Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse Review - Comfortably Huge

TweakTown's Rating: 88%

The Bottom Line

Big, beautiful, and comfortable to use for hours. The new Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse delivers ergonomics and performance with intuitive and in-depth customization via the SWARM II app. However, the size and weight might be too much for some.

Pros

• Large but comfortable
• Easy Shift functions and smooth scroll wheel function
• Customization aplenty
• Excellent and intuitive SWARM II software
• Long-lasting battery

Cons

• It might be too wide for a lot of people
• A tad on the heavy side

Should you buy it?

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Introduction & Specification Details and Close-up

In 2024, the wide and bulky gaming mouse with a base big enough room to include a thumb rest for additional comfort is becoming rare. The trend in the past few years has been fairly obvious: lighter and featherweight mice with symmetrical, no-frills, compact shapes ideal for competitive gaming or esports. If the pros use it, it has to be good... right? Well, not necessarily, as comfort for many trumps all.

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The ergonomic and large shape of the new Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse might feel like a gaming peripheral from yesteryear, but the chunky build is excellent for those with larger hands who love a good palm grip. As the name suggests, this is the wireless version of the Turtle Beach Kone II Gaming Mouse, which we've also reviewed, and it's slightly taller and heavier than its wired counterpart. It's also a little more premium, with a few more features to help justify the price jump.

How heavy is it? Well, weighing in at 110 grams, it sits on the heavy side of modern gaming mice - but it's not unbearable. The additional weight doesn't impact the overall comfort and 'flow' at all, as the glide here is smooth and responsive thanks to the ample PTFE feet, low center of gravity, and even weight distribution.

For a big mouse, you're looking at supreme comfort. Of course, there's a lot more to the Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse than its shape and weight; it has an impressive sensor, and its customization and versatility are backed up by great software. Let's dig in.

Specifications & Close Up

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• Product Type: Wireless Gaming Mouse
• Product Name: Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse
• Interface: 2.4GHz wireless via USB-A Adapter, Bluetooth, USB-A
• Compatibility: PC (Windows 10 or later)
• Sensor: Owl-Eye 26K optical sensor
• Switches: TITAN Optical Switch
• DPI/CPI: 26000
• Polling Rate: Up to 1,000 Hz
• Tracking/Acceleration: 650 IPS/50G
• Buttons: 10 (9 programmable)
• Lighting: RGB (two zones and scroll wheel)
• Weight: 110 grams
• Battery Life: 130 hours (Wireless), 350 (Bluetooth)
• Dimensions: Height: 44.1mm, Width: 82.6mm, Length: 130.2mm
• In the Box: Turtle Beach Kone II Air, Wireless USB-A Transmitter, PhantomFlex USB-C to USB-A Charging Cable, USB-A to USB-C Transmitter Adapter, Grip Tape, Quick-Start Guide

Kosta's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER Founders Edition
• Cooler: ASUS ROG RYUO III 360 ARGB
• RAM: 64GB (4x16GB) Corsair DOMINATOR TITANIUM RGB DDR5 DRAM 6000MT/s
• SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD 4TB, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Plus M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD 8TB
• Power Supply: ASUS TUF Gaming 1000W Gold
• Case: Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW Tempered Glass Mid-Tower ATX PC Case
• Display: MSI MAG 321UPX QD-OLED 4K 240 Hz
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit

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Design, Sensor, & Software

Design

For PC gamers with medium to large hands, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse can be a dream come true. Its ergonomic shape is effortlessly comfortable, and there is a definite benefit or feeling of precision when you have an excellent grip and smooth movement. Now, if it weighed in at around or just under 100 grams, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air would probably feel a little bit better to move - but 110 grams is fine for a peripheral of this size.

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Available in Black or White, the Kone II Air features a classic design with large RGB light strips on the left and right sides of the top shell. The '4D scroll wheel' is also illuminated with one of the most significant changes Air brings over the standard wired option: the protruding button lets you switch between a smooth and a step scroll. Smooth scrolling is brilliant for productivity and browsing, and it always feels like an excellent addition to a mouse.

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With low-latency 2.4 GHz wireless delivered over USB, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air also supports Bluetooth, so there's a lot of versatility here. The USB dongle can safely be tucked in on the mouse's underside, making it an excellent option for travel and laptop users who work or play in different environments. Battery life is also impressive, with up to 130 hours of wireless use via the low-latency dongle and up to 350 hours using Bluetooth. Using a wireless mouse for a week, with heavy day-to-day use, is excellent.

