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 of the shell can be observed. However, at the front on the left side, the top shell doesn't sit entirely flush with the bottom shell, and the side wall can be pushed in somewhat easily, creating a visible gap. Activating the side buttons by squeezing the sides is impossible. Lastly, accidental clicks when slamming down the mouse do not occur regardless of the set debounce time.

Buttons

Main buttons on the Kone XP 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. Theses don't feel entirely firm and have noticeable pre-travel, but no post-travel. Low-profile switches from TTC (blue plunger) are used for these.


Side buttons are good to decent. There are two rows of two buttons each. The back button on the bottom row in particular doesn't feel firm, has significant pre-travel, and suffers from uneven actuation. While the other buttons have less pre-travel and low post-travel for the most part, they don't feel particularly stable, either. The front pair feels better overall than the rear pair. 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 TTC switch (red 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 appreciably low, and tactility is great, with clearly discernible steps and a matching tactile feel while scrolling. However, scrolling is overly heavy to where it may feel strenuous. The encoder comes from TTC (white) and is 6 mm tall. The middle (scroll wheel) click requires medium to 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. Another set of TTC switches (red plunger) is used for these.

Surface

The Kone XP 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 is difficult. First, remove the front and rear skates, along with the screws beneath them. Once those are taken care of, top and bottom shell can be lifted but not separated yet. The side pieces the top shell slots into are affixed with two screws at the front, which thus ought to be removed as well. Finally, the entire top shell can be lifted.

The internal design is quite complex. A small PCB holding the top button is screwed into the top shell and connected through a ribbon cable. The side buttons too are located on their own PCB screwed into the left side panel and likewise connected through a ribbon cable. Furthermore, an auxiliary PCB providing illumination can be found next to the scroll wheel, connected with a 6-pin connector. Everything else sits on the very large main PCB, atop which two RGB assemblies are mounted with two screws each. The thumb-rest shift button actuates a rotated mechanical switch bottom-mounted on the main PCB. In a similar fashion, the scroll-wheel switches are rotated and embedded on the back of the main PCB. The wheel assembly is fixated with another two screws, and the encoder isn't soldered to the main PCB but instead connected with a 3-pin connector. Aside from these and the aforementioned screws, no more screws are used to affix the main PCB to the bottom shell. All PCBs are rather thin, including the main PCB. The MCU is a Holtek HT32F52352, whose datasheet can be found here.


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