The MSI Claw is a Mess: Gaming Handheld Can't Compete | Review & Benchmarks
Sponsor: Lian Li O11D Evo RGB on Amazon geni.us/B3OD
The MSI Claw A1M is a mystery of a handheld gaming device: We can't figure out why they'd make it the way they did. Maybe there's Intel marketing fund involved, but either way, it's just not competitive at its $800 -- or even $700 -- price point against the competition. Compared to the ASUS ROG Ally Z1 Extreme, Z1 Non-Extreme, Lenovo Legion Go, and Steam Deck LCD & OLED, the Claw is hamstrung in either value or performance, and often both. This benchmark looks at some of the best handheld gaming PCs right now, and almost all of those feature AMD's Z1 Extreme or 7840U (or 8840U) variants, which are mostly the same parts. The MSI Claw stands apart for silicon variety with an Intel Ultra solution, like the 155H in ours, but it has to be good to be worth that variety.
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RELATED PRODUCTS [Affiliate Links]
MSI Claw A1M 155H on Best Buy: howl.me/cl2VC5bVwGQ
Lenovo Legion Go on Lenovo site: howl.me/clKICy2sNyQ
ASUS ROG Ally (Non-Extreme and Extreme) on Best Buy: howl.me/clKIJZoW5cS
JS Aux Transparent Steam Deck Shell on Amazon: geni.us/zsE1
RELATED PRODUCTS (not affiliate links)
Steam Deck OLED & LCD on Valve's store: store.steampowered.com/steamd...
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - MSI's Flawed Claw A1M
01:44 - Very Familiar to the ASUS ROG Ally Z1
03:19 - Pricing Comparison: Claw vs. Legion Go, Steam Deck, Ally
05:41 - Complete Mess of Software
09:53 - But it has "AI!"
10:49 - More Software Mess & BIOS
12:09 - Controls, Screen, & Ally Issues
13:26 - MSI Claw Hardware Comparison
15:19 - NEW Benchmark: Handheld Battery Life vs. FPS Comparison
17:57 - 2D Gaming Battery Life Comparison: Deck, Ally, Claw, Go
19:04 - Gaming Benchmark Methodology & Settings
20:01 - Resident Evil 4 Gaming Benchmarks
20:50 - Absolutely Terrible Frametime Pacing on MSI Claw A1M
21:29 - 1080p Resident Evil 4 Benchmarks
22:01 - Cyberpunk Benchmarks
24:06 - 1080p Cyberpunk Benchmarks
24:35 - F1 2023 Benchmarks (720p)
25:05 - RDR2 Benchmarks (720p & 1080p)
25:34 - Baldur's Gate 3 & Dying Light 2 Tests
26:11 - Charge Speed Benchmarks (Handheld Gaming PCs)
27:11 - Thermal Throttling Under CPU Load
28:47 - Conclusion: Best Handheld Gaming PCs
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Steve Burke: Host, Writing, Testing, Video Editing
Patrick Lathan: Testing, Writing
Vitalii Makhnovets: Camera
Tim Phetdara: Camera, Video Editing
Maybe time to make a playlist for handheld reviews to make them easier to navigate. In the meantime, check out our other recent ones below! These benchmarks are a huge effort and we often buy the hardware tested and invest weeks of testing time to bring you independent reviews. Help support us by buying one of our PC component wireframe mouse mats! store.gamersnexus.net/products/gn-wireframe-mouse-mat (or shirts, glassware, and PC build mats on the store!) Lenovo Legion Go review & in-depth testing: kzhead.info/sun/fJdwndyke6OCpaM/bejne.html Steam Deck OLED review: kzhead.info/sun/mMudhpSGg6GCYJs/bejne.html
Maybe next time don't take the Intel funding deal, MSI!
Hope you do the Orange Pi Neo when it comes out.
I genuinely believe msi only made this because Intel was willing to subsidise them chips for half price. Or Intel approached .si with the idea to get some market share
Any reason you don't include display details such as colour accuracy and peak brightness in these reviews?
Waiting for the Switch 2. I figure by the time it releases, they'll be tons of good first party games because it's been delayed so long. Not to mention, I seem to have more fun playing a "kiddie" Mario type of game than ARPGs, Survival games, etc.....
"No, no need to delay and give us a golden sample; I'll buy one in Taiwan and use it personally on the 14 hour flight back" "Oh my god"
This is hysterical😄
What a boss
When the vendor forgets Steve travels.
Gold 😂😂😂😂
LMAO yeah this exact thing was setting off alarm bells in my head. They definitely don't have a lot of confidence in their own product, at least the ones the general public is getting.
