The ROCCAT Kone Pure does not come with a driver CD, a decision ROCCAT has taken for all its most recent products in order to cut both costs and potential issues surrounding shipping old driver sets which may prove incompatible with new OS versions. Instead, you will need to download and install the latest drivers specific to the mouse from ROCCAT.org, a package which will also include the most up to date firmware available for the mouse, and will prompt you to update if possible.

The driver for the ROCCAT Kone Pure is available here. Tests were performed with driver version v1.10, firmware 1.17.



The Main Control panel is where features such as DPI level and sensitivity are controlled. These directly impact how the cursor behaves as you move the mouse, and will need to be adjusted to find a balance perfect for you. This panel is almost identical to that of the panel for the Kone XTD with one exception - Horizontal Tilt isn't native to the Pure (it has no tilt on the mouse-wheel), but remains an assignable function via Button Assignment.

DPI Selection may appear to allow fine variation between 0 and 8200, but in reality variation is only possible in 200DPI chunks. This will not be an issue for most however, especially at the high end of the DPI setting where the difference between 7600 and 7800 (for example) is negligible. The mouse Easy-Aim functionality will look up one of these settings directly, so be aware of that.

All the configuration options of the ROCCAT Kone Pure are stored on a per-Profile basis, which can be switched between easily thanks to button assignments (default: Easy-Shift[+] 17 & 18). Profiles can be individually named, and each of the profile icons are colour-coded to reflect the individual colour choice made for it in Colour Control.

Profiles can also be saved and loaded for long-term storage and recall, allowing expandability beyond those typically stored on the mouse onboard memory. This functionality is accessed via the Profile Load/Save/Edit buttons directly below the main window. ROCCAT Kone Pure profiles (.rmp extension files) are by default stored under '\Programs Files (x86)\ROCCAT\Kone Pure Mouse\config'.



The next panel is Button Assignment, where individual buttons can be bound to specific keystrokes, common mouse functions or ROCCAT-specific functions. The assignments twin panels refer to assignment with and without EasyShift[+] active, close to doubling the number of possible assignments. Of the available mouse buttons, EasyShift[+] can only be bound to buttons 4 and 5; EasyAim can similarly only be bound to buttons 4 or 5, and only when EasyShift[+] isn't enabled.

Under ideal conditions the user would also be utilising an Isku keyboard, which allows both EasyShift[+] and EasyAim to be bound to the keyboard and free up mouse buttons 4 and 5 entirely.



The Macro Manager - accessed via the central button on the Button Assignment panel or through "Create New Macro" - allows the user to create their own macros representing a sequence of keystrokes, with additional time delays if required. The Kone Pure software also has access to pre-assembled macros for various games (such as WoW or Starcraft 2), which helps to get you started in terms of the capabilities.



The Advanced Control panel allows you to adjust advanced mouse features to tweak the Kone Pure to the ideal mousing dynamics for you. Many users won't need to adjust these settings significantly, but the advanced user should revel in them. At the very least, disabling sound notifications would be a good first step as they break gaming flow significantly and don't really add anything to the experience, with the possible exception of DPI notification. Even here, it would be useful to allow a visual rather than audio notification, or add functionality to change the notification sounds from a subtle voice to a chime.



Colour Control if the panel to adjust colour and lighting effects for the LEDs on the mouse palm rest. We've discussed the lighting previously, but we should also note that reflecting the selected colour in the main image of the mouse on the left would be a nice addition. Due to the less complicated lighting customisation on the Pure vs the XTD, the panel for the Pure is also less complicated; however this extents to the lighting effects, of which we would like to see more than the one possible for the Pure.



ROCCAT Achievement Display (R.A.D), tracks the usage statistics of the mouse such as number of clicks or total distance travelled - reach a set number and you get an achievement. The idea is that they're cool metrics and serve as an entry into the Roccat World social hub. It's a nice little addition which is well presented and provides information which may be useful at some point (after all, you never know).



The final panel is the Update/Support panel, and displays the current driver/firmware versions and a link to the ROCCAT software download and technical support pages. Automatically alerting in the event of an available update would be a useful addition, but simple making the driver and firmware version clear is a step up from many other manufacturers.

And that rounds off the Software. As you can see, it's an extremely logical and cleanly presented package very much in concordance with other ROCCAT software packages we have used. There are no real oversights and, apart from minor points to extend functionality even more than they have done, it's very hard to fault them. Unlike so many other peripherals, the software adds to the mouse rather than acts as a detriment to the overall experience.