Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.Learn more.
Turtle Beach Kone II Air Review
With a marginal discount, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air could be a great wireless gaming mouse
In This Article
Verdict
With a marginal discount, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air could be a great wireless gaming mouse for those who value comfort above competitive play. At launch, its 1000Hz sensor means it’s priced far too high to stand out for the right reasons.
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Turtle Beach Kone II Air is a wireless mouse aiming to compete with some all-time greats in the PC gaming space. So what does it do differently?
What’s immediately obvious is its immense size relative to the competition. This mouse is proud to be for medium to large-sized paws and is ready to accept the holy trinity of gaming grips.
While comfort is certainly king here, a gaming mouse needs to be more than just comfortable to earn a place on your desk.
Design
The Turtle Beach Kone II Air harkens back to the past of the Roccat brand, which Turtle Beach picked up in 2019 before merging it into the wider Turtle Beach collection last year.
Available in a sheer white or cool black affair, our white Kone II Air perfectly contrasted the wired counterpart, a black Kone II, we were sent alongside it.
They’re largely the same mouse in terms of shape, fit, and feel: it’s wide, flat, and long. These are mice for the larger hand, or for those medium-sized dukes that want a more relaxed grip.
As someone on the latter side of that scale, I understand the appeal. The low verticle profile and very slight right-side dip is comfortable to rest on over long periods and easy to grip for those more tense skirmishes.
Just as the front and back are largely symmetrical, so too is the outer edge of the top, where two wide RGB strips offer three-stage illumination.
The scroll wheel, which can be unlocked to free-wheel and click left or right, is also illuminated with a soft, diffused look thanks to its rubber grip. The scroll wheel is fairly loud and pronounced with its stage-based clicks, but is quiet and smooth when unlocked.
The unlock button placed behind the wheel means the dedicated DPI Up/Down buttons on the wired Kone II are reduced to a single button that cycles through your presets. It’s less control for more control.
The underside features two wide PTFE feet with a noticeable honeycomb cutdown visible beneath it. Though usually there to reduce the weight of a mouse, the large size, mechanical mechanisms, and battery all contribute to the Kone II Air being anything but lightweight at around 110g.
In the box is the tiny receiver, a grippy adapter, a hyper-flexible 1.8m cable for charging and keeping said adapter on the desk for easy switching in a pinch, and some other little goodies like grip tape and the manual. The box itself is a little more premium than the simple packaging of the Kone II, but only in the way of a foam insert to aid in presentation and preservation.
Performance
To put the Kone II Air to the test, I elected to run a round of Crab Champions. This fast-paced shooter, which is best described as third-person Serious Sam or Killing Floor of the new generation, has you whip your crosshair across dozens of targets for as long as you can keep up. Miss a trick and it’s back to the beginning.
So what better way to test not only the tracking of the Kone II Air’s 26k Owl-Eye sensor, but its TITAN switches, gargantuan grip, and the stability of its 2.4Ghz wireless connection?
To cut through the crust, it was stellar. Good enough for a hardened PC gamer who has never amounted to anything on a pro level, at least. Tracking was smooth as butter on a basic mouse pad. There were no hitches to note either from the sensor nor the wireless connection whether it was pointing directly at the tiny receiver or tucked out of view.
If there’s one thing to note, it’s that the Kone II Air has the same minor tracking jitter as its wired counterpart. This is just barely noticeable choppiness when attempting to move along individual pixels at a very low speed.
It’s not something you’re likely to notice in 99% of use. If you’re a slower shot trying to hone a headshot on a distant target who just refuses to move, however, you might just struggle to hit your mark.
Aside from that slight setback, tracking performance will satisfy the vast majority of gamers. It’s not quite up to par with something from Pixart or the Hero sensor in Logitech’s long-reigning clickers, but it’s far from being unserviceable.
The major concern is its inability to go beyond 1000Hz tracking. It’s not a problem with a 144Hz monitor, but upgrade to something more advanced and the Owl-Eye sensor could hold you back. Other mice in this price range can go all the way up to 8,000Hz–through the battery won’t last nearly as long for it.
But tracking isn’t the whole story. The Kone II Air peddles its TITAN optical switches more than its average sensor. And they’re great. Offering a tactile hairline click while keeping travel distance just high enough to avoid accidental clicks is quite the feat.
The main buttons feel perfect no matter where you pinch down on them. They’re wide enough to reassure you that it’s a mouse for larger hands. The same can be said for the side buttons, too. There’s a low actuation point with enough travel to handle a tight squeeze in those tense moments.
Overall, it’s a strong performance from the Roccat, with no signs of it giving up the ghost after a couple of months of intense use. It’s sturdy and can take a good squeeze without any creaking.
Software and Lighting
The Kone II Air is controlled by the Turtle Beach Swarm II software suite. Click the outline of the product you want to manage through it, and you’ll come to a relatively intuitive tile-like interface. Here, you can change the standard stuff like DPI stages, lift distance, and polling rates if you’re so inclined.
Further down the list, you have access to the Easy-Shift settings, opening up each button to a second command whenever the Easy-Shift button at the base of the thumb rest is held down.
This is only really usable for the buttons on the top of the mouse, but that still majorly expands customisability for productive types, frequent game hoppers or, on its default settings, chronic playlist skippers.
Nestled right at the bottom is a simple solution to power its long, bright RGB strips. Presets offer a handy template for personalisation, and the AIMO setting is there to allow the software to intelligently adjust the lighting to match the action of your active game.
And if you just want to focus on what really matters with a gaming mouse, you can configure multiple ways to keep the battery running just that little bit longer.
Speaking of which, you can expect around 130 hours via 2.4Ghz with the lighting parred down. Various rest modes will help make that a reality, with the flexible cable there to offer snag-free wired use while it charges back up at the end of a long couple of weeks.
On Bluetooth, you won’t need to charge it for a good month at best, but your competitive performance will take a nosedive. It’s more for poking around with casual titles while you’re out and about.
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
You want a large and comfortable mouse without the wires
So long as your hands are big enough to avoid accidentally pressing the side buttons, the Kone II Air is a great piece of kit. But it is expensive.
You want the absolute best sensor for your cash
If you’re not buying it for the comfort alone, you can get a better, more professional-grade clicker at (or below) the price of this.
Final Thoughts
The Kone II Air feels just slightly out of its price range for what it offers. It rejects the status-quo of smaller, lighter, and less interesting looks to instead be bigger, bolder, and more comfortable. And that’s great. But it comes across as a bit of a size tax.
Better wireless mice are available at a vastly reduced price. Just look at theKeychron M6or the newerRazer Basilisk. You do get some nifty customization quirks here, but its larger, heavier stature makes it hard to recommend over competitive-grade wireless clickers that know that taking the opposite design philosophy can make all the difference in-game.
It’s worth considering on sale. But at full price, the Kone II Air isn’t worthy of a spot in our long list of thebest gaming micedespite a valiant attempt. It could be great for those in need of a larger pointer. But for most, comfort ultimately comes at a cost.
How we test
Used over a few weeks in both casual and professional situations.
Tested alongside other mice with similar features.
Compared to mice across various price ranges.
Used over a few weeks in both casual and professional situations.
Tested alongside other mice in and around its price range with varied feature sets.
Connected via Bluetooth, 2.4Ghz, and wired to test performance differences and battery life.
You might like…
FAQs
Yes, there’s a slot on the underside to house the 2.4Ghz USB.
Yes, the 4D mouse wheel can click left and right as well as up, down, and in.
Full specs
Josh studied Computer Programming and Repair during his college years. Now a freelance writer, he covers consumer tech and video games, with a particular expertise in gaming mice.
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
