Software

The TUF Gaming M5 uses the current all-in-one software of the manufacturer, Armoury II. It features the usual ROG style and color scheme, so expect a lot of red and black with sharp edges. On the left side is a vertical bar where you can switch between active profiles. What I've found interesting is that there are only three of these, and I couldn't create more or delete existing ones at all. There are keybinds for activating each profile, by pressing down on the CPI button and the middle or side buttons simultaneously.

The first section under the Mouse tab is for configuring the buttons. You can remap all buttons to your liking. The Performance tab lets you fiddle around with the sensor settings as well as the button response option (I would strongly suggest using the 4 ms value here). The Lighting tab is for the eye candy, more on that in our Lighting section below. Moving on to the Macro tab, you can create and delete your macros and import and export existing ones. The Sync tab is for Aura Sync lighting, which requires at least two ASUS products with this feature to work. Lastly, the Stats tab lets you record how many times you clicked your main buttons, as well as how much distance the mouse has traveled.

The program consumes around 30 MB of memory while running in the background, and takes up 169 MB of disk space in my configuration. Once you set everything up, you can simply uninstall it if you don't want it installed as the mouse has on-board memory for its three profiles.

Lighting

There is an ASUS TUF logo at the back of the mouse, which lights up according to the set lighting option. There are four different effects available—static, breathing, color cycle, and reactive. These all look solid; the lighting is nice and bright (there are five brightness levels), transitions are smooth, and there is no light bleed on the shell anywhere. You can also set your color of choice using decimal codes (255 x 255 x 255 format).

I also made a video in order to demonstrate these lighting effects: