Buttons, Scroll Wheel

Both main buttons are rather light, easily spammable, and quite tactile. The right click feels a bit mushier and is a lot quieter. I don't know what causes this as I could see no irregularities while taking the mouse apart—it might be my mouse only. All in all, I very much liked the main buttons on this particular mouse, and I wish more companies would separate them from the other parts of the top shell—it makes for a generally better click-feel.


The scroll wheel has a grippy, nicely rubberized surface, which makes scrolling easier. The steps aren't that well defined, though; the encoder, which is a brown core Kailh, by the way, isn't very tactile. It's ideal for browsing and bunny hopping, that's for sure.


The middle mouse button feels nice and tactile, and clicking it isn't too hard either as it only requires slightly more force to actuate than the main buttons. The switch used here looks quite funky, and I have never seen anything like it before. It's a square switch with a long purple plunger. It does the job very well!


Moving on to the side buttons, their clicks are great; there isn't much unnecessary travel and they feel nice and crisp. The buttons themselves can emit a strange springy sound if you slick your thumb down to them, but this was rarely the case, and I did not find it bothersome. This can be heard in the button sound test video below as well. As for their switches, they are standard white plunger ones manufactured by Huano.


Lastly, the CPI-changer, which is behind the scroll wheel, is good for changing the CPI, but it can be remapped to pretty much any function. The click feels nice and tactile and requires about as much force to actuate as the main buttons. The clicking mechanism used here is a small square tactile switch with no branding on it.

I also made a video in order to demonstrate how the buttons sound:

Mouse Feet

The stock skates of the M5 are actually decent; they are smooth and consistent, and their friction isn't very high either. I like them, but I prefer a faster glide, so I replaced them with some aftermarket IO1.1 feet after reassembly.

Cable

I cannot decide if I like this cable or not. It's very similar to the Logitech G102/G203 cable, so it's pretty good, but I have seen rubber cables that are way more flexible than this. If you hold it in place with a bungee, or even some electrical tape, you won't have any issues with it. It's 1.8 m long, which should be enough for just about anyone.

Disassembling

Disassembling the TUF Gaming M5 isn't the easiest procedure if you don't know where the screws are, but after finding them, it's really easy to take the mouse apart. There are two screws beneath the bottom mouse feet that let you remove the back panel. With it removed, you can separate the main buttons from the shell, and underneath those are two more of the same Philips-head screws. You can take off the whole top shell after removing these. The rest is absolutely self-explanatory.