Build Quality

Overall build quality is solid. When shaking the mouse, a rattle comes from the side buttons. When applying lateral pressure, minor creaking but no flexing of the shell can be observed. Activating the side buttons by squeezing the sides is impossible. Lastly, accidental clicks when slamming down the mouse do not occur unless a debounce time on press of 2 ms or less is set.

Buttons

Main buttons on the Alpha are good. Pre-travel is fairly low on both, but post-travel is moderate, and the buttons don't feel entirely stable, shifting laterally under one's fingers during use, though the click feel itself is pleasing. Button stiffness is light. A pair of Omron D2FC-F-K (60 M) (China) switches is used.


Side buttons are very good (forward button) to decent (back button). While pre-travel is fairly low and post-travel minimal on the forward button, the back button has significant pre-travel, resulting in a mushy button response. The pressure point is mostly even across the entirety of these. Button size and placement are good, as actuation is possible rather easily by rolling one's thumb across. A set of Kailh switches (cyan plunger, gray case) is used for these.

At the top of the mouse is a single button for cycling through the set CPI steps, which feels somewhat flimsy. A low-profile switch from Kailh (green plunger) is used for this one.

Scroll Wheel

The scroll wheel is good to very good. Noise levels are mostly under control, and tactility is quite good, with decently separated steps and controlled scrolling. The encoder comes from Kailh (blue) and has a height of 14 mm. The middle (scroll wheel) click requires medium to high force for actuation. A seemingly unbranded tactile switch is used for this one.

Surface

The Alpha has a smooth matte surface on the top and a dotted pattern on the sides. Grip is fine on either, but the pattern does attract grime and dirt quite easily, and cleaning it may be difficult. The top surface is easy to clean, and there are no signs of wear left after doing so. All in all, good materials.

Button Sound Test

Disassembly

Disassembling the Alpha is mostly easy. First, all skates and the screws beneath them need to removed. Second, two clips holding top and bottom shell tightly shut need to be dislodged as well. Wedging a credit card in between typically works best for doing that. When separating top and bottom shell, some caution is advised to avoid ripping any cables.

The internal design is needlessly inefficient. While the PCBs are just moderately thick, all PCBs are very large for no good reason. The top and side buttons sit on their own PCB screwed into the top shell and connected to the main PCB through a ribbon cable. An auxiliary PCB next to the scroll wheel provides wheel illumination and too is connected with a ribbon cable. Four screws in total are used to affix the main PCB to the bottom shell. The MCU is an NXP LPC11U36, whose datasheet can be found here. Production date for the side-button PCB is the 52nd week of 2021.


As for the soldering and general quality of the PCB, I'm unable to find any noteworthy flaws.