Buttons, Scroll Wheel

Main buttons are pretty good on the Kova, but the buttons on the previously reviewed ROCCAT Kain 120 are miles better. These buttons are snappy and somewhat tactile, but not the greatest for click spamming. They have no unnecessary pre-travel, but do have a tiny amount of post-travel after the actuation (I could drastically reduce this by tightening the screws under the two front mouse feet). The clicks are rather stiff, resembling the feel of the Zowie FK and ZA series. They use Omron D2FC-F-7N switches with an RT marking, which presumably stands for ROCCAT.


Scroll wheels are mostly excellent with ROCCAT mice, and the Kova is no exception. The wheel is very tactile, of medium-light resistance, and generally feels awesome to work with. Needless to say, it operates with an Alps encoder (that is 9 mm tall if I'm correct). As mentioned before, the scroll wheel's surface is surprisingly grippy given it has no texturing whatsoever.


The middle mouse button is pretty good, too; its travel distance is short, and it takes slightly more force to actuate than the main buttons. It uses a standard EVQP0-style square switch.


Side buttons on both sides are alright, though there's room for improvement. The rear buttons are mushier, with some unnecessary pre-travel. The front buttons, on the other hand, are much snappier and tactile, but have more resistance, which I think is intentional as it eliminates accidental clicks. These buttons operate with flat red plunger TTC switches.


Depending on where you depress them, the quick-fire buttons on top are quite mushy. They have a lot of pre-travel, but their overall click feel is not that bad, and they are nicely spammable once you get the hang of it. They use white plunger standard TTC switches.


The CPI button is objectively perfect. The button itself is not in the way of accidental clicks and feels great; it's very tactile and spammable. It uses the same white plunger TTC switch as the front clickers.

I also made a video in order to demonstrate how the buttons sound:

Mouse Feet

There are five mouse skates on the Kova AIMO, all of which have protective film you should remove before use. These feet are pretty good, especially after they break in, which takes a few hours, depending on the roughness of your mouse mat. They offer a smooth and consistent glide with moderately low friction. My only gripe is that there are no replacements included in the box, which is quite the letdown at this price point.

Cable

The cable is my main gripe with this mouse. It's quite stiff and generates a noticeable amount of drag resistance, which limits your movement a bit. I would strongly recommend placing it into a bungee, or if you lack one, affix it to the table with some tape. It's 1.8 meters (5.9 ft) long, which should be enough for most users.

Disassembling

Disassembling the Kova AIMO is the same as with its predecessor, which means you'll need to remove a total of six standard Philips-head screws. Four of these are beneath the mouse feet, and two are under the front of the sticker, next to the cable stress relief. Once these are removed, you can easily separate the two main shells, but be careful as there is internal cabling that connects the PCBs.