The Logitech G502 and Razer Basilisk (V2/V3) and their variants continue to be among the most popular mice around, which is why it is no surprise that competitors still throw their hat in the ring. In the case of DAREU, the contender is called A980 Pro Max, and clearly emulates the shape of the aforementioned mice. Compared to the Basilisk V3, the A980 Pro Max is a bit shorter and not as tall, but by and large, the shape is virtually the same. Differences are found elsewhere. Most notably, the A980 Pro Max has a TFT display on the side, allowing one to display and conveniently adjust parameters such as CPI, polling rate, or battery charge level, and even simple pictures may be shown. Furthermore, the A980 Pro Max is much lighter: at 76 g, it almost matches the Glorious Model I 2 Wireless at 74 g, though that one has holes but also RGB lighting. Still, the A980 Pro Max successfully checks the box of "lighter Basilisk V3 without holes," and build quality is in a great spot, too. On my sample, there is no rattle when shaking, no creaking or flexing of the shell, and actuating the side buttons by pressing below them is impossible.

In terms of buttons, the A980 Pro Max also does things a bit differently. First, while the rest of the shell is made of regular ABS plastic, the main button pieces are made of a magnesium alloy, lending the buttons a sturdiness otherwise only achieved by utilizing thicker or different plastic such as PBT. The switches themselves are Kailh GM 8.0, which provide snappy and firm actuation. That said, pre-travel borders on high, which is why the buttons don't feel quite as tactile as they could, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing. More irritating is the significant degree of lateral button movement, though this only becomes apparent when forcing it, and isn't really noticeable during regular use. Since the TFT display occupies plenty of space on the left side, the side buttons had to be arranged differently compared to the G502 or Basilisk. Instead of being wider than tall, the forward and back buttons therefore are taller than wide, and the sniper button sits right below the forward button and slightly towards the front. As a result, one's thumb essentially will sit right on top of it when palm-gripping, which is not an issue when claw-gripping. Still, compared to the Basilisk V3, where the sniper button is always out of the way, its placement on the A980 Pro Max certainly isn't ideal. Much like the Glorious Model I 2 Wireless, the A980 Pro Max is a bit light on buttons in general. Aside from the sniper button, there aren't any additional buttons, and even a top button is nowhere to be found. Thankfully, there at least is the ability to bind a shift key, giving one access to a secondary set of button mappings, but in terms of physical buttons, the A980 Pro Max cannot compete with either the G502 or Basilisk V3. This includes the scroll wheel, which is restricted to regular two-direction scrolling, and comes with an encoder from F-Switch (brown, green core). Noise levels are somewhat elevated on this one, but the individual steps are rather nicely separated from each other, affording good tactility. The feet are made of gray-dyed PTFE and glide reasonably well, and a replacement set being included in the box along with a set of grip tape is certainly welcome.

Similarly to the ThundeRobot ML903, the A980 Pro Max utilizes an MCU from HiSilicon, which offers both USB full-speed and high-speed, therefore allowing polling rates above 1000 Hz in wired operation as well, and additionally supports both 2.4 GHz via Huawei's NearLink and Bluetooth. Whereas performance on the ML903 was disastrous, the A980 Pro Max fares quite a bit better. CPI deviation sits at 2.5%, which is low and easily corrected. General tracking is without issues, regardless of MotionSync being enabled or not. As far as polling stability goes, the A980 Pro Max does well for the most part, as even though there are periodic off-period polls, they happen infrequently enough that they well may be ignored. More significant are the larger off-period polls occurring at higher polling rates, including at 8000 Hz in wired and 4000 Hz in wireless operation. In those cases, polls are missed by several intervals. A recurring issue from the ML903 is the HID descriptor being limited to 12-bit in wireless operation. That is, any report containing more than 2047 counts (+/-) will result in a malfunction. Since that is typically the case when using higher CPI steps such as 15,000 CPI at a polling rate such as 1000 Hz, these higher steps effectively become unusable on the A980 Pro Max, so the 30,000 CPI count of the PAW3950 sensor is only valid on paper. Since the A980 Pro Max introduces significant smoothing at and above 10,000 CPI, increasing motion delay in the process, avoiding higher CPI steps is recommended in general. Another oddity is that MotionSync cannot be enabled at 8000 Hz, which is odd in that the 3950 has no problem maintaining 0.125 ms intervals with MotionSync enabled, so this restriction appears to be a leftover from the PAW3395. As far as numbers go, the A980 Pro Max is not too impressive. Wired motion delay is excellent, as the A980 Pro Max secures a lead of 1.2 ms over the Logitech G403 (control subject), on par with wired-only mice such as the Endgame Gear OP1/XM2 8K. As always, this leads gets smaller once MotionSync is enabled. In wireless operation, the A980 Pro Max merely achieves parity with the G403 at 4000 Hz, and quickly falls behind at lower polling rates such as 2000 or 1000 Hz, effectively performing no different from regular 1000 Hz mice. The same can be observed for click latency: at 4000 Hz in wireless operation, 4.6 ms are averaged, but this increases to 5.7 and 6.4 ms at 2000 and 1000 Hz, respectively, which is a rather poor showing. Wired click latency is around the 4 ms mark, which likewise isn't anything to write home about.

DAREU cites up to 130 hours of battery life, though no mention of polling rate or connectivity (NearLink/Bluetooth) is made. The battery charge indicator in the software isn't granular or reliable enough to allow any projections, but given the battery capacity of a whopping 930 mAh, I'd be very surprised if the A980 Pro Max doesn't clear the 100 hours mark at 1000 Hz at the very least. At a little under 0.5 A, charging is as speedy as it should be given the capacity, and the charging cable is rather flexible, so playing while charging is an option at least. The A980 Pro Max is compatible with DAREU's all-in-one software, which has all the relevant options and is pleasantly bug-free, including the firmware deployment tool, and it even offers some neat extra features, such as the ability to configure lift-off distance separately for lifting and landing, similarly to Razer's Asymmetric Cut-Off. Resource usage is also under control, and all processes are terminated upon exiting the software, which is how it should be. In short, I have no complaints in this regard.

At $89.99, the A980 Pro Max is priced much lower than its direct competitors from Logitech and Razer, and also lands below the Glorious Model I 2 Wireless at $99.99. While the latter gets beaten, it is clear that the Basilisk V3 Pro and Basilisk V3 X Hyperspeed operate at a higher level, and the latter one goes for only $69.99, providing better performance and value. Still, the A980 Pro Max has its merits, and if one can deal with its shortcomings, it is at least worthy of consideration over its competitors.