Button-wise, in addition to the scroll wheel switch, there's a dedicated DPI switch on the top. The scroll wheel also includes three buttons: the main button press, left tilt, and right tilt press. The two side buttons are also nicely placed and easy to reach, and the thumb rest includes the Easy Shift button, which opens the door to a whole range of customization.

Sensor

The Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse features the latest iteration of the company's Owl-Eye optical sensor, which has been upgraded to a new maximum DPI and sensitivity setting of 26,000. With adjustments in increments of 50, finding the exact setting to suit your preferences is easy. Turtle Beach includes a little test in its SWARM II software that gives a result to help you find the right setting, which is a fun addition.

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The Owl-Eye 26K optical sensor is also impressively accurate, with a 650 IPS tracking speed and 50f acceleration rating. The sensor is also precise enough to allow for an adjustable lift-off distance. However, due to the size of the mouse and wide base, it's not the sort of peripheral you're likely to pick up and move while gaming. In addition to the optical sensor, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air's left and right click feature TITAN Optical Switches rated at 100 million clicks.

Software

As someone familiar with the original Kone gaming mouse when it was released under the Roccat banner (Turtle Beach acquired Roccat), I was familiar with the company's original SWARM app. However, I don't remember anything special about it. What a difference a few years make, as Turtle Beach's modular SWARM II software is excellent when paired with the Kone II Air. The redesigned interface is clean, easy to follow, and powerful.

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This can be seen in the tool to remap buttons or adjust the Easy Shift settings to create secondary functions for apps and games. With a visual representation of the mouse, you select the button you want to change, and it brings up the current Primary and Easy Shift functions. Then, choose from a detailed and categorized menu on the right to make the change. With the default out-of-the-box profile, no button has a secondary function set, so making the most of the Kone II Air is a manual process. This isn't as bad, but you'd think there would have been some built-in secondary functions that could apply to several games.

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SWARM II's interface for creating Macros is similarly intuitive. You can set the Easy Shift functions to a range of buttons to fire off Macros. Outside of this, SWARM II includes several helpful hints and explanations for changing DPI settings, Polling Rates, etc. Providing definitions and explanations for things like debounce times, angle snapping or smoothing, and motion syncing is excellent because it gives those who might not be familiar with those settings enough context to experiment and try things out.

Gaming Performance and Productivity

Gaming Performance

Although playing shooters like Apex Legends, DOOM Eternal, Overwatch, and Valve's Deadlock with the Turtle Beach Kone II Air is perfectly fine, comfortable, and issue-free - I enjoyed my time most when playing more quickly and strategically. Strategy games like Age of Mythology: Retold, Frostpunk 2, and action RPGs like Diablo 4 feel great with the Turtle Beach Kone II Air for reasons that probably have to do with the fact that these are the sorts of games are all about measured and thought-out movement as opposed to reflexes and reaction times.

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Why? That probably comes down to comfort and realizing that I have been missing having a thumb rest and wide base after several months or a year or two of using ultralight compact mice. The Kone II Air is great for gaming and covers pretty much everything regarding comfort, customization, and features. If you're not a fan of the soft matte finish, Turtle Beach includes grip tape in the box for that rubbery feel.

Productivity

Being wireless, with Bluetooth and the ability to store the dongle on the mouse's underside, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air is versatile and a mouse you can easily take on the go. Access to the excellent software and the full customization suite is limited to Windows devices, so that is one limitation. Ultimately, the large size and comfortable ergonomic shape are excellent for users with larger hands - and the extra buttons and Easy Shift functionality are perfect for those who use productivity or creative apps and want easily accessible shortcuts.

Final Thoughts

Although large and heavy, the Turtle Beach Kone II Air Wireless Gaming Mouse is a pleasant surprise - a wireless gaming mouse that blends ergonomics with great hardware and software. This is the sort of shape you either love or don't prefer, but if you fit into the former camp, then the Kone II Air is worth checking out. It's priced reasonably, too, with the $119.99 USD MSRP coming in cheaper than similar mice from Logitech and Razer.

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It looks great in white (the version we reviewed), with bright and ample RGB lighting that is often overlooked when it comes to competitive mice. If the Turtle Beach Kone II Air were a little lighter, it would have earned an even higher score. This is a great gaming mouse from Turtle Beach - one for those with large hands who want a full grip while pointing and clicking.