ROCCAT ROC-11-810 KONE XTD - Max Customization Gaming Mouse

This is unbelievable. Seriously.TL;DR summation: if you have the money, buy it. Don't hesitate. The ergonomics are phenomenal, the materials are like sex in your hand, and the software is outstanding. If you don't have the money, save up, sell an eyeball or a kidney, and buy it.If you've read either of my reviews for the CoolerMaster Cherry keyboards, you'll be aware that I'm a professional software developer--chief engineer on a fair sized application. If you haven't, go do so. Buy one. You'll love it. And now you know what I do. I spend 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week with my hands on a keyboard and a mouse. I've been looking for an oustanding mouse for about a month, about the same time I decided to upgrade my keyboards.I bought a Razer Deathadder first. It was more comfortable than the Dell garbage micro-mouse that came with my ridiculously overpriced Dell development workstation, but it didn't fit my hand perfectly and wasn't particularly weighty--it felt cheap. I got the black edition, so it's a soft-touch plastic and my sweaty-ass hands don't slip off it.But I still wasn't hugely impressed, especially not considering the price or the Razer emblem on the tin. Meh.I use a LOT of macros in Visual Studio. I started thinking maybe I wanted a mouse that could handle a few of my more common ones for me. I didn't want the utterly ridiculous Razer or Logitech MMO. I found a review of ROCCAT's new mice (the XTD Max and Pure) on bit-tech and decided to look it up on amazon. It's got eight buttons (technically), and the [+]function effectively doubles the number of assignable macros. I was a little hesitant due to the price, then I remembered that I make lots and lots of money for clicking on things all day...so what the hell?It just got here. I'm in love with it. I may try to have baby mice with it.Looks/fit & finish:It's a sexy mouse. The logo is relatively understated in my dimly lit office environment. The software has tons of options for the light bars, including the option to turn them off entirely. You have to go with the preset colors (there are about 30), and there is no option for white. There's a little bit of light leakage around the forward & back buttons, but it's only noticeable when viewing the mouse from a ~30 degree angle.Ergonomics:I'm old fashioned in that I believe when you pay three times the price of everything else in a market segment, that item should feel like it. The XTD does. Every surface you spend time with your hand on is a very soft, almost felt-like rubberized surface. There's a notch for your thumb under the forward/back buttons that's surprisingly comfortable in a claw grip. All of the buttons click very nicely--neither too hard nor too soft, and just enough tactile and audible feedback to let you know it registered. The mouse wheel feels every bit as good as ROCCAT advertises, and their website would indicate that they are absolutely in love with it. The whole mouse is hefty, which is a good thing for me. I don't game with it, so the added weight lets me keep the sensitivity up and still glide smoothly with plenty of control. Plus, again, that makes the mouse feel sturdier; almost like you paid for something and got it.There are 10 buttons total--two on the right side (traditional forward & back), left and right click, middle mouse wheel click, mouse wheel left and right, then two below the mouse wheel and one above. With one button reserved for [+], there are 18 total possible macros you can use.Software:Holy freaking crap. THERE IS SO MUCH HERE. But it's intuitively laid out. You can adjust damn near anything you can imagine, down to microscopic adjustments in the sensitivity on the x and y axii, independently. Despite that, it took me all of two minutes to get over my initial awe, play with the lighting options (there are a LOT) before turning them off entirely, and start setting up my own macros--the whole reason I bought the mouse in the first place. There are several templates for macros included with the mouse for about 20 games and ten or so applications, like Dragon Age, ME2, Photoshop, and IE.The [+] button defaults to where the back button usually is. I didn't think I'd like it at first, but the software defaults to pressing the [+]+left for back and [+]+right for forward. I made the standard forward button alt+tab instead, and I dig the hell out of it now. It took about 10 minutes to create my own set of macros called VS2012 to handle 12 of my most-used functions, including setting up the one I just mentioned. Very, very intuitive.Was it worth $80? Sure. All ergonomic and ease-of-use (and plain sexy) considerations aside, the mouse will save me enough time in keystrokes to pay for itself in about a week. It's a super cool little device--I'm now hesitant to call it just a "mouse"--and judging by feel alone it should last at least until the need for mice has been superceded by...I dunno, thought interfaces or whatever.Buy it.

