[section_title title=”Software”]SoftwareÂ
Lets take a look at the software.
Here we have the first tab of the software, ‘Main Control’. We have control over things like DPI, scroll speed and double click speed; all the basics. At the bottom we also have a profile manager with five slots which is a good amount for most people to be able to have one for each of the games they play the most. One thing I did like was the WP button which means that profile is the default Windows profile that the software will switch to when you aren’t in a game, which is great if you want to re program all the buttons for office shortcuts in normal use.
Speaking of reprogramming buttons we have here the button assignment tab, as you can see we have control over all of the buttons and there are a good amount of functions that you can bind. The right hand side of this screen features the Easy Shift button assignments which lets you program extra functions to your mouse to be used in conjunction with the Easy shift button which you can bind to either M4 or M5. This is a cool feature for people who need more functionality in their mouse but don’t like the look of a mouse plastered with buttons.
The next tab is the Advanced Control area which gives us control over polling rate, lift off distance amongst others including the rather nice sensor alignment option which lets you adjust the angle the sensor registers zero rotation at, which is good if you don’t like resting your wrist dead straight. My favourite option by far is the fact that the options for lift off distance include ‘Low’ and ‘Extra Low’ if you have read my other mouse reviews you will know I like to moan about high lift off distances so I have to give special praise when this is actively remedied!
I must say the wildcard here is definitely the sound feedback tab, I only glanced at the software when I set the mouse up at first so I assumed the sound would be a beep of some kind. How wrong I was. Picture the scene: I’m trundling along in War Thunder in my Panzer 4 and suddenly I spot the dreaded impenetrable KV1 out the corner of my eye. I slam on the brakes and train the gun sight on him, I hit the DPI down button to carefully aim up that shot just under the gun mantlet to knock out the horizontal turret drive so I’m free to go and shoot Ivan in his soft rear; only whilst this thought process is playing through in my mind an ominous, deep computerised male voice escapes my headset’s drivers and penetrates my very soul “1600 DPI”.
Confused by the source of this noise I pause momentarily and that was enough, Ivan hits me right in the kisser with 6.8 kg of Stalin’s finest steel and that’s curtains for my poor little Panzer. Sat at the respawn menu I realise that it was likely the mouse software that produced this strange commentary of my actions and I have to say after using the mouse for a few days now I’ve grown to accept the thinly veiled sensuality of the Kone Military’s spokesperson and its actually a really good feature because you get complete confirmation of changing the DPI without having to look down at the mouse to double check which could be the difference between life and death (in the digital sense).
Next up we have the colour control tab, there are a good amount of options here such as being able to choose a lighting effect or indeed to turn it off completely. Always worthy of praise is the inclusion of full RGB customisation on the colour as this will help people match their colour schemes nicely.
The next tab is pretty R.A.D…geddit? Fine. We have some cool little touches here, my favourite thing by far is the button click stat tracking; its a great curiosity but it also helps you identify keys that you could make better use of if they are relatively unused, see for example my Thumb Button 2. There is also the trophy and achievement screen; perhaps I’m just a miserable bastard but I found this about as exciting as the practice of peeling that little foil bit off a new bottle of ketchup.
Finally we have the support screen, it is really nice that ROCCAT encourage users to email them with problems and being able to update firmware and drivers with the click of a button is always a nice feature.
I have to say this is some of the nicest mouse software I’ve seen, both in design and functionality. There are no features missed in my books and the extras like the button statistics and the voice feedback make it a nice feature boost to the whole package. Now lets move on and take a look at some Synthetic testing!
