Thus far, mice with shells made of magnesium alloy were mostly restricted to the $150 price bracket, with releases such as the Finalmouse Starlight, Razer Viper Mini SE, or Pwnage StormBreaker. The MCHOSE AX5 Pro Max is among the more affordable options, though in this case, the purpose of using a magnesium shell over common ABS plastic doesn't lie so much in weight saving, but rather the rigidity afforded by it. At 55 g, the AX5 Pro Max is lightweight for sure, but realizing this weight with a plastic top shell would've been just as possible, albeit without matching how utterly solid the top shell of the AX5 Pro Max feels. On my copy, there is positively zero creaking or flexing of the shell, and actuating the side buttons by pressing below them is plain impossible. The only flaw I could find is a minor rattle when shaking, but other than that, the AX5 Pro Max feels remarkably solid. Aesthetically, the AX5 Pro Max is comparable to the Viper Mini SE, in that the sides are solid, whereas the back and bottom part of the main buttons have triangular-shaped holes of varying sizes. Of course, dust and dirt possibly getting inside the mouse is a concern with this design, though thankfully, opening the AX5 Pro Max for cleaning is rather easy, as the screws are hidden under the detachable rear skate, so the only real obstacle is finding a suitable screwdriver.

The Pro Max is the most premium variant of the AX5 series, which is mostly reflected in its battery size and switch choice. According to MCHOSE, the 500 mAh battery is supposed to last 100 hours when using 2.4 GHz wireless, presumably at 1000 Hz, or 130 hours when using Bluetooth. Due to the battery indicator found in the software only having approximate segments, I'm unable to confirm or deny this figure, though I'd expect it to be closer to 80 and 100 hours, respectively. Charging is reasonably speedy on the AX5 Pro Max in any case. However, since the charging cable also doubles as a regular cable for use at a maximum polling rate of 8000 Hz, stronger shielding to ensure signal integrity at 8000 Hz had to be employed, reducing flexibility in the process. Though the cable isn't terribly stiff, it definitely can be felt both during charging or regular use of the AX5 Pro Max as a wired mouse.

For the main buttons, optical switches from TTC see use, which have previously been used on releases from ROCCAT, Corsair, or recently NZXT and Fantech, and whose reputation isn't the best. More specifically, I've found these to often be inconsistent, having dull and muted actuation, be faulty, or all of those things combined. The AX5 Pro Max presents a welcome surprise in this regard: on my sample at least, actuation is snappy and firm, as well as consistent between the left and right buttons, and only the moderate amount of pre-travel could be noted as a negative. Likewise, lateral button movement is minimal, even when trying to provoke it. Of course, there is always the possibility of getting a dud, but based on my sample, I have nothing to complain about here. For the side buttons, surface-mounted switches from TTC are used, which impress with their notably low degree of pre and post-travel, though actuation itself isn't quite as pleasing, albeit still more than acceptable. The scroll wheel encoder too comes from TTC, and while tactility is quite good, the high level of noise when scrolling up is less than ideal. The feet are made of regular black-dyed PTFE, and even though their glide is decent, they still fall short of the standard of most other releases these days, such as those from LAMZU or Razer.

Using the latest firmware, performance on the AX5 Pro Max is surprisingly excellent. CPI deviation is minimal, general tracking without issues, and due to the lack of smoothing, any CPI step can be used without a motion delay penalty. Polling stability isn't perfect, as bouts of elevated noise are found across all polling rates and in both wired and wireless (2.4 GHz) operation, but tracking is unaffected by these, which is why I'm inclined to consider them more of an academic flaw. In terms of motion delay, there is a sharp contrast between polling rates of 1000 Hz and under and 2000 Hz and above. In the former case, the AX5 Pro Max achieves parity with the Logitech G403 (control subject) in both wired and wireless (2.4 GHz) mode as long as MotionSync is disabled, whereas in the latter case, the AX5 Pro Max comes out ahead of the G403 by 1.1 ms (wired) to 0.9 ms (wireless), again with MotionSync disabled. Enabling MotionSync will increase motion delay by varying degrees, depending on the set polling rate, with the impact becoming smaller the higher polling rate is. For the record, MotionSync cannot be actually enabled at 8000 Hz, and in wired mode, the AX5 Pro Max fails to meet the target interval of 0.125 ms, instead only averaging 0.155 ms. Click latency is even more straightforward: in both wired and wireless operation, and regardless of polling rate, 0.5 ms are averaged, provided debounce time is set to 0 ms. Since the optical switches used on the AX5 Pro Max do not bounce, debouncing isn't really required, and a slam-click filter is present to prevent so-called slam-clicking, which describes inadvertent button actuation upon resetting the mouse. Hence, there is no real reason not to run the lowest debounce time of 0 ms, and enjoy click latency that is on par with the likes of Razer, Finalmouse, or recently LAMZU.

The software for the AX5 Pro Max isn't particularly sightly, and the spelling errors may not inspire confidence, but I've found it to be mostly bug-free and, more importantly, functional, with all the important settings being present. Of particular note is the fact that it does not require installation, and even when running, only 2 MB of RAM is consumed, which is about as lightweight as it gets.

All in all, I'm positively surprised by the AX5 Pro Max. Not only the feature set, but more so its execution manages to impress, and at $99.99 on Mechkeys.com, it is priced much lower than comparable alternatives from Glorious (Model O 2 Pro 4K/8KHz Edition) or Pulsar (X2A/X2h eS). As such, the AX5 Pro Max gets our Recommended award.