MSI Claw Officially Announced: New Handheld Gaming PC

MSI has recently made the announcement of the Claw, a portable Windows gaming PC that follows in the footsteps of the Steam Deck. At the same starting price of $699, it is meant to compete with the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go. The only difference is that this one has an Intel Core Ultra processor inside, which MSI claims is superior to AMD in terms of both performance and battery life.

 

As of right now, it is impossible to say whether it is any good because it depends on performance and battery life, which are not final. I just received hands-on experience at CES 2024, and I can state with complete certainty that it is impossible to determine whether it is any good. MSI is showcasing engineering prototypes at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and these samples appear to be in need of the months of tuning that they will ideally receive before a debut in the first half of 2024.

The good news is that if you enjoy the Asus ROG Ally but wish it were only more comfortable and had a longer lifespan, MSI might be able to meet your needs. Although the grips are larger and more comfortable than those of Asus, they lack the excessive beefiness and edges that dig into my palms that are present in the Lenovo Legion Go. In many respects, the Claw appears to have been taken directly from the ROG Ally, with the exception of the grips. It has a similar shape, similar port placement (including an SD card reader right next to a vent), nearly identical button placement, and similar screen bezels surrounding a similar 7-inch 120Hz 1080p IPS screen. The only difference is that the grips are different.

Features, Performance, and Battery Life

The user interface appears to be made of the same material and, in a same vein, it requires creature comforts that have not been introduced to the Ally for quite some time. These creature comforts include the capability to map an Xbox button and anti-deadzone, which reduces the oversensitivity of the joystick in some games.

 

You will, however, receive a battery that has a capacity of 53 watt hours, which is greater than the 40 watt hour pack that comes with the ROG Ally and is comparable to the Steam Deck OLED and Lenovo. Moreover, it is equipped with Hall effect joysticks, just like the Legion Go.

In addition, MSI claims that it will incorporate the Ally’s most advantageous feature in comparison to the Deck and Legion Go, which is a variable refresh rate that can make the whole Asus experience more fluid.

On the other hand, I am not experiencing smoothness from the Intel Core Ultra CPU, at least not at this point in time. During gameplay, the Intel Core Ultra-powered engineering samples that MSI brought to CES are a little bit stuttering, and there are a lot of frame spikes. The default thermal design power (TDP) of the chip is currently between 24 and 27 watts, which is higher than I anticipated from a processor that is meant to be more efficient than AMD’s. (The samples of engineering once more! Perhaps several months before the launch! Although it is difficult to tell in a packed environment, the fans do appear to be quite quiet when they are operating under load.

There is no doubt that it is not yet capable of competing with the Steam Deck when it comes to lower wattage. Even at 720p and the lowest settings, it struggled to run an Assassin’s Creed Mirage benchmark when I set it to the “Super Battery Saver” 15W mode. This was the same as what happened with the Deck. In the midst of significant frame dips, I saw an average frame rate of only 24 frames per second.

You can get up to 35W of power from the battery or 40W when put into the wall, just like other Windows handhelds. Most of the time, even in the 27W speed mode, I got 40fps at 720p and just over 30fps at 1080p in Mirage. You can also make your own fan curves, map keys, and quickly set up to 12 macros with delays between each key. Wi-Fi 7 is available in the Claw. An MSI representative said that Windows 11 might not officially support Wi-Fi 7 until the second half of the year. However, they also said that in the lab, they saw speeds four times faster.

This handheld device has AI. You can turn on AI noise cancellation, and a representative says there is a “AI-powered performance mode” that uses the Intel chip’s NPU to change the screen lighting and chip power on the fly. Upon turning on Mirage, I observed a chip power range of 24W to 27W, which suggested that it was working.

The MSI Claw has 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and Intel Arc graphics that are built in. It weighs 675 grams, which is more than the Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and both Steam Deck types. The storage setup can hold up to 1TB of SSD, and there is a MicroSD card slot for extra space. Like other portable game PCs that want to stand out, the MSI Claw’s main selling point is how well it works with batteries.

Even though it’s using a lot of power right now, MSI says that games that are hard should still get two hours of battery life, lighter games should get four hours, and videos should get five hours or more. That isn’t more than I expect from the Deck OLED, but Windows handhelds haven’t always done that. They’re already getting two hours of Forza 5, compared to one hour with the Asus ROG Ally.

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