Roccat Kone Pure Optical vs Cougar 450M

This mouse is great for every grip style. The right side lets you palm or fingertip grip the mouse regardless of your hand size.

Roccat releases official drivers for Linux for most (if not all) of their products and the Kone Pure Optical is not an exception.

With the Avago ADNS-3090 optical sensor being used there is no angle snapping or pointer prediction to be found.

The buttons are very well-built and feel great when pressed. There is almost no travel to any of them and they are quite light.

The Kone Pure Optical has great build quality. The materials with which this mouse is built feel very nice, there's no squeakyness when pressing the buttons and the cable is pretty good as well.

The cable is braided so it doesn’t bend easily.

The DPI button, which is located on top of the mouse, is actually a profile changing button and can be tied to button configuration or lighting options.

This mouse has some basic sensor-related customization.You can modify the polling rate, DPI amount, lift-off distance and even angle snapping. The angle snapping is an on/off choice instead of a slider. Its UIX companion software has an extensive list of customization options, notably long for a budget mouse. It includes lighting options, button rebinding, macros, DPI changing, multiple profiles and several other smaller features that even other non-budget mice don’t have.

The Cougar 450M uses the Avago 3310 sensor and presents no jitter, acceleration or smoothing. The DPI choices ranges from 50 all the way up to 5000 with increments of 50. For this sensor, every DPI step of 50 should work equally well, so you don’t have to worry about keeping track of native DPI settings.

Being an ambidextrous mouse, it avoids unconventional shapes and stay true to the classic mouse design. To facilitate control and finger grip, it has a slight incline located at the side and its sides are covered in textured plastic.

The mouse has an ambidextrous design, making it a possible choice for left-handed users. It also has extra buttons on both sides, so they can be used on both use cases.

It’s Avago optical sensor is a solid performer recognized many mouse enthusiasts. You can rely on it to track precise movement without worrying about acceleration or jitter.

Despite the low price point, this mouse still maintains a respectable list of features. It has a good shape, reliable sensor and plenty of customization options. It bridges the gap between low cost and high quality while still being well built.