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MSI Dragon Center has been replaced by MSI Center, which is a fully UWP-integrated app available through the Microsoft Store.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 fondness for entering infinite loading screens or just plain crashing.

All functions are distributed across three 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 26,000 CPI in increments of 100, despite increments of 50 being supported by the sensor on the hardware level. Furthermore, options for polling rate (125, 250, 500, or 1000 Hz), lift-off distance (low/high), angle snapping (on/off), and MotionSync (on/off) are present. The third tab is called "MSI Speed Shift," and allows switching between three levels (called "Gears"), which modify the sensor framerate scaling curve. The higher the gear, the more rapidly framerate will ramp up when moving from a standstill (stationary to motion). "Gear 1" is the default, but introduces significant motion delay at the onset of motion, which is why opting for "Gear 3" is recommended. Note that the angle snapping setting is unavailable as long as Gear 1 is active. Profile management is available, too.

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 175 MB on average when running in the foreground, which is reduced to 111 MB when minimized to the taskbar and 108 MB when minimized to the system tray, along with a moderate CPU time cost. Upon exiting the application, a multitude of processes with a RAM footprint of 91 MB keep running. In order to fully and safely uninstall MSI Center, running the dedicated MSI Center Uninstall tool is recommended.

Lighting

The Clutch GM51 Lightweight Wireless has three physical lighting zones, which are the logo at the back and two zones on the sides. A total of seven pre-defined lighting effects are available in the software: Steady, Breath, Color Cycle, Wave, Reactive, Dance, and Radar, 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 default "Wave" lighting effect:

Battery Life

MSI cites a battery life of up 150 hours without illumination. However, no details are provided whether this applies to 2.4 GHz or Bluetooth operation, which polling rate is used for each, or which "Gear" is active. 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 with RGB lighting fully enabled, a polling rate of 1000 Hz, and "Gear 3" being active, the battery charge indicator stood at 80%, which would amount to a total battery life of around 50 hours assuming linear consumption.

By default, the mouse does not enter a sleep mode at any point. If the Auto-Sleep setting within the software is enabled, the mouse will enter sleep mode after two minutes of inactivity.

Using the included USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable plugged into a USB 3.x port, I measured the charging speed during the constant current stage, which sits at around 0.470 A, with spikes above 0.5 A. Plugged into a USB 2.0 port, I measured around 0.395 A. Using the included charging dock, the charging speed is around 0.160 A. The battery has a capacity of 550 mAh and utilizes a 3-pin JST connector.