Performance and Experience
Okay now its time for ‘ze’ real test of Kova[+]. No doubt the mouse looks aesthetically very pleasing and the bundled driver package has been built really well loaded with features , now lets see if it actually lives up to its name and expectations.
On Side-Buttons & scroll click :
While the main click and scroll up/down is very ‘crisp’ and smooth the scroll wheel click is a kinda hard and the side buttons are a bit soft in terms of depth of click. Initially the side buttons are really annoying because you need to press them a bit more that what I must have been. But as you use it , your fingers will automatically adapt to the side buttons and after that using it is really comfortable.
On Rubber Pads on both the sides under the size-buttons :
These pads are located where your thumb makes contact at the left side and where your ring finger makes contact on the right side in case of Right handed guys like me and vice-vera for left handed freaks. These pads are long enough for any kind of gripper viz. Palm / Claw gripper. I am a claw gripper and didn’t find any issues with it even in case when my thumb and ring finger backs of a bit. Being rubber it can easily catch dust .. but hey you just need to take a little more care when it comes to keeping your mouse clean .. can’t you?
On Tests and Performance :
For testing the Ease of use and Performance of the mouse we used the following Games and Softwares:
1) Crysis 3 Multiplayer
2) Battelfield 3
3) Team Fortess 2
4) Killing Floor
5) Photoshop for Image Editing
6) Power Director for Video Editing
7) Eagle for PCB Designing
Crysis 3 Multiplayer : Crysis 3 multiplayer gameplay is really intense and specially the Hunter Bow fanatics might love this mouse. Many times depending on your weapon and situation you need to increase/decrease DPI really quick .. I mean in a fraction of a second. Doing this with any other similar mouse takes practice. I’ve configured the side-buttons on the right side for changing DPI on the fly. I use my ring fingre to do so. And when you develop those reflexes .. you start to PWN your enemies but that requires your fingures to be really dextrous which again comes with practice.
Battelfield 3 : This too is my favourite game , though I don’t play mulitplayer much. One thing I noticed while playing BF3(single player) and Crysis that the left and right buttons are crisp .. I mean no chance of debouncing which was the case (very rarely) with razor death adder .. I don’t know if its me or it actually was :P. Also the scroll wheel is almost same as death adder but the 3rd button click i.e scroll wheel click is a bit hard though. All in all it was a nice experience.
Team Fortress 2 : The classes which I play most in TF2 are : Soldier , Heavy and Pyro. The real test of Kova[+] comes when you play as Soldier , Scout or Spy where you need fast and neat reflexes. In this case the mouse doesn’t let you down. The on-the-fly DPI change also comes in handy when playing the sniper class.
Killing Floor : This is one of my favourite Survival-Horror Game. I didn’t notice any thing drastically different with respect to ease of use as compared to Razor Death Adder.
Photoshop : Even with Adobe Photoshop the ease of use and precision is almost the same as compared to Razor Death Adder or any other mice of its class for that matter.
Power Director : I used this software with at Lower DPI settings 1600 & 800 DPI. I am not a pro at using Power Director. I use it casually to edit my videos , add some text , images and background soundtracks and optimizing videos. Many times when editing tracks fine tuning is required for which lower DPI is a must .. and the dynamic DPI change helped here a lot. Overall editing videos and soundtracks is a lot easier compared to mice which dont have dedicated DPI change buttons.
Eagle (PCB Desinging CAD Software) : Apart from Gaming I am an embedded and DIY ethusiast too! I’ve been using eagle from 2009. The fact that Kova[+] is not so bulky as compared to many popular gaming mice helped here a lot. When routing PCBs you gotta move your mouse a lot .. here n there as compared to while playing games. In my opinion its size is kinda best suited for this kind of job.
