Sensor and Performance

The ROCCAT Kone XP is equipped with the PixArt PAW3370 sensor. 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, four pre-defined CPI steps are available: 400, 800, 1200, 1600, and 3200.

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 exclusively positive, highly consistent, and quite low, which is a good result overall. In order to account for the measured deviation, adjusted steps of 400, 800, 1550, and 3100 CPI have been used for testing.

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 Kone XP is moved first and thus receives a slight head start.


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." While the first plot shows no such kinks, the second one does, indicating there being smoothing.


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. Whereas 1600 CPI shows no motion delay differential, a differential of roughly 3 ms can be observed at 19,000 CPI, which is due to smoothing. The first level of smoothing is introduced at around 6000 CPI.

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 5 m/s, which is within the proclaimed PCS range and causes no observable sensor malfunction.

Polling Rate Stability

Aside from the occasional outliers, all of the four available polling rates (125, 250, 500, and 1000 Hz) look and perform fine. Polling stability is unaffected by any RGB lighting effect.

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 shows minor jitter, which is amplified to moderate levels at 10,000 CPI despite the latter step having smoothing. 19,000 CPI then displays major jitter. Lastly, there is no lens movement.

Lift-off Distance

The Kone XP offers 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). Set to the "low" preset, the sensor does track at a height of 1 DVD, but not at a height of 2 DVDs (1.2 mm<x<2.4 mm, x being LOD height). 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 is 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 I consider sufficiently accurate; i.e., standard error of around 0.2 ms. The Razer Viper 8K has been posited as the baseline for being within 0.1 ms of a hypothetical absolute minimum. Many thanks go to NVIDIA for providing me an LDAT v2 device.

Click latency has been measured to be roughly +1.2 ms, with standard deviation being 2.5 ms. The debounce time setting has no effect on click latency on press (button-down). Keep in mind that due to the indicated value being 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.