TLDR - "There's no reason to settle for good enough when better is cheaper" - Steve, GamersNexus
Totally agree!! This channel has put so many good decisions under my desk its not even funny. Solid thanks and appreciation to Steve and team. You guys ROCK!!
The sentence is good, but really, nothing about the Claw seems "good enough" - it's unreliable, stuttery, has power issues, doesn't feel well in terms of being a handheld. To me, that spells "bad", not "good enough".
This is my dating strategy
@@1samm1 yeah, most of these problems being from it using a intel processor to be honest. intel shouldn't have entered this market, nobody else is going to use their processors for this. slow, hot, takes too much wattage to get the same performance as AMD cpu's, which is why as mentioned, it runs hot. and I doubt they'll give software tweaks of any kind to improve efficiency at lower wattages.
Funny, when i made that same exact quote in 2017 everyone called me an AMD shill
Store Clerk: Why would you buy one? Steve: My job is to become disappointed.
Hahahahaha
LMAO. Likely what went unsaid.
Thinking the claw makes it on this year's Disappointment shirt!
Having to buy a separate $80 dock and then recommend a 100w charger too to update the bios is WILD.
Yeah that is Crazy
Actually maniac
Reminds me of an Acer laptop I bought that advertised dual drive bays. The second one didn't come with the required metal mounting bracket. They wanted you to pay another $40+ for that tiny scrap of metal to use that second bay. I never bought an Acer product again.
Plus chargers usually don't come with cables, so you have to buy a 100W Type C-Type C cable too... smh
@@p5eudo883 Oh yeah! I had a model with that too, it was a 17" model! Also when I really evaluated to buy it, it was nowhere to be found like one year after release. That and other multiple warranty issues made me avoiding Acer like plague.
I see MSI trying to claw back out of the grave that Steve put them in before.
oooooooof
A company I will never, ever make the mistake of buying from again with their borderline, if not flat out, malware of a rgb control software
@@GamersNexus do you think they will ask you to take the video down again?
tbf, they dug that grave themselves. Steve just helped with the burying
@@Yeeted-115 at this point with the platform Gamers Nexus has NOW and the fact that GN will absolutely take it public and call them out, I think it's a no lol
Thanks, Steve
Back to you, Steve.
You can literally see it!
Boring, back to you Steve.
Back to you all!
Thanks Steve.
I remember when the Steam Deck came out everyone was yelling and screaming how it would flop with its horrible battery life... then the competition came out, and all those same people don't seem to care about battery life any more.
I have played on a lot of handhelds. 8 hour battery life is a good sweet spot. 1-3 hours is awful for a handheld. For a gaming laptop, it's not bad.
@@gamingguru2k6 I mean it depends on what youre playing but yeah 1-3 hours is terrible, but playing in bed and not my desk is a good trade off
It's kinda just a fundamental thing with needing to use x86 architecture. ARM translation layers are getting better and better though. Hope one day they'll get that critical mass of compatibility like Proton did recently where it's easily usable for most people.
literally no one said the steam deck was going to flop
People complained about the Switch's unacceptable battery life and unwieldy form factor in 2017 and now its praised as the gold standard for size and battery life... I miss handhelds like the PSVita which can actually fit in your pocket and last at least 8 hours. What we have now would be considered 'luggables'
Steve, I just want to commend you and give upmost respect. I've been following your work since way back when you released blog posts about RAM timings/frequency. And to this day, you are doing unbiased reviews and keeping your integrity, in an era where everyone else sold out. That doesn't have a price tag, it's priceless.
Wow! That's a long time. Thanks for sticking with us for so long! I like to think our style hasn't changed much.
Now I don't wanna get my claws on it anymore. :(
That :( actually feels sad...
bazinga!
@@harryshuman9637r/foundtheredditor
It's from MSI, I wouldn't have anyway.
@@GamersNexus Of course, I wanted a Claw in my claws. :(
Steve whipping out Mandarin like its NOTHING
Over a billion people whip out Mandarin like it's* NOTHING. (it's = it is. Its is possessive.)
@tim3172 someone learning a second language as an adult should always be commended. It ain't easy. Especially going from a Germanic language to an Eastern one. Very difficult.
@@tim3172Only bc the CCP is made speaking Cantonese illegal.
@@tim3172 You're going to be a lot happier and a lot less publicly mocked and ridiculed when you figure out the difference between KZhead comments and the essays you have to write for your middle school English class, boo.
@@Avendesora Or you just be literate.
Valve: Does nothing, competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot. What's that called?
Hmm. I vote for, "schadenfreude".
The funny thing about Valve, is that they are exceedingly competent. They’re not always the best at everything, but they’re good at everything and excel in a few areas.
