Mountain Makalu Max review: Modular madness

Mountain’s Makalu Max gaming mouse has one crucial edge over other competitors, and that is that it’s got heaps of modular functionality. But, after weeks of testing, is it actually worth your hard-earned cash?

Mountain is a relatively young peripheral brand with hopes to take on titans like Logitech and Razer. With an impressive keyboard offering, and previous success in the gaming mouse space, its newest product, the Makalu Max, hopes to boost customization while retaining those all-important gaming features.

Featuring customizable side plates a-la the Razer Naga V2 Pro, the Makalu Max hopes to take it one step further with interchangeable weight, where you can adjust the balance of your mouse with symmetrical, or asymmetrical weighting rings.

Boasting a wireless 2.4Ghz sensor in addition to heaps of customization, on paper, the mouse tries to offer lots of customization. The reality of this, however, ends up making it feel like a customizable mouse made for no one at all.

Key specs

• Weight: 110g (customizable)
• Connectivity: USB-C, 2.4Ghz
• Grip type: Claw, Palm, (right-handed)
• Buttons: 8 (Kailh GM 8.0)
• Sensor: Pixart Wireless 3370
• Maximum DPI: 19000
• Polling rate: 1000Hz
• Battery life:
• Features: PTFE skates, Base Camp software, adjustable weights, customizable side panels
• Price: $89.99

Design

The Mountain Makalu Max’s unboxing experience is studiously well-thought-out. It highlights all of the customizable elements and showcases a statement from the company about its product mission. So, it’s disappointing to see that seemingly less thought has gone into who this mouse is actually for.

Sporting a weight of 110g, this is one of the heavier mice that we have tested at Dexerto, and you can choose to increase this weight, should you feel like you need an extra edge. This is a feature found on older gaming mice, usually, as modern trends have shifted toward lighter mice for gaming, like the excellent Endgame Gear XM2we.

The overall shape of the mouse reminds us of the Logitech G502X, or the Razer Basilisk, but compromised in almost every single way. The two side buttons feel like they do not have even actuation, and an additional “sniper” button just feels too shallow to press when compared to its competitors.

The main two buttons feel light and responsive, with a nice and satisfying scroll wheel, which lacks any special features that you might find in modern competitors, like a free-spinning mode or adjustable clutch. Meanwhile, two additional buttons lie on top, adorned with a ring of battery-sucking RGB.

Customization options

One trick that the Makalu Max does have up its sleeve is the ability to switch up the shape of each side. A right-hand panel offers support for your ring and pinky fingers, which is nice in productivity scenarios but feels too bulbous for high-octane gaming. Meanwhile, the left-hand side panel offers a small wing to support your thumb with a light rubberization. Adding both at once turns the Makalu Max into a hulking behemoth of a mouse, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

While customization is incredibly welcome, it does feel like Mountain does not know what kind of gamer they are targeting this mouse toward. With so many specialized mice out there, the G502 or Basilisk shape is oft-seen as a jack-of-all-trades. But, despite the Makalu Max’s enhanced customization offering, it doesn’t reach anywhere near the level of quality that you would come to expect from either of those mice.

The same goes for what Mountain calls a “gravity control system”: Essentially different weights for your mouse that allow you to shift the center of gravity, and somehow make the mouse even heavier than before. While some might still love the precision that a weighted mouse offers, the industry has long since moved passed this trend, and it’s commonly agreed that a lighter mouse is more optimal for gaming performance, which we’ll talk more about slightly later on.

One saving grace of the Makalu Max is its fantastic software.

Software

Mountain’s Base Camp software is incredibly good, allowing us to shift around almost everything that could be controlled via software, including adding macros to certain buttons for productivity tasks, and changing up RGB colors. It’s refreshingly bloat-free, unlike many of its competitors, and works without a hitch. There’s very little to bemoan about it, and all of the functions work almost instantaneously, with a slick UI and UX to match, too.

Gaming performance

The Mountain Makalu Max, in all of its forms, is a gaming mouse founded on compromise. While main pointer buttons and sensors are definitely up to the task of competitive gaming, we found ourselves missing our tried and true XM2we while playing titles like Fortnite, while we struggled to actuate the adjustable button on the front due to its shallowness. This is a distinct weakness when compared to the stellar Basilisk V3 Pro, which offers all-around better performance in game while also weighing almost the exact same figure.

Weight is not the be-all and end-all, and you can get good performance out of the mouse, but I don’t think the adjustable weight of the mouse contributed to better performance in any meaningful way.

Where the mouse does come into its own is in more casual experiences like Diablo 4, where the number of buttons comes into play, and you can bind your most-used skills to them. Adding the customizable plates made for a very comfortable experience. But, it’s far from having the utility of an MMO mouse, which is what we initially used for the game, and are likely to go back to.

One of the better uses of this mouse is actually in productivity, rather than gaming. So, it left our heads scratching somewhat when looking at the positioning of the mouse overall. This would be fantastic for those sitting at a PC all day, working. It works well in games, but there are other, superior options out there.

Should you buy it?

The Mountain Makalu Max is eclipsed by its competitors in almost every single way, while the experience of using it is comfortable for long periods, almost everything it does is done better in the G502X or the Deathadder V3 Pro. Additionally, its customizable side panels came into very little use while gaming and served to make the mouse more comfortable for productivity usage.

The Verdict: 3/5

There are just better mice out there, and while it’s admirable that Mountain has tried something different, the company needs to go back to the drawing board for its next entrants into one of the most fiercely contested peripheral battlegrounds in the industry.