Summary
Being able to say that the MSI Claw is a letdown is not sufficient. In a time when ranking among the finest portable gaming PCs needs nothing more than a competent UI and competitive performance, the Claw stands out not because of the areas in which it succeeds in comparison to the competition but rather because of the areas in which it lags behind.
MSI Claw review
Even after two years have passed since the Steam Deck was first shown to the public, there is a general consensus that a time of expansion follows the introduction of any new portable device. MSI, along with other companies like Asus and Lenovo, is now tasked with navigating this new and unexplored region, and it is inevitable that there will be some obstacles along the way. Despite this comprehension, however, the Claw does not live up to the expectations that were set for it.
The fact that it is more costly than the other products on the market while also providing a lower level of performance and a shorter battery life is the most essential information that you should be aware of. On the basis of that alone, you should not purchase the MSI Claw at this time. In addition, based on what I’ve seen, it’s difficult to believe that MSI will be able to get the Claw into a competitive position without introducing a totally new product.
Can you tell me about the MSI Claw’s engine?
The Core Ultra central processing unit is the source of the Claw’s renown. There is just one major gadget that has an Intel CPU, and MSI offers two different configurations for it. Both the Core Ultra 5 135H and the Core Ultra 7 155H are available for your selection. After reviewing the Core Ultra 7 155H version, I believe that the MSI Claw is the one that you should choose to purchase if you are compelled to do so.
Aside from that, the specifications are pretty well known. You get 512GB of storage space and 16GB of random access memory (RAM), regardless of the model that you choose. If you want to increase the amount of storage space to 1 terabyte, you may upgrade to the Core Ultra 7 155H model by spending an additional $50. However, you are free to replace the M.2 2230 SSD on your own.
Pricing is a major consideration here. At a cost of $700, the basic model is equipped with the Core Ultra 5 135H processor. The ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go, both of which are equipped with the Z1 Extreme processor, are both listed at the same price as this product. A Core Ultra 7 155H will set you back $750, and if you want that chip with a 1TB solid-state drive, you will have to pay $800.
Compared to other products on the market, The Claw is more pricey. Before you even consider the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED, both of which are hundreds of dollars less expensive than the Claw, this is the first thing you should consider.
In addition to having an Intel CPU, which, as I will explain in more detail later, does not do much to justify the price, MSI does not do much to justify the price. In a manner comparable to that of the ROG Ally, you will get a 7-inch IPS display that is capable of displaying 1080p resolution and has a refresh rate of 120Hz. Despite the fact that it has a great screen and that games like Tetris Effect look wonderful on it, the Lenovo Legion Go has a higher resolution than the Steam Deck OLED, which boasts, well, OLED.
There is, to tell you the truth, no justification for the Claw’s price to be as high as it is in comparison to the market for typical portable devices. When compared to the ROG Ally, it has buttons and sticks that are of somewhat better quality, and MSI has made a great fuss about the 53-watt-hour battery, but these features are not sufficient to justify such a high price. There is nothing that jumps out in this regard, which is especially problematic when one considers the exorbitant price that MSI is asking for and the poor performance that the Claw provides.
| Claw A1M-052US | Claw A1M-051US | Claw A1M-050US | |
| APU | Core Ultra 5 135H | Core Ultra 7 155H | Core Ultra 7 155H |
| RAM | 16GB | 16GB | 16GB |
| Storage | 512GB | 512GB | 1TB |
| Ports | 1x USB-C w/ Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm, 1x Micro SD | 1x USB-C w/ Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm, 1x Micro SD | 1x USB-C w/ Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm, 1x Micro SD |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi 7 | Wi-Fi 7 | Wi-Fi 7 |
| Screen | 1080p IPS, 120Hz | 1080p IPS, 120Hz | 1080p IPS, 120Hz |
| Price | $700 | $750 | $800 |
MSI Claw review: Is it design?
Although MSI has been subjected to some criticism for the derivative design of the Claw in comparison to the ROG Ally, there are sufficient departures from the ROG Ally for the Claw to be considered a stand-alone product. MSI distinguishes apart with buttons and sticks that have a considerably more quality feel to them, despite the fact that the feels in the hands are relatively identical.
There are magnetic Hall Effect triggers and sticks that you get, and they have a really smooth feel. When compared to the ROG Ally, which has buttons, sticks, and triggers that have a fairly poor feel to them, this is a significant improvement. Moreover, the D-pad is of high quality and does not have the clicky sensation that is present on the Ally.
On the outside of the buttons, you will find a slot for a Micro SD card, a 3.5mm headphone socket, a USB-C connector with Thunderbolt 4 that you will use for charging, and a power button that supports Windows Hello with your fingerprint. Because it is compatible with external GPU enclosures, the USB-C port is a significant advantage over the ROG Ally. In order to use the Ally, you will need to purchase one of Asus’ XG Mobile graphics cards.
Dual 2-watt speakers that provide an astonishingly rich sound completed the construction of the device. This is without a doubt one of the most notable features of the MSI Claw, and I can declare without any reservations that it is of the highest quality.
