Turtle Beach Kone II Air Review

Verdict

With a marginal discount, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air could be a great wireless gaming mouse for those who value comfort above competitive play. At launch, its 1000Hz sensor means it’s priced far too high to stand out for the right reasons.

Introduction

The Turtle Beach Kone II Air is a wireless mouse aiming to compete with some all-time greats in the PC gaming space. So what does it do differently?

What’s immediately obvious is its immense size relative to the competition. This mouse is proud to be for medium to large-sized paws and is ready to accept the holy trinity of gaming grips.

While comfort is certainly king here, a gaming mouse needs to be more than just comfortable to earn a place on your desk.

Design

• Great fit and feel for medium/large paws
• Underside cubby for the 2.4Ghz receiver
• Ample RGB

The Turtle Beach Kone II Air harkens back to the past of the Roccat brand, which Turtle Beach picked up in 2019 before merging it into the wider Turtle Beach collection last year.

Available in a sheer white or cool black affair, our white Kone II Air perfectly contrasted the wired counterpart, a black Kone II, we were sent alongside it.

They’re largely the same mouse in terms of shape, fit, and feel: it’s wide, flat, and long. These are mice for the larger hand, or for those medium-sized dukes that want a more relaxed grip.

As someone on the latter side of that scale, I understand the appeal. The low verticle profile and very slight right-side dip is comfortable to rest on over long periods and easy to grip for those more tense skirmishes.

Just as the front and back are largely symmetrical, so too is the outer edge of the top, where two wide RGB strips offer three-stage illumination.

The scroll wheel, which can be unlocked to free-wheel and click left or right, is also illuminated with a soft, diffused look thanks to its rubber grip. The scroll wheel is fairly loud and pronounced with its stage-based clicks, but is quiet and smooth when unlocked.

The unlock button placed behind the wheel means the dedicated DPI Up/Down buttons on the wired Kone II are reduced to a single button that cycles through your presets. It’s less control for more control.

The underside features two wide PTFE feet with a noticeable honeycomb cutdown visible beneath it. Though usually there to reduce the weight of a mouse, the large size, mechanical mechanisms, and battery all contribute to the Kone II Air being anything but lightweight at around 110g.

In the box is the tiny receiver, a grippy adapter, a hyper-flexible 1.8m cable for charging and keeping said adapter on the desk for easy switching in a pinch, and some other little goodies like grip tape and the manual. The box itself is a little more premium than the simple packaging of the Kone II, but only in the way of a foam insert to aid in presentation and preservation.

Performance

• Great signal stability
• Fast, snappy buttons all around
• Only 1000Hz

To put the Kone II Air to the test, I elected to run a round of Crab Champions. This fast-paced shooter, which is best described as third-person Serious Sam or Killing Floor of the new generation, has you whip your crosshair across dozens of targets for as long as you can keep up. Miss a trick and it’s back to the beginning.

So what better way to test not only the tracking of the Kone II Air’s 26k Owl-Eye sensor, but its TITAN switches, gargantuan grip, and the stability of its 2.4Ghz wireless connection?

To cut through the crust, it was stellar. Good enough for a hardened PC gamer who has never amounted to anything on a pro level, at least. Tracking was smooth as butter on a basic mouse pad. There were no hitches to note either from the sensor nor the wireless connection whether it was pointing directly at the tiny receiver or tucked out of view.

If there’s one thing to note, it’s that the Kone II Air has the same minor tracking jitter as its wired counterpart. This is just barely noticeable choppiness when attempting to move along individual pixels at a very low speed.

It’s not something you’re likely to notice in 99% of use. If you’re a slower shot trying to hone a headshot on a distant target who just refuses to move, however, you might just struggle to hit your mark.

Aside from that slight setback, tracking performance will satisfy the vast majority of gamers. It’s not quite up to par with something from Pixart or the Hero sensor in Logitech’s long-reigning clickers, but it’s far from being unserviceable.

The major concern is its inability to go beyond 1000Hz tracking. It’s not a problem with a 144Hz monitor, but upgrade to something more advanced and the Owl-Eye sensor could hold you back. Other mice in this price range can go all the way up to 8,000Hz–through the battery won’t last nearly as long for it.

But tracking isn’t the whole story. The Kone II Air peddles its TITAN optical switches more than its average sensor. And they’re great. Offering a tactile hairline click while keeping travel distance just high enough to avoid accidental clicks is quite the feat.

The main buttons feel perfect no matter where you pinch down on them. They’re wide enough to reassure you that it’s a mouse for larger hands. The same can be said for the side buttons, too. There’s a low actuation point with enough travel to handle a tight squeeze in those tense moments.

Overall, it’s a strong performance from the Roccat, with no signs of it giving up the ghost after a couple of months of intense use. It’s sturdy and can take a good squeeze without any creaking.

Software and Lighting

• Relatively intuitive software
• Enough lighting options
• Plenty of performance tweaks

The Kone II Air is controlled by the Turtle Beach Swarm II software suite. Click the outline of the product you want to manage through it, and you’ll come to a relatively intuitive tile-like interface. Here, you can change the standard stuff like DPI stages, lift distance, and polling rates if you’re so inclined.

Further down the list, you have access to the Easy-Shift settings, opening up each button to a second command whenever the Easy-Shift button at the base of the thumb rest is held down.

This is only really usable for the buttons on the top of the mouse, but that still majorly expands customisability for productive types, frequent game hoppers or, on its default settings, chronic playlist skippers.

Nestled right at the bottom is a simple solution to power its long, bright RGB strips. Presets offer a handy template for personalisation, and the AIMO setting is there to allow the software to intelligently adjust the lighting to match the action of your active game.

And if you just want to focus on what really matters with a gaming mouse, you can configure multiple ways to keep the battery running just that little bit longer.

Speaking of which, you can expect around 130 hours via 2.4Ghz with the lighting parred down. Various rest modes will help make that a reality, with the flexible cable there to offer snag-free wired use while it charges back up at the end of a long couple of weeks.

On Bluetooth, you won’t need to charge it for a good month at best, but your competitive performance will take a nosedive. It’s more for poking around with casual titles while you’re out and about.

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