Software

MSI Dragon Center has been replaced by MSI Center, which is a fully UWP-integrated app available through the Microsoft Store. Modules for the mouse or RGB lighting have to be downloaded and installed separately. While largely functional, MSI Center looks quite basic and not fully finished yet in some places, as some options are presented in a needlessly convoluted manner. In addition, MSI Center spawns upwards of ten background processes which are running regardless of whether MSI Center is set to auto-start, and there is no easy or convenient way of shutting them down. Furthermore, MSI Center has a certain tendency to crash at every opportunity. Change RGB lighting effect? Crash. Open mouse settings? Crash. Physically cycle through CPI levels while the sensor page is open? Crash. Essentially, MSI Center is one big crash trigger, which makes it rather difficult to get even the most basic things done.

All functions are distributed across two tabs. The first one has button remapping to mouse, CPI, and macro functions. The second tab allows one to adjust CPI for five levels at a range of 100 to 12,000 CPI in increments of 100. Furthermore, options for polling rate (125, 250, 500, or 1000 Hz) and angle snapping (on/off) are present. Additional options include LED Auto-Sleep Mode, which determines whether the mouse will enter sleep mode after staying idle for a non-user configurable amount of time, and Low Battery Warning OSD, which displays a warning once battery starts to run low. Profile management is available, too. Lighting settings are found in an additional module described below.

When applied, all settings are saved to the on-board memory, so the software does not need to be running (or be installed) all the time. On my system, the software has a RAM footprint of around 105 MB on average when running in the foreground, which is reduced to 74 MB when minimized to the taskbar and 73 MB when minimized to the system tray. Upon exiting the application, a multitude of processes with a RAM footprint of 60 MB keep running. In order to fully and safely uninstall MSI Center, running the dedicated MSI Center Uninstall tool is recommended.

Lighting

The Clutch GM31 Lightweight Wireless has but a single physical lighting zone, which is the logo at the back. A total of three pre-defined lighting effects are available in the software: Steady, Breathe, and Rainbow, accompanied by the ability to create a custom effect. For most effects, it is possible to set custom colors and adjust brightness. Of course, disabling the lighting altogether is also possible.

Color accuracy and vibrancy are excellent throughout. Here's a short demonstration video in which I demonstrate the Rainbow lighting effect:

Battery Life

MSI states a maximum battery life of 110 hours. No details are provided under which conditions this figure applies, however. For this review, I've used the mouse at a polling rate of 1000 Hz and with RGB lighting enabled. The software includes a percentage-based battery indicator with single-digit accuracy, which appears to be reliable and consistent. After 10 hours of continuous use, the battery charge indicator stood at 90%, which would amount to a total battery life of around 100 hours, assuming linear consumption.

By default, the mouse enters a sleep state after exactly two minutes of inactivity. The Auto-Sleep setting within the software can be used to disable this behavior.

Using the included USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable, I also measured the charging speed during the constant current stage, which sits at around 0.199 A. Using the included charging dock, the charging speed is around 0.175 A. The battery has a capacity of 450 mAh.