Introduction
As the Story Goes : ” Everything was going crazy and insane with our favorite online game matches n all . Suddenly one crappy night , out of the blue , my razor death adder started acting drunk. The problem was with left mouse click .. damn! . When I’d single click the mouse would send it as double click .. wth .. inputs were mysteriously bouncing! This happened to many guys and I was yet-another victim this time. A few days after this the same problem creepd into the side buttons and I got pissed off. I had enough of it and started looking for a new gaming mice. This time I planned to try some other brand. After a bit of research I finally settled down with Roccat Kova[+] Gaming Mouse. ”
Today we’ll be reviewing ‘ze’ Roccat Kova[+] Mouse for our Gaming Freaks. The mouse that I have in my hands is certainly not for budget gamer (or may be? – well , it depends :P). This mouse seems to be aimed for the Intermediate to Pro(..somewhat) Gaming Freak. Now lets see how this “German engineering product” actually performs in real life.
Specification and Features
1) 3200dpi Max Precision pro-optic sensor which can be set to 400dpi , 800dpi , 1600dpi or 3200dpi. The max speed has been increased to 130 inches per second and acceleration support is now upto 30Gs!
2) Ergonomic “V-shape” which makes it equally suites for Left handed and Right handed Freaks.
3) The Easy-SHIFT[+] button Duplicator. I really love this feature! With this 16 additional functions can be assigned. It works same as the shift key of the keyboard. Pressing the Easy-SHIFT button and any other button will invoke the secondary function assigned to that button.
4) Roccat Driver with Macro Manager makes customizing the mouse a child’s play. It supports upto 5 custom defined gaming profiles. You can also link these profiles to the executable of a game or an app so that when load that particular game/app the profile is automatically changed! The buttons can be assigned custom Macros and a wide range of functions along with predefined presets:
5) Multicolor customizable Light System : This mouse supports 7 different LED colors. Using the driver software the LED color can also be fixed to any 1. Breathing effect can also be turned off if you need and color changing time can also be increased.
6) Sound Feedback : Man… This is so coool! Whenever the profile , dpi or sensitivity of mouse is changed on the fly a corresponding audio file is played so you are totally aware of the current setting of you mouse.
Here are the Technical Specs and additional information pulled out from Roccat’s product page.
Ze Unboxing
Here are a few pics of the Box and Packing:
Finally here is ze Mouse :
Included Card , Manual and Driver CD:
3200 DPI Pro Optic Sensor R2:
Mouse Aesthetics & Size Comparison
Mouse connected! :
Front :
Back : That Porche style killer looks I bet!
Size Comparison with Razor Death Adder :
Multi-color Lighting System :
Software
Even without installing the drivers the Kova[+] works like a charm right out of the box.
The driver and customization software that comes with this mouse is one of the best I’ve ever used. Indeed it has lots of options but those are organized in such a way that you wont get lost and its kinda intuitive. Once you invoke the software the default tab displayed is “Main Control” as shown below. The settings under this tab are :
1) Sensitivity Options
2) Vertical Scroll Speed
3) Horizontal Tilt Speed
4) DPI Switcher
5) Windows Pointer speed
6) Double speed
7) Factory Reset
The next Tab is “Button Assignment“. In this tab you can edit the standard button assignment as well as EasyShift[+] button assignment which gives you 18 key combinations. Hence you can assign a total of 18 different functions! Using the Hand-Mode Switch you can configure the mouse as right handed or left handed. The next option is really interesting one! Its called “Create + Edit Macros”. By default its loaded with many of pre-defined macros for popular games like BFBC 2 , Crysis , L4D , WoW , Dragan Age , ME2 , etc.. and also for apps like Firefox , Photoshop , etc.. the sequence of these pre-defined macros can be also edited. On top of that you can also create your own Macros! Thats quite handy for benchmarking games or doing repetitive tasks.
The 3rd Tab is “Advanced control” which has options for Color and Light Control , Polling Rate and Sound Feedback(I really like this!). Finally the last Tab is “Update/Support” .. I’ll let the pics do the talking.
The 4th and the last Tab is “Update/Support” .. just in case you need it.
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.
Final Conclusion
To conclude with , lemme list out some Pros and Cons of this mouse :
Pros:
- Top Notch Driver software
- Plenty of customization features
- Total of 7 + 2(Scroll up/down) Buttons
- Supports Custom Macros
- Multicolor lighting
- Suited for both Left and Right handed guys
- Audio alerts for changes in DPI , etc.. I really love this feature
Cons:
- Scroll wheel click is hard
- To a few the size may seem a bit small
- Main Logo on mouse body missing 🙁 … I really wanted that “backlit-cat-logo”
- “Depth of click” for all the four side buttons is more and initially its really annoying