Mages benefit extremely heavily from certain types of 'ware, as losing 1 essence translates to 1 less casting and summoning dice and 2 less force limit, which is ultimately an extremely minor cost. You rarely cast at a full force 12 and when you do it is often in contexts where your sort of doing overkill casts for emergencies. Like the scope of damage from a force 10 and force 12 fireball are the same: you killed everyone and melted half the building.
Giving that up for a pain editor is seen as so strong it is overpowered: You essentially become immune to stun based drain if you play a traditional 'stay out of trouble' caster. Obviously just loading up on stun means maybe you will take more lethal damage in edge cases, but usually it is irrelevant, and the 'ware boosts drain resistance and allows you to ignore pain penalties from drain as well. This is the 'ware that makes burning out for 'ware on a mage worth it, to the point that it would be optimal to take even if it costed a full essence point, and it is one of the few pieces of gear that is such a game changer it is worth the Restricted Gear quality, which is usually a bad investment.
Other decent 'ware options include boosting your drain resistance if you are a hermetic or intuitive caster, or just getting more soak and defense dice. Mages benefit a lot less from attribute boosting 'ware however than most other archtypes, as increase [Attribute] with psyche is extremely effective, effectively putting the attribute they are using at 1 less than augmented maximum at no essence cost. Likewise, analyze device is an intensely powerful generalist buff. It isn't that this 'ware is bad for mages per-say, it is just that mages in 5e at least have a lot of access to ways to boost skills and attributes at little cost. In general most mage builds would be stronger burning out for 1 essence even without pain editor, but without pain editor there is a lot less drawing them to 'ware, it is one of those unsatisfying 'invisible power' buffs where you do it and take statistically 1 less damage every attack against you sort of thing rather than getting a samurai's level of damage resistance or grabbing a fistfull of offensive dice.
Limb mages are funny, and one of my favorite PCs I ever played alongside was a limb mage, but there is some serious anti-synergy with limbs, such as the essence cost being significant enough where force limits start to seriously cramp your style and "Trogdor" limb builds not benefiting from your very powerful attribute boosting spells. I generally find that the value of essentially ignoring a -1 sustaining penalty when shooting one handed weapons worth less than just a soak bonus and tossing increase agility on yourself.
Thematically, mages often get datajacks and cybereyes, because they are in universe convenient, though they are not powerful.
Prototype Transhuman seems very useful for a mage, but it is actually not a very strong quality. You are saddling yourself with some pretty intense permanent disadvantages for an essence point of pure bioware that must be filled at gen, creating priority issues. It isn't bad, but most people dabbling with character optimization avoid it because the cost of losing 1 essence on a mage is actually low, and mostly psychological (we, as humans, are loss adverse and prioritize our magic is 1 less than it could have been over the fact we got something worth a lot more than 1 magic). PT also locks you out of a major advantage of burning out 1 essence, in that you gain access to nuyen based augmentation advancement by upgrading 'ware levels to get more soak, defense, or skill dice, allowing you to advance as both a mage with karma and an augmented character with nuyen, rather than the much lower cap of nuyen advancement for mages, foci, that is also karma linked anyway.
At the end of the day, 1 essence of 'ware for a mage isn't going to totally flip their power level one way or another (again, unless you take pain editor, which completely changes your relationship with your spell and spirit forces in an arguably unhealthy way) and mages already sit at a very high power level. If you really enjoy optimization (which is a totally fun and valid way to play the game!) you probably would want to go for a pain editor and orthoskin or good strong bones. If you are looking at a more lore based mix and are just more worried about general viability (Not caring about optimization is also valid, but obviously doesn't matter how interesting thematically a PC is if they aren't fun to play), if your burning out only 1 essence and are covering your keister with the basic mage package of summoning, casting, and knowing heal and one AOE indirect for emergencies along with your intended spells for your specific mages, the loss from 1 magic isn't a huge difference maker and you have plenty of room to just take fun 'lore ware even if it isn't good. Mages in 5e are very forgiving of inefficient choices because their 'floor' is still extremely strong.