Just Valve doing what it does best lol.
own goal
How the fuck did Valve do it?? Like every single handheld release is a steam Deck advertisement. Crazy.
Not using Windows, that's most of it
Not butchering battery life to keep chasing bigger numbers.
@@datguy8296 Absolutely, I think the most high impact decision is to make a balanced spec sheet, components that make sense for each other is more important than one of them being the best
Absolute consistency at any cost. By being inoffensively average so well that it may as well be a slab of marble when looking at the variarion in performance
By targeting xbox 360 games
It shows Valve did some strange magic in creating the Steam Deck. The device isn't perfect, but the Deck is still ahead of the game.
The approach is similar to apples. They have control over the hardware and the software so they can optimize for the steam decks specific hardware and get the best performance for it
@aruce9 I respect that approach. Plus, the OS for the Steam Deck was optimized well. Windows 11 is another story.
@aruce9 I mean msi, lenovo and asus have their own software to make windows usable. Even tho they can't teak windows they can make it usuable with good software so at some extend the approach is similar enough to Apple's.
@@DaleonM4 Yeah but that doesnt optimize the garbage windows is. If anything tht software is more overhead.
It’s a great approach for this type of device and I think the incredibly consistent performance and frame times is a testament to that. God battery life, stable performance, slick UI. Deck rocks
I like the icons for showing how you acquired it. Love this channel!
Thank you! Working on a small update for those soon too to improve readability on that text. Needs a drop shadow or something!
@@GamersNexusyou are just a treasure ❤
What icons? I missed them and am curious now
@@Lolwutfordawin 0:25 bottom left
@@GamersNexus TBH, I would have just simplified it to a flat icon with just the text in it, then add some win 7-ese BG/ drop shadow. And to show which kind it was chosen a different colour from the rest. Fit in a lot better than a Skeuomorphic-ish design out of a budget radio replacement with screen/ Android Auto/ CarPlay, IMO
I must have missed it in a previous episode because nobody seems to be commenting about it, but Steve apparently speaks chineese well enough to have a conversation with the store clerk and that's kind of impressive.
He learned it years ago for trips to Taiwan and greater Taiwan.
I believe he used it during the Li Lian factory tour vid
"We won't send you one." "Okay, then we'll buy one." "I was not expecting that."
Lol i love that ...the store assistant was honest, here he would avoid answering the question to avoid embarrassing you / put you off buying
As if employees get paid enough here to lie. If you are friendly, a lot of times they will talk to you just like this.
@@krknife yes a minimum wage person could probably get fired for being honset
I didn't know Steve spoke Mandarin. Nice
crazy, right!?
i didnt know too, that is amazing
Soon enough, he'll be elected next president of Taiwan. Guys a legend.
Yeah he's spoken it for years now. You can see it in a few vids
He’s commented on Chinese language and culture KZhead channels before, it’s weird seeing Steve out in the wild
Nothing beats the accuracy the steam deck track pad offers. Surprised to see no one implement something similar.
The Legion Go and upcoming Orange Pi Neo both have touchpads. But yeah, the touchpads on the Steam Deck are great.
A pc should definetely have a way to properly emulate a mouse. The ROG Ally missing the touchpads is a major dealbreaker.
@@cameronbosch1213 I've only seen the Legion in videos so my opinion is unfounded but it just *looks* like the right hand trackpad is way too far out of the way to be comfy to use casually or on a moment's notice. Also it's just the one pad right? I've actually gotten a lot of mileage out of having two
@@uglybad4 Same here, which is why I really like the Steam Deck.
Yeah, the track pads on the Steam Deck are a must for sure, and I use the right one for when I play a first person game. It's kinda weird that the other systems haven't implemented them yet
"I've seen it, heard of it, but never saw anyone buying it, you are the first!" Wow thanks Steve!!!
When the promotional material focused on the hardware like core count and stuff 100% they’re trying to cover up bigger issues. Thanks for being the sacrificial lamb, Steve.
It's pretty funny how so many of the handhelds show off their beefed up CPUs but the reason the Steam Deck is giving such stable performance is because they specifically went with a device that cut back the CPU a bit to give the GPU more headroom. It's given them super consistent performance and far better battery life (since the CPU isn't eating extra power for no reason).
@@LanceThumping Yeah, anyone who's already into pc gaming knows how much more important the GPU is. Marketing is trying to fool people who don't know better.
Thanks Steve, this video helped motivate me to sell my 256Gb LCD Steam Deck on FB marketplace so I can upgrade to the most expensive OLED Steam Deck for less than $400. When I consider how much use I got out of my OG Steam Deck + how good the condition was when I sold it (w/ case & original charging cable) I think you helped one person upgrade their handheld hobby for "cheap" & helped someone else get into the market for less with a high quality pre-owned handheld.
