Roccat Kone XTD Mouse and Hiro Mousepad

Product(s): Roccat Kone XTD Mouse / Roccat Hiro Mousepad
Provided By: Roccat
Price: ~$90 and $50 respectively at time of publication

Introduction:

Today I have two items from Roccat to take a look.  I will be checking out the Kone XTD Mouse and The Hiro mouse pad.   These guys have been around since 2007 and I've only ever heard positive feedback about their products. Never having experienced any Roccat products, I'm pretty excited to test these out today. From what I've heard and read, I'll be expecting some serious performance from Roccat. You can check out all their products at their site here.

The Roccat Kone is a performance gaming mouse with a lot of features. The sensitivity ranges from 200-8200 DPI.  There is an Easy-Shift+ button that allows you to maximize what each button can do.  The Kone also sports a nice led system that can be customized in a variety of ways. There is also a weight system that, combined with the ergonomic design, gives the Kone some serious handling.

The Roccat Hiro is a mouse pad also made for performance gaming. The Hiro consists of a vulcanized silicone surface, non-slip base, and is power bonded to combat any fraying issues. With a surface size 350mm x 250mm the Hiro works very well for all play styles. It is also water resistant which makes cleaning a breeze.

In the next section we'll get right into these products with some pictures.

Kone Pictures and Description:

We'll start this section with some shots of the Roccat Kone XTD.

The Kone comes packaged, as most mice do, in a color-graphic printed box that contains a plastic clamshell for added protection.  Detailed specs are also present to let you know exactly what you are getting.

As you can see, the Roccat Kone XTD has some nice looks. The instructions included explain how to install it and give you the web address to download the newest drivers.  I find that not coming with a driver disk is actually more effective since most of the time the drivers on said disk are usually out of date anyways.

It has eight buttons and the wheel scrolls vertical and horizontal. Easy-Shift+ technology allows these buttons to perform double duty by assigning multiple functions for any button.

I found the weight system pretty nice.  I like how the weights, when installed, were located where your palm goes.  It seems to add better control whether it is for browsing, graphics editing, or just shooting it up in a game. Roccat gives you 20g, in 5g increments, to adjust the weight to ones liking.

On the next page we'll take a look at the LED features of this mouse as we jump into the software side of things.