MSI Clutch GM10 Optical Gaming Mouse Review – No Side Buttons?

A Closer Look and Performance

The latest gaming mouse from MSI certainly looks like a quality product. It’s focused, it’s simple, and well, maybe a little too simple. It comes with a hard-wired lightweight USB cable, and everything is plug and play ready. Of course, that’s good news for eSports tournaments, where software likely isn’t permitted.

The sides of the mouse feature a large textured surface made from hard plastic. It’s perfect for getting a tough grip on the mouse and will work for lift-off playstyles if you like to keep your DPI low. MSI call it their “Dragon-scale Anti-Slip Grip” which sounds cool, but it’s just a bit of plastic, no need to oversell it here. What’s more important is what isn’t here. Clearly, there are no side buttons at all, which does seem odd to me. Then again, if you’re playing a very specific game that doesn’t use them, this does make sense; more on that in a moment.

Down the other side, more of that dragon-scale grip, with a good ergonomic curve to provide good grip also. The mouse is set up for right-handed users only, so lefties may want to look elsewhere.

Ergonomics

The right mouse button is slightly longer than the left, which again fits the natural size and shape of your hands. The mouse only has a good arch to the top, meaning it fits the palm of your hand perfectly. I play fingertip grip while gaming in FPS, and switch back to palm rest for anything else, and it felt pretty darn comfortable in both.

The mouse glides effortlessly too, despite only having two smaller slipmats on the base. Of course, the mouse is pretty lightweight anyway, at just 104g it’s unlikely to drag on any gaming surface. It’s almost comically skittish on hard gaming surfaces it’s that light, but I typically use a weighted mouse. It’ll work well on hard-cloth mats best of all though.

Grip

For a gaming mouse, I do find it to be a little too limited for my liking. Then again, I use a mouse that has 12 buttons on it, so make of that what you will. Unlike many keyboards with a “gaming” mode that disables keys, this just takes them out completely. That means you get more grip coating on the side, a lighter mouse, and fewer things to go wrong if you want to put a positive spin on it; which I just did. It feels very comfortable in the hand, and the lack of buttons doesn’t feel like a big issue while gaming.

I mean, I play MMO games a lot and do use macros on my mouse, so for me, that’s a no go with the GM10. However, games like LoL and CS:GO seem very well suited to it. Just lock in the DPI, and get to business. It’s in games like this that the mouse really shines through. It tracks like a cats eye following a laser pointer. It feels silky smooth yet pixel accurate at the same time. Again, it doesn’t have many features, but what it does have is all set up very nicely indeed.

Gaming

The mouse switches have a good tactile click to them, rated for 10m+ clicks too, so they’ll last more than a few games of LoL before they bite the dust. The mouse wheel is quite large surprisingly so for a mouse of this size actually. It feels a little tight to turn too, but that’s no bad thing when you’re cycling weapons in CS:GO, as it allows more accurate selection; although it would likely piss me off using it for browsing reddit.

The ultra-light design is nice though, and it’s unlikely to encumber you after a long gaming session. It also makes changing direction pretty swift too, which is great for twitchy gameplay, although I did find myself over-adjusting for a few games until I got adjusted to the weight of it. The sensor is bloody fantastic though and may rank as one of the brightest Optical sensors I’ve seen too. For a more affordable product, it’ll track as well as many more expensive options and then some.

Overall, this is a funny little mouse but I can’t help but like it. Plus it looks pretty fantastic too, and I’ll hear no complaints about that.