This mouse just arrived today and I'm already in love with it. The smoothness of the tracking is incredible, it glides like butter and the surface is baby smooth and grippy at the same time. The 8200 DPI is outstanding and you can even adjust it on the fly via programmable buttons on the mouse. I installed all four 5g weights because I like the heft and glide of a weighted mouse. If you want more weights, you might want to buy another brand.I'm not really a hard-core gamer; I play an occasional shooter on my PC like Syndicate, but mostly games like Civ 5 or indie titles... I did play SWTOR for a while, but only on PvE servers, for instance. I'm more of a console guy. Anyway I tend to buy gaming-grade products for future-proofing against normal use as well as Moore's law, and for the versatility: I want to use the same product for surfing, computer maintenance, typing, coding, gaming, et cetera. I try to buy products that are well-constructed but not overly flashy; I want products that last and are stylish but don't shout 'I'm a gamer, look at me!'.That said, this mouse does have a particularly flashy feature not found in any other mouses I know of: each of the four corners of the mouse is equipped with an LED independently programmable with 32 different colors. You can specify the color for each one in the control panel in addition to several effects. I have mine solidly lit with a shade of orange to match my keyboard. However, it's very understated compared to the other gaming products on the market. There is an oversize Roccat logo emblazoned on the palm rest of the mouse, but it, too is understated; dark matte silver on dark matte gray. If you like a more refined, 'less is more' aesthetic, this is the right mouse. It's sexy but not trashy.You can specify up to five button profiles in the EasyShift interface, which is a really well done piece of software. The UI could be a little more intuitive but overall it's quite simple and easy to use. You can set one of the profiles as the Windows default; there are also built-in macros for a couple dozen major games like WoW, C&C 3, Left 4 Dead, StarCraft II, ME2, MW2, Sims 3, and several more. Some of those games are a little dated; I'm not sure if more macros are available for download somewhere. It also has something called EasyAim for sniping; you'll have to look up reviews by hard-core gamers on YouTube to find out more about it, I haven't used it.I did hit a bit of a snag with the drivers, launching EasyShift and getting it bound to the mouse, which was annoying. The first part of this was largely user error; I was mistakenly downloading and installing drivers for the Roccat Kone+ instead of the Kone XTD. However, there are also a couple of other tricks. For starters, Roccat doesn't include a disc. Not a huge deal, it is 2013. However if you don't have an Internet connection working when you install the mouse you won't be able to get the EasyShift software working without the driver. The mouse will still work, as Windows will install the correct default drivers, you just won't be able to customize it. Confusing matters is the fact that even when you install the drivers correctly the mouse still shows up in the Device Manager as simply an HID-Compliant mouse with Microsoft drivers. None of this is in the instructions in the packaging, which are almost nonexistent; they just point you to the Roccat driver download page. If you follow these steps, everything will go off without a hitch:- Make sure you have a working Internet connection.- With the mouse unplugged and using another pointing device, download and install the correct drivers from the Roccat site.- Restart your computer.- Plug in your mouse; after 5-10 seconds the driver will detect it and prompt you for a firmware update; follow the instructions.After the firmware update, everything should work perfectly.Also, I had to look online to discover, in a forum post, how to launch EasyShift: hold the back button on the left side of the mouse down and click the button immediately forward of the scroll wheel. Also not in the instructions or on the site.The bottom lineMechanically, physically, ergonomically and in many other ways, this is a very high quality mouse: you get what you paid for. It's stylish without being flashy: it works just as well for modest gamers as it does for ninja LAN partiers that want to advertise their badassitude via understated subtlety. Think Audi R8 instead of Ferrari 458. It also works very well for people who just want a quality input device that will do a phenomenal job and last a long time, feel comfortable and look good doing it. Obviously I won't know if the durability part of that is true for a few years, but it seems like it will be based on the quality of the build and materials; it just feels like a quality product. One star off for the following: unintuitive driver, firmware and utility installation; poor documentation; somewhat outdated macros (doesn't matter to me but will to some gamers); and the fact that at the moment I can't seem to find model-specific replacement mouse skates, either on the Roccat site or anywhere online. Like my keyboard, a Max Keyboard Nighthawk X8, which I also recommend highly, this brand and manufacturer aren't nearly as well known as the big names like Razer, Logitech, Mionix, et cetera. They don't have very many reviews. For both products, however, you'll notice that the people who do review them, love them. I highly recommend this product and encourage you to take the leap and buy it.