Turtle Beach Kone II Air review

If you're looking for a review on the Roccat Kone 2 Air, you should know that the Roccat brand has been assimilated under the Turtle Beach brand name. So I'm actually looking at the next iteration of the Kone Air, here, minus the associated Roccat branding. Got it? Cool.

The Turtle Beach Kone 2 Air is a wireless gaming mouse marketed as an ergonomic wonder with up to 350 hours of battery life. Everything on the box makes me very excited, because it looks like Turtle Beach has finally rounded out the Kone lineup with a chonky beast of a gaming mouse. But does it live up to the hype in actual, everyday testing?

Previously, I spent some time with another wireless sister of the Kone 2 Air—the Kone Pro Air. Just getting the Kone 2 Air out of the box I was already amazed at the vast comparative quality, against both the Pro and what I've seen of its predecessor.

The clearest difference between the Kone 2 Air and its Pro counterpart is the weight. The Pro is more suited to FPS games, weighing in at just 2.6oz / 75g, while the Kone Air has always been the chunkier option for players who don't fling their mouse around willy-nilly. With two AA batteries under the hood, the old Kone Air was around 140g… not an issue in and of itself; people like chunky mice, myself included. It's the weight imbalance that users found problematic.

Thankfully, the Kone 2 Air has done away with AA battery power. It's much more balanced, and you don't need to keep spare batteries to hand. You can just plug in the lovely, light braided USB Type-C cable Turtle Beach has included and click away, unhindered.

Where the build quality is concerned, the Kone 2 Air feels good and sturdy in hand. The ergonomics are lush, with a thumb rest and a button on it that isn't as easy to accidentally click as it looks. There's also something about the thumb grove I really like as a claw grip mouse user. It makes it easy to keep hold of even without slapping the included silicone grips on the sides.

Every click of the Kone 2 Air's seven, well placed buttons feels purposeful. There's a satisfying, light press that doesn't sound hollow like a lot of lighter gaming mice do.

The design has also moved away from those awful metal scroll wheels Kone used to rep, replacing it here with a soft silicone one that lights up with RGB at the edges. Not only does it have the fancy, programmable tilt click function, it also unlocks and goes into freespin mode. If you're thinking infinite scroll is a pointless novelty, I can vouch that it's one of the single best features I've found in a gaming mouse. I've been using the same function on the Logitech G502 and G502 X daily for years and it never stops being useful.

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In testing, the Kone 2 Air's Owl-Eye 26K Optical Sensor is relatively accurate, with a nice smooth curve and minimal outliers on MouseTester's xCount vs. Time chart. But while 1000 Hz polling looks great on paper, there are quite a few inconsistencies when it comes to the update rate. It's not enough to notice in general use, but there's around 8ms latency and quite a lot of wavering when shifting the Kone 2 Air around quickly.

One thing to note is that the Swarm 2 Software has come far. It's got a lovely clean look, and it importantly lets you create your own macros for using those seven buttons.

Taking more cues from the Logitech G502 and crew, the Kone 2 Air also includes an Easy Shift function, so you can switch some of the buttons up on the fly, and quickly back again. There's space for five on-board profiles, too, making it a godsend if you play away and switch between games/playstyles a lot. The fact you can get a good few days of battery life out of it over wireless connection (a week or more in Bluetooth mode) makes the portable aspect all the more enticing.

Honestly, I'm struggling to find something bad to say about the Kone 2 Air. Sure it's not the cheapest wireless gaming mouse out there, nor is it the lightest, or the mouse with the most buttons. But having rectified the issues with previous models the Kone 2 Air is perfectly placed in that sweet spot for weighty, ergonomic mice, and one that's worth your consideration even with that $120/£120 price tag.