So I picked up an M5 driver on Ebay. Had a tournament yesterday and took it out of the box and straight to the course.
I hit a few balls on the range to try and dial in the settings. I got the 12* head and glad I did. I first tried it in the 1.5* open position with the weights neutral but that makes it 10.5* loft and I couldn't get in in the air. Really low shots that went nowhere. I've read tons of threads that said this is a really low spin head and I would definitely agree with that. Wasn't feeling any kick in the shaft either, which was the Tensei Orange CK. Finally decide I needed all the loft I could get so I set the face angle to neutral and put all the weights in the toe. This seemed to help but it still seemed really short.
Took it to the first tee and was pleasantly surprised. I hit 12 of 14 fairways and one of the ones I missed was I just ran it through the fw on a dogleg. Hit it right where I aimed it. And the others weren't just in the fw but nearly dead center every time. And this on a day when I wasn't hitting anything else well at all except for the occasional good shot.
So that was the good, now the just Ok, distance. I was consistently hitting the ball about 210. Hit a couple 220+. I was playing TP5x balls for what it's worth. I was wondering if that ball wasn't good for me with a low spin head so on one hole I hit a Pinnacle Rush, that I found which was the only distance ball I had. I really hit that ball well but of course I forgot to start the shot tracker on my gps so I don't know how far it went but from the yardage listed on the card it was 358 and I had 100 yards in. So I figure even if the tee was up 10 yards I got that one 240-250. Maybe a ball switch is in order? Lost the Pinnacle on the next hole a par 3, so I never got to hit it again to see if it was just luck or actually something to it. I'm about 10 yards longer with the G400 Max, when I can keep it in play and get balls out to 230-240 with the Max.
So initial impressions are Wow, this thing is a straight shooter, but distance is a question that remains to be answered.