The MSI Clutch GM41 Lightweight was not a bad mouse, but suffered from one big and ultimately fatal flaw: a comically stiff cable. With the Clutch GM31 Lightweight, I am happy to report that this concern has been addressed most convincingly, as its cable is several leagues above in terms of flexibility. The much better cable elevates the GM31 as a whole, and allows it to show its strengths. At 60 g, the GM31 is genuinely light for its medium to small size, which has been achieved without resorting to holes in the shell, yet build quality leaves little to be desired: There is no rattle when shaking, the side buttons can only be actuated by squeezing the sides if excessive force is applied, and creaking or flexing are absent as well. The feet are made of pure PTFE and glide very well, which adds to the already nice handling.

In terms of buttons, MSI has opted for Omron switches for the main buttons, which provide a snappy yet much lighter button response than the otherwise ubiquitous Kailh GM 8.0 switches. Unfortunately, the left main button in particular doesn't feel entirely stable on my copy, and moves laterally when keeping the button pressed. On most mice using a split-button design, some button wobble is expected, but ideally, it should only occur when provoking it, and not during typical uses. Of course, it is entirely possible that I simply got unlucky on my unit, as my sample of the GM31 Wireless doesn't suffer from this issue anywhere near as much. In any case, the side buttons are outfitted with Huano switches, and the forward button in particular shines with minimal post and pre-travel. The back button, on the other hand, has a bit more pre-travel, and actuation isn't entirely even, but overall, I have little to complain here. The same goes for the scroll wheel, which utilizes an encoder from CF, and scores with remarkably low noise levels. While still not silent, this encoder is among the most pleasing in terms of noise I've experienced in quite a while. Tactility is quite good too, with distinct steps allowing for controlled scrolling. The scroll wheel click, however, is less of a treat due to being way too stiff. In fact, I've found myself unable to actuate the wheel click without inadvertently scrolling be it in-game or during office work. Hence, for those who like to use the wheel click a lot, the GM31 will be a poor fit.

When it comes to sensor performance, the GM31 does reasonably well. Owing to PixArt's trusty PMW3360 sensor, CPI deviation is decently low and general tracking fine. On the launch firmware, motion delay is low as well, but recent firmware updates have upped this to 2 ms for no good reason. Furthermore, instead of the most recent SROM5, which only has smoothing at and above 3600 CPI, an older SROM for the 3360 is used on the GM31, which has smoothing kick in at 2100 CPI already, resulting in higher motion delay. In addition, I've found all polling rates below 1000 Hz to suffer from periodic off-period polls, which already was the case on the GM41. A recent firmware update has lowered the frequency of these off-period polls, but they continue to persist nonetheless. On the launch firmware, click latency was unacceptably high, but the latest firmware addresses this somewhat at least, lowering click latency to a mostly competitive 5.4 ms.

Customizing the GM31 is possible in MSI Center, which effectively replaces the older Dragon Center. Being a fully UWP-integrated app, MSI Center is installed through the Windows Store, and follows a modular structure, allowing one to install additional functions according to one's needs. This includes Mystic Light, which incorporates the RGB component for the GM31. Visually and functionally, MSI Center is quite similar to Dragon Center, although the UI is more convoluted in some places, and the entire design looks a little too barebones for my liking. MSI Center also has a certain fondness for entering infinite loading screens or outright crashing, even when performing seemingly mundane tasks such as cycling through CPI levels while the settings tab is open. While MSI Center's appetite for RAM and CPU time isn't too great, I'm not a fan of the sheer number of processes spawned by it. Most lamentably, these processes run regardless of whether MSI Center is running or has been set to launch at startup. Thankfully, there is no real need to bother with MSI Center anyway, as the RGB lighting effects can conveniently be cycled directly on the mouse through button combinations, though installing it once for getting the latest firmware is recommended at least, as click latency won't be in a good spot otherwise.

Still, the GM31 gets most things right, and for those on a budget, the GM31 is certainly worth a look, and earns our Budget award. When looking at the competition, there aren't too many options in this price range. For $59.99, the SteelSeries Prime Mini comes with better performance, similar weight, and a similarly annoying software, without doing anything better in particular. For $49.99, the Glorious Model D- has better performance, good buttons, better software, but weighs more while featuring holes. Lastly, the Razer DeathAdder V2 Mini is even smaller than the GM31, has better performance, a stiffer cable, and optical main button switches, for $49.99.