Build Quality

Overall build quality is solid. A minor rattle comes from an indeterminable location when shaking the mouse. When applying lateral pressure, no creaking or flexing of the shell can be observed. Activating the side buttons by squeezing the sides is possible, but only for the rear side button and by using moderate force. Lastly, accidental clicks when slamming down the mouse do not occur regardless of the set debounce time.

Buttons

Main buttons on the Kone XP Air are very good (left) to good (right). Pre-travel is low on either button, but the right one has significant post-travel. While the left button feels snappy and pleasing, the right one is rather dull and muted. Despite being visually separated from the shell, lateral button movement is as low as physically possible. Button stiffness is medium. ROCCAT-branded optical switches are used here.

Next to the main buttons are two additional buttons. They don't feel entirely firm and have noticeable pre-travel, but no post-travel. Low-profile switches from TTC (black plunger) are used for these.


Side buttons are very good. Compared to the wired Kone XP, these are much improved. There are two rows of two buttons each. Pre and post-travel are low across the board, with only the back button of the top row not feeling entirely stable. The pressure point isn't entirely even on the back buttons. The side buttons bulge outward significantly, which makes it easier to tell them apart by feel, but does make actuation by rolling one's thumb across more difficult. Two pairs of low-profile switches from TTC (blue plunger) are used for these.

An additional button is located right on the thumb rest. This one feels rather flimsy, and hitting it accidentally during use is quite easy. A low-profile TTC switch (black plunger) is used for this one. At the top of the mouse is a single button for cycling through the set profiles. Its click feel is good. A seemingly unbranded tactile switch (black plunger) is used here.

Scroll Wheel

The scroll wheel is very good. Noise levels are elevated, but tactility is great, with clearly discernible steps and a matching tactile feel while scrolling. The encoder comes from TTC (white) and has a height of 6 mm. The middle (scroll wheel) click requires very high force for actuation. A TTC switch (red plunger) is used here.

The scroll wheel can also be tilted to the left and right, giving access to two additional button functions. When doing so, tilting to the right will be stiffer than tilting to the left. I didn't encounter any issue with accidentally actuating the middle click when tilting the wheel. A set of seemingly unbranded tactile switches (yellow plunger) is used for these.

Surface

The Kone XP Air has a smooth matte surface all over. The sides feature a line pattern, which adds a bit of grip, but does catch dirt somewhat more easily. The surface doesn't attract fingerprints, dirt, or the likes too much, is easy to clean, and there are no signs of wear left after doing so. All in all, excellent materials.

Button Sound Test

Disassembly

Disassembling the Kone XP Air is difficult. First, remove the front and rear skates, along with the screws (Torx T6) beneath them. Once those are taken care of, top and bottom shell can be separated, though an additional clip at the rear needs to be dislodged as well.

The internal design is quite complex. The shift and side buttons sit on their own PCB screwed into the top shell and connected through a ribbon cable to the main PCB. From what I can tell, an angled screwdriver would be required to unscrew the PCB. The profile button switch is located on its own PCB, along with several LEDs, and connected through a ribbon cable to the main PCB. The wheel assembly is glued to a holding piece that is part of the bottom shell at the front and slots into another assembly at its rear, and the encoder isn't soldered to the main PCB but instead connected with a 3-pin connector. Two screws are used to affix the battery holder directly to the bottom shell. Aside from these and the aforementioned screws, only a single additional screw is used to affix the main PCB to the bottom shell. All PCBs are rather thin, including the main PCB. The MCU is a Nordic nRF52840, whose datasheet can be found here.


As for the soldering and general quality of the PCB, I'm unable to find any noteworthy flaws.