In the past years, gaming mice have progressed in several areas. Among the most notable improvements are the cables. Long gone are the days where thick, braided cables used to restrict mouse movement—stock cables have become flexible to where they often are able to compete with aftermarket paracords. In that sense, the MSI Clutch GM41 Lightweight is a trip down memory lane. The GM41 is outfitted with a cable of virtually unrivaled stiffness. MSI might as well have installed a lead pipe, the rigidity wouldn't be much different. While this wouldn't have been much of a big deal in 2011, when cables of largely similar rigidity were commonplace, a cable of this firmness sticks out like a sore thumb in 2021. And while an inelastic cable is less of a nuisance on an already heavy or large mouse, the GM41 is very nimble at 67 g, which is achieved without externally visible holes and further complemented by pure PTFE feet enabling the GM41 to glide very well. Yet none of this matters if there is the equivalent of an anchor attached to the mouse, bogging down any attempts to fluently move the mouse around. Frankly, I consider this cable unusably stiff even if clipped into a mouse bungee.

It's a pity, really, since the GM41 is a competent mouse otherwise. Build quality is fairly solid, the main buttons provide a snappy and pleasant click feel, and the same goes for the side buttons, although their position towards the front may not be to everyone's liking. The main buttons are complemented by a click latency of around 4 ms, which is very low. The scroll wheel is appreciably low on noise even though tactility leaves something to be desired. As for the sensor, PixArt's PMW3389 performs generally well aside from some relatively minor issues. All polling rates except 1000 Hz show periodic outliers, so until MSI issues a firmware fix, one has to use 1000 Hz. Tracking is generally rather messy, although this is more of a cosmetic complaint and does not necessarily impact performance. A bigger issue is LOD adjustment, which doesn't work as of now. Even when set to "Low, " the "High" setting is permanently applied, resulting in a much greater lift-off distance than typical on a 3389. Again, this is something MSI could (and hopefully will) fix in the future. Aside from these issues, I have surprisingly little to complain about when it comes to the software side of things, MSI Dragon Center. Much like ASUS' widely disdained Armoury Crate, Dragon Center is an overarching software suite for all things MSI. I'm not exactly a fan of the number of processes running in the background, their RAM footprint, and the fact that my Windows color profile gets reset upon every restart, but other than that, I've seen worse. Dragon Center also allows for setting up RGB lighting on the GM41, and possibly synchronizing it with other MSI devices.

Still, even if MSI would fix every firmware-related issue on the GM41, one would still be stuck with the awfully stiff stock cable. As such, the only way to salvage this mouse is by buying and installing a new paracord cable, but this would raise the price to around $70. Meanwhile, the $60 Endgame Gear XM1r or $50 HyperX Pulsefire Haste come with a highly flexible cable by default without the need to possibly void the warranty by opening the mouse. Accordingly, until MSI decides to re-release the GM41 with a cable that isn't utterly terrible, I'd recommend looking at the Clutch GM41 Lightweight Wireless, which solves this problem by getting rid of the cable altogether.