The Claw does not pull any punches when it comes to its appearance, but it also does not fall flat on its face entirely. The mobile device has a pleasant feel in your hands, including controls of a high quality, connectors that are handy, and speakers that are surprisingly excellent. MSI did an excellent job with this particular component of the Claw. And this is a good thing since the other components of the Claw do not live up to the expectations that were set for them.
MSI Claw review: Can you perform?
There is a significant lack of performance from the MSI Claw. This is not because the screen resolution is too high, as we saw with the Lenovo Legion Go, nor is it because it is lacking in terms of the hardware that is contained therein, as was the case with the Ayaneo 2S. There is no doubt that it is somewhat lower than the competitors. Also, it does not make a difference whether power mode you choose to look at. In comparison to its rivals, the MSI Claw has a lower performance to offer while also using more power.
Taking into consideration the default Balanced setting, it is clear that the Claw is not as good as the ROG Ally when compared to the Z1 Extreme in terms of overall performance. The Claw achieves a minor advantage in Dying Light 2 and Returnal, but its defeats in Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk 2077 stand out more than its other victories.
This is not just a matter of the raw statistics; there is more to the narrative. However, although having a superior overall performance in Dying Light 2, the Claw was a stuttering mess with poor performance. As you can see in the screenshot that is shown above, it was quite inconsistent. At a minimum of 18 frames per second (fps), the ROG Ally was capable of delivering a high-quality video experience. The Claw had a frame rate of at least five frames per second.
There was also a lack of consistency in performance. While playing Cyberpunk 2077, I put the Claw through its paces in the Balanced and Battery Saver modes, and I found that it initially performed better than the ROG Ally game. The performance, on the other hand, plummeted to a new low and remained there when I repeated the exams for the second time. Whether this is a problem with thermals or something else entirely, I am not sure, but it is a problem nevertheless.
Just by looking at the Claw, you can see that it has five distinct power modes: Performance, Balanced (which is the default), Battery Saver, Manual, and AI Engine. In spite of the fact that it automatically adjusts some components of the device, the AI Engine does not provide any additional performance. Above, you can see how the different power modes interact with one another.
There is something wrong with this, if you have been paying attention to the world of portable gaming devices, as you will certainly notice. Quite a bit of power is used by the Core Ultra 7 155H that is housed inside the MSI Claw. This gives key background for the discussion. You need to keep in mind that the MSI Claw is using twice as much power as the ROG Ally while giving poorer performance if you scroll up and look at my findings in Balanced mode in comparison to the ROG Ally.
With the Z1 Extreme sucking down 35W, the Claw is unable to compete with the ROG Ally, even when it is tuned to the greatest power possible, which can go up to 40W, and when it is hooked in with the Overboost function that is offered for MSI. Even while operating on battery power at 25W in its Turbo mode, it is not even capable of competing with the ROG Ally.
Even bad, it gets worse. In order to ensure that the ROG Ally, MSI Claw, and Steam Deck OLED are all competing on an equal footing, I restricted the resolution to 720p. Additionally, the Claw seems to be in a bad state. The Steam Deck OLED is even slower than this display in any game other than Returnal. Also, bear in mind that the Steam Deck OLED is built on a chip that was released four years ago and has a graphics architecture that was developed at that time.
You will see that I do not have any results for Strange Brigade on the MSI Claw, which is a game that I often use for handheld benchmarks. This is something that you will find across all of these charts. It just would not start up. I attempted to load it more than a dozen times, regardless of whether I was using DirectX 12 or Vulkan, but it just refused to. When it comes to other Windows handhelds, I’ve never had that problem.
Inexcusably poor performance is being shown by the Claw, and all of this information is recent. The most recent Intel 5522 graphics driver was used for testing, and I used BIOS 109, which was claimed to deliver a speed gain of thirty percent in addition to a significant increase that was achieved with an earlier upgrade to the BIOS. Exactly one day before I began testing, the BIOS update was made available to the public. I feel terrible for everyone who purchased the Claw on the day it was released because if this is the performance I’m seeing after seemingly big leaps in performance, then I feel terrible for them.
MSI Claw review: The software?
In terms of the Claw, one of the locations in which I have the greatest optimism is Center M. When I first began using the Claw, this application, which is included by MSI and gives you the ability to launch games and access your settings, was one of the things that stood out to me the most. However, throughout the course of my ongoing usage of the gadget, Center M began to reveal its less desirable side. It needs some revisions.
To begin with the good, let’s talk about how quick Center M is. Quick as a flash. There is a button that is specifically designated for bringing up the utility, and there is another one that brings up a sidebar that has fast settings. As opposed to the Lenovo Legion Go and Ayaneo 2S, they are able to react to your inputs very instantaneously and come up promptly. This is a significant improvement over both of those devices. The Steam Deck is the product that gets the closest to achieving the same level of speed as what Value has achieved with the Steam Deck.
The user interface for Center M is not very good, and you will have to wander around quite a bit in order to locate options that need to be located in clearly visible locations. On the other hand, I am ready to ignore it given how rapidly Center M reacts (and the fact that the Claw has a great deal of other problems).
