Sensor

The Clutch GM11 operates with a PixArt PMW3325, which is a mid-tier tracking unit, but one that can suffice for even competitive gaming. By default, it shouldn't have any smoothing as it's pretty raw and responsive, and its perfect control speed is high enough for most.

As for its specifications—the nominal maximum tracking speed and acceleration values are 100 IPS and 20 G (but these are higher in reality—more on this later). Resolution can be set to 400, 800, 1,600, 3,200, or 5,000 CPI. The available polling rate is 1000 Hz, which translates into a nominal response time of 1 ms. As expected from the PMW3325, the lift-off distance is a bit high, sitting between 1 and 2 DVDs in height (approximately 2 mm). There's no option to change this, although you could use the good oldtape trick.

Paint Test

There is no jitter on the reasonable CPI steps, and I couldn't detect any unwanted angle snapping or sensor rattle either. There is noticeable smoothing on the sensor, as it should start jittering a lot earlier than 5,000 CPI. More on this under the input-lag section.

CPI Divergence

The measured values are somewhat higher than the nominal ones. If you come from a mouse with perfect CPI accuracy, you should consider lowering your in-game sensitivity.

Perfect Control Speed

Nominal perfect control speed (or PCS for short) is rather low on this sensor, at 100 IPS (which translates to 2.54 m/s). Thankfully, in reality, the sensor works perfectly until 3.5 m/s, which is when it stops tracking. This is more than enough for most players, even those playing with a rather low sensitivity.

Speed Related Accuracy Variance

This test shows the sensor's accuracy at different speeds. You can see me doing a fast swipe to the right before I slowly slide the mouse back to its original position. There is pretty much no acceleration or deceleration here, or if there's any, it's due to human error.

Input Lag & Smoothing

I measured +2–3 ms of input lag on every single CPI step, which is generally unlikely for this sensor. There's definitely some additional firmware-level smoothing to, in my opinion, reduce jittering above 1,600 CPI. It's completely unnecessary on the lower steps, though, and impairs performance to where my Logitech G PRO Wireless is actually faster than the GM11. Pity about this as there are otherwise no issues with tracking. Of course, most end users probably won't notice such a small amount of input lag, but it's best not to have such things in the firmware.