the case for the Kone Pure Optical. From here you can set the behaviour of most mouse buttons with secondary assignments also available for Easy-Shift[+] operation; an immense range of pre-configured options are available including multimedia functions, games shortcut and profile switching. On the mouse itself Easy-Shift[+] can only be set to one of the two thumb buttons (labelled 4 and 5), however another ROCCAT device can be used to activate Easy-Shift[+] mode if ROCCAT Talk is installed.

Timers can also be assigned to button presses, but won’t operate simultaneously with another command. That’s something of an omission (which we also noted recently with the Ryos MK), and along with a lack of OSD flexibility make it a tool which could be much more useful in certain gaming genres.



Of course, for all the breadth of pre-programmed macros, you’ll almost certainly still want to create your own. That’s where the Macro Manager comes in, which allows you to record macros on a keystroke-by-keystroke basis. Later you can insert additional keystrokes or mouse events, and if necessary alter the delays between events. An advanced view plots this out in a timeline rather than list of actions, and can be useful to determine how well certain events overlap if using modifiers.

Macros are assigned to particular application groups (such as specific games etc.) and stored within profiles, but there’s no explicit way to back-up the entire catalogue of macros so far as we can discern. One way or another, this sort of functionality would be immensely handy when migrating settings from one PC or OS installation to another, ensuring that no work on optimising macros is lost.



Advanced Control, the final configuration tab, defines the more aesthetic features of the mouse. As discussed already you can control the lighting, but you can also alter sound feedback settings (a must to prevent being scared by a someone blaring that you just won a trophy mid-coffee) and Windows mouse dynamics. Polling rate is also adjustable here, although you will likely stick to 1000Hz polling in almost every case.



ROCCAT Achievement Display (R.A.D), tracks mouse activity metrics such as number of clicks or total distance travelled. Other manufactures have taken the step of collating this information into heat-maps of activity for the mouse, but at present ROCCAT merely displays the information which serves as an entry into the Roccat World social hub. As pleasant as an addition that is, ROCCAT could be doing a whole lot more with this information and it would be sensible to start to provide a little bit more in a visual manner, as well as streamlining the process of tracking the info.

The final Update/Support tab presents summarised information on driver and firmware version as well as links to the official support site and forum. At present the software suite doesn’t automatically check for new versions and relies on a manual lookup, which is somewhat disappointing given how sleek the sofware is otherwise. That excepted it is function, and at least provices this inforation in a logical and easy to find spoit.

All in all the ROCCAT Kone Pure Optical’s software suite is a reasonable modification to that of the original Kone Pure. We’ve mentioned in the past that other manufacturers are improving their software and ROCCAT need to step up their game; the same is true here as for all its polish it’s a little lacking, relatively speaking. Even so it’s more than adequate and very few are likely to be harmed by some of the more significant omissions.


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