The MSI Claw shows some promise with its quality build and speakers, but there are far too many problems for it to earn a recommendation.
MSI Claw MSRP $800.00 Score Details “The MSI Claw isn't worth your time, and it certainly isn't worth your money.” Pros Cons It’s not enough to call the MSI Claw a disappointment. In a time when ranking among the best handheld gaming PCs requires little more than a decent interface and competitive performance, the Claw stands out not to due to where it excels compared to the competition, but where it falls behind.
Otherwise, the specs are fairly familiar. You have 16GB of RAM regardless of the model you choose, as well as 512GB of storage. You can spend an extra $50 on the Core Ultra 7 155H model to jump up to 1TB of storage, but you’re free to swap out the M.2 2230 SSD yourself as well. There’s frankly no excuse for the Claw to be as expensive as it is compared to the mainstream handheld market. It has slightly higher-quality buttons and sticks compared to the ROG Ally, and MSI has made a big deal about the 53 watt-hour battery, but they aren’t enough to warrant such a premium. There’s nothing that stands out here, which is particularly troublesome considering the high price that MSI is asking and the low performance the Claw offers.
Rounding out the build are dual 2-watt speakers that sound shockingly full. This is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the MSI Claw that I can say is truly good without reservation. There’s more to the story than the raw numbers here. In Dying Light 2, the Claw posts higher overall performance, but it was also a stuttering mess. You can see how inconsistent it was in the screenshot above. To put some numbers to it, the ROG Ally had a minimum of 18 frames per second . The Claw had a minimum of 5 fps.
Even when configured to the highest power available — up to 40W — and plugged in with MSI’s optional Overboost feature, the Claw can’t manage to best the ROG Ally with the Z1 Extreme sucking down 35W. It can’t even beat the ROG Ally running on battery power at 25W in its Turbo mode. Software One of the areas I’m most optimistic for the Claw is Center M. This is the utility that MSI includes that allows you to launch games and access your settings, and it was one of the highlights when I first started using the Claw. As I continued to use the device, though, Center M started to expose its ugly side. It needs some work.
Some issues presented themselves immediately. The performance overlay that’s supposed to display your frame rate just, well, doesn’t, and MSI would kick me back and forth between a desktop and game mode button assignment randomly. The biggest issue I had by far was changing the resolution, however. It doesn’t sound terrible, but I need to put in context how quickly the battery drains here. I wasn’t able to complete my run of benchmarks on a single charge in the Balanced mode, and I watched the battery capacity drop by 5% in a 60-second run of a Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark. Even on the Windows desktop with nothing running, MSI’s overlay reported between 8W and 10W of power consumption. The Steam Deck OLED only consumes 15W under full load.
Handheld Gaming PC Intel MSI MSI Claw PC Gaming
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