Software

The Kain 200 AIMO is compatible with ROCCAT's staple software suit, ROCCAT Swarm. Layout and presentation are a bit crowded, but in terms of functionality, it works well. The available options are accessible on four pages. On the first page, you can access the regular Windows cursor and CPI configuration settings. CPI adjustment is possible from 100–16,000 CPI, in increments of 100 and for up to five levels. On the second page, you'll find the button remapping function, which also supports EasyShift, enabling mapping of a secondary function to every button that is toggled by the press of a designated shift button. The third page features the lighting settings. Finally, on the last page, all advanced settings are made accessible: polling rate, LED sleep, rest modes, angle snapping (on/off), sound feedback (upon CPI level/profile switch), and the Zero Debounce function. Additionally, a signal strength indicator gives a rough estimation of wireless connection quality. The rest mode and power-saving settings are quite detailed, enabling one to define thresholds and how aggressive the behavior is supposed to be (e.g., reduce illumination, turn off illumination, or reduce polling rate). Profile and macro management are available as well. All settings can be saved and stored to onboard memory. On my system, the software had a RAM footprint of 150 MB on average while having the software in the foreground. Upon minimizing to the system tray, the RAM footprint went down to 65 MB on average.

An oddity (or bug) I've found is that when using the Kain 200 in wired mode, the software shows 80% battery status, only to correct it to 100% a couple of seconds later. Furthermore, Swarm tends to either crash or simply stop working correctly when switching from wired to wireless mode. Another issue presented itself with rest mode, from which the mouse consistently refused to wake up during testing. Only turning it off entirely and back on brought it back to life. Lastly, the update function doesn't appear to be entirely reliable, as I was prompted to update only to be told that everything is up to date later several times.

Lighting

The ROCCAT Kain 200 AIMO has two zones for RGB lighting, which are the scroll wheel and the logo at the back. Through the software, it is possible to select from among seven available pre-defined lighting effects. These are AIMO (default), Wave (color cycle), Fully Lit (permanent color), Heartbeat (pulsating single color), Breathing (single color fade-in and fade-out), and Blinking. Lastly, the "Battery Indicator" effect can be used to display battery life. It's possible to set custom colors and adjust brightness and transition speed. The lighting can be turned off entirely by lowering the brightness to zero.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. Here's a short demonstration video of the default "AIMO" effect, as well as the "Wave" and "Battery Indicator" lighting effects:

Battery life

ROCCAT indicates up to 50 hours of battery life with the lighting disabled and up to 35 hours with the lighting enabled. Curiously, the software estimates a remaining battery life of 39 hours at a battery status of 100%, yet only 24 hours at 80%. It's not entirely clear how the battery status and remaining battery life indicator relate to each other—do they refer to the same reading, and do the provided values scale linearly? In any case, the battery life indicator scales in increments of 20%, which may be less granular than the estimation in hours left. The battery is a 1000 mAh Lithium-Ion model made by ChangHong Grand-Pro Tech Co., Ltd.