Sensor and Performance

The ROCCAT Kone Pro Air is equipped with the PixArt PAW3370. According to specifications, the 3370 is capable of up to 19,000 CPI, as well as a maximum tracking speed of 400 IPS, which equals 10.16 m/s. Out of the box, five pre-defined CPI steps are available: 400, 800, 1200, 1600, and 3200.

All testing was done on the latest firmware. As such, results obtained on earlier firmware versions may differ from those presented hereafter.

CPI Accuracy

"CPI" (short for counts per inch) describes the number of counts registered by the mouse if it is moved exactly an inch. There are several factors (firmware, mounting height of the sensor not meeting specifications, mouse feet thickness, mousing surface, among others) which may contribute to nominal CPI not matching actual CPI. It is impossible to always achieve a perfect match, but ideally, nominal and actual CPI should differ as little as possible. In this test, I'm determining whether this is the case or not. However, please keep in mind that said variance will still differ from unit to unit, so your mileage may vary.


I've restricted my testing to the four most common CPI steps, which are 400, 800, 1600, and 3200. As you can see, deviation is kept to an absolute minimum, which is an excellent result.

Motion Delay

"Motion delay" encompasses all kinds of sensor lag. Any further sources of input delay will not be recorded in this test. The main thing I'll be looking for in this test is sensor smoothing, which describes an averaging of motion data across several capture frames in order to reduce jitter at higher CPI values, increasing motion delay along with it. The goal here is to have as little smoothing as possible. As there is no way to accurately measure motion delay absolutely, it can only be done by comparison with a control subject that has been determined to have the lowest possible motion delay. In this case, the control subject is a G403, whose 3366 has no visible smoothing across the entire CPI range. Note that the G403 is moved first and thus receives a slight head start.

Testing is restricted to 2.4 GHz mode as Bluetooth is not suitable for non-casual gaming applications.

Wired Testing

First, I'm looking at two xCounts plots—generated at 1600 and 19,000 CPI—to quickly gauge whether there is any smoothing, which would be indicated by any visible "kinks." As you can see, no such kinks are on display in the second plot, which indicates that there is no smoothing. As an aside, SPI timing variance is very low.


In order to determine motion delay, I'm looking at xSum plots generated at 1600 and 19,000 CPI. The line further to the left denotes the sensor with less motion delay. Much like the Endgame Gear XM1r, when plugged in, the Kone Pro Air appears to have the so-called corded mode enabled, which gets rid of the onset motion delay otherwise present on the 3370. There is no difference in motion delay at 1600 CPI, which holds true all the way up to 19,000 CPI. In short, there is no visible smoothing across the entire CPI range.

Wireless Testing

Upon first switching to wireless I was greeted by the above. Several outliers are visible, which I've found to be related to polling.


But luckily, after having disabled all RGB lighting, these outliers disappeared entirely. With RGB fully disabled, tracking is clean, with fairly low SPI timing jitter.


Onto motion delay. There is still no visible smoothing across the entire CPI range. I can measure an isolated wireless motion delay of roughly 1 ms, which is nothing short of impressive. Furthermore, the delay at the onset of motion typically present on the 3370 is almost entirely absent, which is even more impressive and a first so far.

Speed-related Accuracy Variance (SRAV)

What people typically mean when they talk about "acceleration" is speed-related accuracy variance (or short SRAV). It's not about the mouse having a set amount of inherent positive or negative acceleration, but about the cursor not traveling the same distance if the mouse is moved the same physical distance at different speeds. The easiest way to test this is by comparison with a control subject that is known to have very low SRAV, which in this case is the G403. As you can see from the plot, no displacement between the two cursor paths can be observed, which confirms that SRAV is very low.

Perfect Control Speed

Perfect Control Speed (or PCS for short) is the maximum speed up to which the mouse and its sensor can be moved without the sensor malfunctioning in any way. I've only managed to hit a measly 4.5 m/s (which is within the proclaimed PCS range), at which no sign of the sensor malfunctioning can be observed.

Polling Rate Stability

Considering the Kone Pro Air is usable as a regular wired mouse as well, I'll be testing polling rate stability for both wired and wireless use.

Wired Testing


Of the available polling rate settings (125/250/500/1000 Hz), only 1000 Hz looks and performs fine. Polling stability is unaffected by any of the available RGB lighting effects.

Wireless Testing
For wired mice, polling-rate stability merely concerns the wired connection between the mouse (SPI communication) and the USB. For wireless mice, another device that needs to be kept in sync between the first two is added to the mix: the wireless dongle/wireless receiver. I'm unable to measure all stages of the entire end-to-end signal chain individually, so testing polling-rate stability at the endpoint (the USB) has to suffice here.


As mentioned above, having RGB enabled greatly impairs polling stability in 2.4 GHz mode. AIMO, which is enabled by default and shown above, is the greatest offender, whereas the other RGB lighting effects occasionally display polling outliers. Curiously, closing ROCCAT Swarm improves polling stability slightly with non-AIMO effects and greatly with AIMO. Perfect stability is achieved only with RGB lighting fully disabled, which is thus the setting used for the plots below.


First, I'm testing whether SPI, wireless, and USB communication are synchronized. Any of these being out of sync would be indicated by at least one 2 ms report, which would be the result of any desynchronization drift accumulated over time. As you can see, several off-period polls are visible, which suggests there is some degree of desynchronization present.


Second, I'm testing the general polling-rate stability of the individual polling rates in wireless mode. Running the Kone Pro Air at a lower polling rate can have the benefit of extending battery life. All available polling rates look and perform just fine as long as RGB lighting is fully disabled.

Paint Test

This test is used to indicate any potential issues with angle snapping (non-native straightening of linear motion) and jitter, along with any sensor lens rattle. As you can see, no issues with angle snapping can be observed. No jitter is visible at 1600 CPI. 5000 CPI already shows minor jitter, which is amplified further at 10,000 CPI. 19,000 CPI then shows major jitter. This is in line with what to expect from a sensor lacking smoothing entirely. Lastly, there is no lens movement.

Lift-off Distance

The Kone Pro Air offers two pre-defined LOD levels to choose from, along with the ability to perform a manual calibration. Using the "very low" preset, the sensor does not track at a height of 1 DVD (<1.2 mm). Unlike on the wired Kone Pro, this doesn't change when setting it to "low." Keep in mind that LOD may vary slightly depending on the mousing surface (pad) it is being used on.

Click Latency

Most gaming mice use mechanical switches for their buttons. By wiring the switches of the test subject together with the switches of a control subject, I'm able to measure click latency very accurately; i.e., standard error of around 0.05 ms. However, this method is not applicable to mice with non-mechanical switches and wireless-only mice in general. As such, other methods ought to be employed, one of which being NVIDIA's Latency Display Analysis Tool (LDAT). The LDAT allows me to measure the entire end-to-end latency between the mouse click and photon transition on the monitor. By establishing the relative difference to a control subject, I'm able to provide values that I consider sufficiently accurate; i.e., standard error of around 0.2 ms. Many thanks go to NVIDIA for providing me an LDAT v2 device.

Click latency has been measured to be roughly +2.7 ms when compared to the Razer Viper 8K, which is considered as the baseline with 0 ms. Standard deviation is 2.6 ms, but since the indicated value is neither the absolute click latency nor the measured end-to-end-latency, standard deviation ends up looking disproportionally large. Comparison data comes from my own testing and has been exclusively gathered with the LDAT.