ISSUE 380|COMPUTER SHOPPER|OCTOBER 2019 75
MICE
ŠHENTHERE’SŚERŴlittle price difference
between the TUF Gaming M5 and its Asus
cousin, the ROG Gladius, it begs the question
of how distinct these two mice actually are.
As it happens, they’re very different
indeed, and not always in ways that favour
the slightly more expensive TUF model.
Whereas the ROG Gladius is asturdy mouse
that’s big enough to use with any kind of grip,
the TUF Gaming M5 takes amore compact
approach, at the cost of making itself feel a
bit airy,with claw-style and fingertip grips
clearly favoured over palm grips.
More positively,this is an ambidextrous
mouse,giving another option to often-
underserved southpaws; the Asus ROG
Gladius’s curves are designed forright-
handed users only.It’s not completely
symmetrical, as the two side buttons are
positioned to be used by aright thumb,
but the overall shape is simple and hand-
agnostic. If you are left-handed, you might
just need to get used to operating these
buttons with asideways ring finger push.
GO FORASPIN
There are some other small touches that
help the TUF Gaming M5 avoid feeling
like athrowawaytravel mouse.Onboth
the leftand right sides, there are visually
interesting pattern grips, and the notched
scroll wheel design makes it easy to find
and flick. It has asimilar bump-bump-bump
sensation to the ROG Gladius, making
scrolling feel decisive and helping to
prevent accidental overshooting.
There’s also alarge dpi switching button,
the unusual arrowhead shape of which
ensures that it’s quickly findable by touch,
even if you’re not yet familiar with the feel
of the mouse in general. Once again, this
toggles between two sensitivity settings –
400dpi by default and 1,600dpi –and, despite
this not being part of the ROG line-up,you
can use the ROG Armoury software to set
precise dpi levels to anywhere between 100dpi
and all the wayupto6,200dpi.
The latter is 200dpi lower than the ROG
Gladius’s ceiling, but it’s still rather too
oversensitive forour tastes. We’d only be
compelled to whack it up much higher than
1,600dpi if we were using aparticularly vast
monitor; on smaller and medium-sized
screens, including high-resolution ones, the
default settings are enough to show the
optical sensor doing afine job.
ASUS TUF
GamingM5
★★★★★
£32•From http://www.scan.co.uk
VERDICT
Withitspartytricksprovingunconvincing,
theTUFGamingM5isleftintheshadowof
bettermice
Even with all
this, however,
spending time with the
TUF Gaming M5 causes
some problems to bubble
up.The first and most
serious is the shape.It’s
clearly not made forthose with
large hands, or even those with
smaller hands that prefertorest the full
length of their palm and first two fingers on
top–which by itself isn’t necessarily aflaw,as
all mice don’t need to accommodateall grip
styles. The real issue is how it’s been sculpted
at the sides: the topofthe mouse is wider
than the bottom and the sides are only very
slightly concave,sothere’s essentially
nowhere to let your thumb and fingers hang.Compare and contrast to the Cooler Master
MM830, and its big, comfortable thumb rest.
The textured grips should help with this,
but they’re only made of plastic, not rubber
like on the ROG Gladius, so there’s not
actually that much grip at all, especially if
your hands get sweaty.HARDLYHARDY
On that note, Asus has treated the TUF
Gaming M5’s shell with acoating that makes
it more resistant to perspiration and abrasion.
While this makes it seem more scratch-
resistant than the ROG Gladius –keeping in
mind afairer test would be to compare with
an untreated mouse after amatter of ayears,
not days –this is the only notable wayin
which the TUF mouse is, in fact, ‘tough’. It’s
unnervingly light, and alot of parts outside
the main shell are made of cheap-feeling
plastic. The thumb buttons, in particular,have
anasty,insubstantial flimsiness to them.
The main source of the TUF Gaming M5’s
premium credentials isn’t its durability,it’s the
less practically useful RGB lighting. This is, to
its credit, well supported: the TUF logo can be
lit up in one of 16.7 million colours or set tocycle through ahandful of them, depending
on what you choose in the Armoury software.
It also uses Asus Aura Sync to match the
lighting of any other compatible hardware in
your system, be it amotherboard, graphics
card or purpose-made addressable LED strips.Still, it’s hard to get excited about an RGB
logo when its positioning means it’s going to
be obscured by your hand most of the time.
Armoury is much better used forconfiguring
dpi settings, button bindings and macros;
again, the TUF Gaming M5 deserves credit
here,even if this is an entirely shared feature
with the ROG Gladius. Changing dpi, polling
rate(up to 1,00MHz) and button response is
just as quick and easy as it is with the other
Asus mouse,soyou can get the TUF Gaming
M5 performing exactly how you like it.SMALLER CONCERNS
This high-quality software goes along way
towards making up forthe design missteps,
but ultimately there are fewreasons to buy
the TUF Gaming M5 when the ROG Gladius
exists. Its only unshared qualities are its
ambidextrousness and its RGB lighting; you
get the same configuration flexibility with the
ROG Gladius, which also happens to be more
comfortable,more customisable and acouple
of pounds cheaper.The Gladius also adds a
carry case and apair of detachable cables; all
that comes in the TUF Gaming M5’s box is the
mouse and the manual.This is an ambidextrous mouse,giving another option tooften-underserved southpaws