Header Ads

Roccat Kone Pure Owl Eye Overview

Roccat is famous for making high-end gaming mice that runs on comparably low DPI but high accuracy. Among all of their released mice, Kone series got the most appreciation. This series includes Kone EMP, Kone Aimo, Kone XTD and many. Kone Pure Military Edition was famous for it's smooth rubberized grip. But the mice that managed the spotlight for Kone series was Pure Owl Eye. This mouse contains premium plastic grip, agile buttons and the Owl Eye sensor (which is actually PMW3361, the modified version of PMW3360). This is Mashhud Hasan from Frenzyweb360 and today I'm going to give my thoughts about Roccat Kone Pure Owl Eye and will let you guys know whether it is worth buying or not.


Body & Shape
Kone Pure Owl Eye has a very sleek and ergonomic shape. It's chassis is made of high quality plastic and the side grips are made of thin rubberized grips, this combination definitely gives a premium feeling. It's thumb rest is deep and that is helpful at laying the thumb with comfort. But it doesn't have any noticeable ledges and due to having no comfort grooves, it's hard to lift this mouse off without slipping it off.It's shape is compatible for almost all types of grips. Due to having steep button slope, it's good for fingertip and claw grippers. But it's shape is comparably small and might cause gripping issues for those who have long fingers. It has a wide shaped palm rest and the hump is located towards the back, so palm grippers will feel the comfort of gripping this mouse. This mouse doesn't have any wide shaped gliding pads though but it's pads aren't gathered inside small areas but they're stretched. This is handy for the users to glide the mouse smoothly. It has a width of 7cm and a length of 11.5cm. So the ratio of it's length-width isn't even close to 2:1 but since the thumb rest at left is quite deep, so extra widths are not gonna affect at gripping. It's mostly preferable for FPS gaming and the weight is only 88 grams, which is perfect for FPS. But many people prefer heavy mice. So, having a weight tuning system would be better.

Buttons & Cable

Kone Pure Owl Eye has a total of 7 buttons which includes left & right buttons, 2 buttons for DPI increasing/decreasing, a scroll wheel and two side buttons that are programmed as forward/backward browsing by default but all of the buttons are programmable. It's left and right buttons are pretty light at clicking and that's why it's not as durable as the Military version's. But they're very clicky (might cause unexpected clicking though) and according to response speed, it is as similar as Logitech G403. DPI and side buttons are also not as hard as Military version's but they're clicky and positioned well. One thing to mention that the left and right buttons are located very near to each other but due to high-end build quality, they don't create any friction with each other during clicking (this is an issue that HyperX Pulsefire Surge has). It's scroll wheel is named 2D Titan Wheel. It's pretty smooth and can be scrolled by two different dimentions. This mouse has a 1.8m braided cable and they don't create any friction with the surface. Overall the buttons and cable are very much satisfying.

Sensor
This mouse contains Owl Eye sensor, which is actually PMW3361 sensor (the modified version of PMW3360). This optical sensor can run up to 12,000 DPI, has a gravitational acceleration of 50G and a tracking speed of 250IPS. Due to having high tracking speed, this sensor tracks very accurately without any noticeable acceleration (unless you enable the enhance pointer precision). It handles the swift horizontal flicks very nicely which is the reason it never decelerates at high tracking speed. It's prevented from pixel skipping and angle snapping  and the lift-off distance can be customized. This sensor's default acceleration is a bit too high which might affect in accuracy. It has a frame rate of 12,000 FPS, which means it's micro cam captures 12,000 surface images per second and deliver it to the Micro Controlling Unit to process and determine the cursor movement (according to customized DPI). This sensor is completely prevented from stuttering and interpolation issues since it has high FPS and polling rate. It's ratio between DPI and true pixel movement is nearly accurate 1:1. It has an integrated IR LED as an emitter. Infrared rays aren't so good at illuminating shiny surfaces but they're mostly adaptable with opaque surfaces. So this sensor might jitter at shiny or light colored surfaces. Nowadays most of the mice contain laser emitter to prevent surface issues. Overall this sensor is prevented from all of the major issues plus it's very precise and accurate in terms of tracking. It's a big competitor of AM010, PMW3366 and PMW3389. You'll find this Owl Eye sensor in Roccat Kone EMP and Leadr as well.


Others
This mouse has a high-end polling rate of 1kHz. This makes the mouse very snappy and responsive. It's Micro Controller is ARM Cortex-MO which has a clock speed of 50Hz. The clock speed of it's SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) connection with the sensor is 70MHz. Due to having high SPI connection speed, it's very snappy and can handle the high frame rate (12k FPS) of the sensor. Basically this Micro Controller is very fast at processing 12k surface images per second and determine the cursor movement accurately. Kone Pure Owl Eye has an onboard memory of 512kB and can contain 17 button programmed profiles at a time. For customizing this mouse, Roccat features the Swarm software. With this software, you can customize the DPI (up to 12k), Windows Sensitivity, Double clicking speed, horizontal tilt speed, windows pointer precision, Button assigning (17 profiles), polling rate, color of illumination and many. It's by far the most handy software ever produced by a mouse developing company.

So let's highlight all the pros and cons of this mouse down below

Pros:
  • High-end sensor (PMW3361 aka Owl Eye optical).
  • Build quality is very good.
  • lightweight mouse (88g).
  • Buttons are positioned well and they have good response speed.
  • Micro Controlling Unit is impressive.
  • SPI speed between sensor and MCU is impressive.
  • High polling rate.
  • Long and durable cable.
  • With Roccat Swarm, you can customize almost all types of stuffs.
Cons:
  • unnecessary acceleration (50G).
  • length width ratio isn't 2:1.
  • no presence of weight tuning systems

As we can see here, other than those unnecessary accelerations and the emitter, the sensor is completely fine. The shape and build quality is also satisfying. The length-width ratio of the shape should've been 2:1 though, but the thumb rest has a deep bottom and it's fine for gripping. Buttons are good as well but should've improved more after the Military version. It's software is very handy and you can customize almost everything. FPS gamers might miss the weight tuning systems which this mouse doesn't have. But after all it's just 88 grams. It has an excellent Micro Controlling unit and an onboard memory of 512kB. Overall it's a well-rounded mouse, can track very smoothly and pretty much adaptable for all types of grippers. Thanks for reading this overview. Hope this will help you guys decide whether you should buy it or not.

No comments

Powered by Blogger.