Wireless mice have been a little hit or miss in the past, either lacking in battery life or features or simply having too much lag to be useful for gaming. Roccat’s latest addresses all of these issues and more.

The Kain 200 Aimo looks unassuming at first, the matt black (or white if you choose that colour option) outer shell looks smooth and sophisticated and there are no over-the-top button placements you find on some gaming mice. , just the two chunky side buttons and a large DPI switch behind the rubberised scroll wheel.

Place your hand on the mouse and you’ll change your mind immediately. The weight of the device is pretty much perfectly balanced, feeling more like a wired mouse and the smooth anti-wear coating feels both grippy and comfortable. Button placement is perfectly aligned with fingers, even though it does lack the multiple programmable buttons of other gaming mice so is less suitable for those who like to fill their button presses with macros to use mice as a shortcut in MMORPGs though, of course, this is still possible in a more limited way.

Plug the dongle in and install Roccat’s Swarm software and the crisp Aimo lighting illuminates the logo and scroll wheel with a range of RGB colours. Swarm has been a fantastic bonus for anyone who collects together all of Roccat’s peripherals, with keyboards, mice and headsets that share the Aimo label all working together to form a unified lighting system that feels far less garish than some other RGB lighting would do and much more organised.

Swarm does have its disadvantages, it’s sometimes fussy about upgrading firmware, requiring you to remove and re-add devices from USB ports to full initialise and new hardware may not be recognised straight away but, saying that, the Kain 200 did install without a hitch and automatically set itself to use the same intelligent lighting pattern as my keyboard. Once keyboard, mouse and headset are aligned it really does make for an impressive sight as the colour fades from one to the other.

Performance-wise, the 16,000 DPI Owl-eye sensor is one of the best on the market and precision is the key here. Anyone using this to game with won’t feel at a disadvantage over a wired mouse and in many cases this beats a lot of the other wired mice on the market for response rate.

Being wireless, battery life is key to success and the Kain 200 does not disappoint here, either. 50 hours without full lighting and 35 hours with illumination enabled should keep anyone going without a need for a recharge for weeks, plus there’s an intelligent cut off for the RGB lighting when the mouse is idle, saving battery life further. When it’s time for a charge, there’s a 1.4m USB braided USB cable included which can also be used with the mouse to turn it into a wired mouse thanks to the cleverly designed channel the cable sits in.

In short, if you’re looking for a new gaming mouse and have thought about going wireless, the Kain 200 Aimo is pretty much the first choice.