In terms of Center M, I have a positive outlook and am hoping that it will one day become a really useful resource. This day, however, is not that day.
The emergence of some problems occurred very quickly. In addition, the performance overlay that is intended to indicate your frame rate does not display it at all, and MSI would arbitrarily switch the buttons that are assigned to the desktop mode and the gaming mode. Changing the resolution, on the other hand, was by far the most difficult problem I encountered.
As you go through the fast settings menu, you will have the opportunity to choose between 1080p and 720p resolutions. It is not a problem to go from 1080p to 720p. The opposite of what you say? A little less so. Therefore, in order to restore your resolution to 1080p, you will need to go into the settings of Windows. When attempting to squeeze your windows into a 1080p screen, you will also notice that they are distorted. Make sure you don’t even attempt to change the resolution when you’re playing a game.
A significant number of these issues are not related to the MSI Claw but rather to Windows. On the other hand, it is not devoid of criticism. Despite the fact that SMSI has made a lot of noise about the 53-watt-hour battery that is included inside the Claw, my testing has shown that the additional capacity is not sufficient to compensate for the increased power consumption of the Meteor Lake CPU. Within the span of only one hour and fifteen minutes, I saw the Claw’s demise in Cyberpunk 2077. Not only that, but that was not utilizing any kind of high power mode. Right out of the box, it was operating in the Balanced mode, which is the default setting.
I need to put into perspective how rapidly the battery is depleted in this situation, even if it doesn’t seem very bad. The battery capacity dropped by 5% in a sixty-second run of a Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, and I was unable to finish my run of benchmarks on a single charge in the Balanced mode. I also saw the battery capacity decrease during the run. MSI’s overlay claimed a power usage of between 8W and 10W even when it was installed on the Windows desktop and there was no application running. When it is operating at maximum load, the Steam Deck OLED only uses 15W of power.
The overlay that indicates the capacity of the battery is also plagued with bugs. The Claw only lasted for a total of 32 minutes during a single run of Cyberpunk 2077. That was not due to the fact that the battery did not last very long. One of the problems was that the battery was never completely charged, despite the fact that the Claw itself believed that the battery was fully charged. Despite the fact that this may seem to be a little matter, the reporting of battery capacity that is erroneous might have significant repercussions.
In spite of the fact that it has a bigger battery, the MSI Claw has a shorter battery life than other laptops because of its power-hungry CPU.
An example of this would be a problem that, in earlier versions of the Steam Deck, could effectively leave your device inoperable. Over the course of time, the battery will indicate a decreasing capacity, and finally, the gadget will only last a few minutes despite the fact that it is claiming that it is fully charged. The Claw has not yet reached that stage, but if there are still issues with capacity reporting, I wouldn’t be surprised if it does ultimately reach that position.
In addition, I made an effort to extend the battery’s life. After lowering the screen resolution to 720p with a refresh rate of 60Hz, I also lowered the power mode to the lowest possible setting, which is said to be optimized for battery life. In Cyberpunk 2077, the Claw nevertheless passed away in less than two hours, even in this particular circumstance. In addition, I wasn’t participating in the game in any way. I had no movement whatsoever as I stood there.
Because of its power-hungry CPU, the MSI Claw has a shorter battery life than both the Steam Deck OLED and the ROG Ally, despite the fact that it has a bigger battery than both of those other devices. MSI’s promises of a fifty percent improvement in battery life just do not stand up in reality, despite the fact that it is not useless.
MSI Claw review: Not prepared in any way?
Although Center M was attempting to switch to 720p, it just refused to pick up the controller. At the same time that I was unable to access the quick settings menu, I was also unable to move around the program. The problem is not resolved by reverting to 1080p resolution; instead, you need to do a complete restart of the device.
MSI Claw review: How long does the battery last?
As soon as MSI made the decision to debut the Claw without first sending out any review samples to the press, alarm bells began to sound. It was a warning sign that MSI intended to market a product that was not yet ready, but they were determined to do it anyhow. And now, after a period of two months, when I have got the opportunity to put the Claw through its paces, it is abundantly evident that the warning would have been appropriate.
The Claw falls short of the competition while using more power, and as a result, it dies just as quickly despite having a bigger battery capacity. This is despite the fact that there has been a rush of driver and BIOS upgrades that promise improved performance. In spite of the fact that it operates more smoothly than the alternatives provided by Asus and Lenovo, the software presents a number of shortcomings, including a restricted set of options and an interface that rapidly deteriorates when you interact with things such as modifying the resolution of your screen.
Even MSI is not entirely to blame for this. There is a good chance that the corporation will improve the Claw in terms of the software and the faults that it contains. In order for it to continue producing devices in this category, it is necessary for it to do so, and I will be pleased to examine it again in the event that a big upgrade is released. However, the chip that is contained therein is where the majority of the most significant issues are located, and it is likely that this also has an effect on the cost.
This gadget should be kept at a safe distance from everyone. During the time when MSI is working on updates for a gadget that is already pricey, the last thing you want to be is a beta tester.