That's awesome that these videos are helping with buying decisions! Hope the new owner knows they're getting a deal with a used device!
This is awesome to read. I’ve also found that Valve generally puts in a lot more effort and polish. Their customer support is also honestly excellent. Got a hardware problem even out of warranty? No problem, they’ll sent you a new unit (thanks Gabe ❤)
@@GamersNexusThey always do! I switched to arc recently due to your followups
Last week I bought my mint condition 1tb LCD deck for £200. This thing is amazing. I only realised my expectations were unrealistic (forgetting about the whole windows/Linux thing) after exploring using non-steam launchers, and even then, the deck exceeds my expectations up via proton.
How much did you get for it I want to sell mine as well that OLED been teasing me
I'm so glad you guys have done all this handheld testing. I picked up both versions of the deck over time and I've really enjoyed them both.
You know it's bad when a Chinese salesman tells you "no one has bought one"
The battery life on these handhelds is nostalgic. It reminds me of the Game Gear.
Ha yes the good old day. I remember getting my gear on christmas and the dread asking for batteries after a few hours 😂 Still what a machine, I still remember how amazed me and my brother were by the backlit color screen. Wish I still had it even if it would certainly not run anymore.
@thierryfaquet7405 its so insane that that thing took SIX batteries! And not rechargeable!
Thats what happens when you feel like you NEED the most powerfull APU avaible in these things. The SteamDeck so far is the only one with good battery life.
@@Zaquerooni yeah my mother was quite smart and got us the little power supply. We played sitting on the ground near a socket 😂 cause the cable wasn’t that long (wtf sega)
@@ZaquerooniBut there were rechargeable packs that worked great.
the surprise on Steve's face when Anthropometry turned out to be a real thing lol
Thanks for including the Z1 in these tests! It is much more relevant after the recent price cut at Best Buy.
Microelectronics giants still cannot beat the digital shop.
The styling of the Claw reminds me of bootleg handhelds you see as props in mid-tier games..
The D-Pad Just Looks so ugly that's exactly where my eyes focus when I look at that
@@VSMOKE1 To me it's the whole thing, just looks so generic and cheap.
Thanks for all the great coverage of the handheld side.
Really appreciate the honesty for the community. You guys are incredible.
The steam deck's 1% is so much better than the rest. I'm not interested in a handheld but if I was I would get the OLED deck for sure.
Right seems like a no brainer, some of those 1s are awful.
It's Windows. Throw Bazzite (SteamOS) onto the Legion Go, which I did last month, or the Ally and the 1%'s are the same.
It's just some of the gam compatibility
Likely to be a OS thing.
@@meneldalIt's also a RAM thing. The Steam Deck has over twice the memory bandwidth of the Ally.
Hey, look at the bright side -- with that fan noise, you can play Metro with maximum immersion.
Unless of course the thing's nuclear and at higher power modes the internal geiger counter kicks in to warn you.
Thank you Steve as someone who was in the market for one of these handheld gaming I relied heavily on Gamernexus videos as a way to compare the ROG ally and the SteamDeck. to make a decision on which one I wanted to go with. Keep putting out your informative and unbiased content.
Thank you! What'd you end up choosing?
I’m now so desperate to know what handheld shoelesshobo7744 decided to buy it’s unreal.
@@GamersNexus I ended up chosing the SteamDeck OLED over the Ally. While I did notice the Ally had much better performance when in its performance mode I am mainly buying the thing for being able to play smaller titles on the go so for the extra cost it seemed like wasted potential I was also worried that to be getting those FPS I am sacrificing battery longevity. The wait time however is probably going to be a killer now though as I could have had a ROG Ally in hand today versus having to put in an order for the SteamDeck OLED which may have swayed my decision had I considered it prior to ordering. 😆
@@shoelesshobo7744 deck oled is a great choice, i bought mine on release day and it has not let me down.
Man I dunno. Kinda new to Gamer Nexus and Im laughing way to much at these reviews than I should. Keep the banter/bits up. I love it, haha.
the more and more times I see any review of the MSI Claw it just seems like Intel wanted a "handheld gaming device" to please some one at the board and MSI was the only idiot that agreed to build one. Then both parties just shrugged and said "I mean we did the minimum viable product and left it in the dust day -1 on release.
You know, that initial interaction with MSI.... that screams alarm. 29:20 I have been following you for a bit.... I didn't think that I would EVER hear you say something like that in a review. Your right, but it is unexpected.
Yeah the fact they basically panicked when Steve told them "no problem I'm buying one now". And the fact the one they sent was altered and not the same as a out of the box one would be just isn't a good look.
@@sean8102 That's just sad at this point. They should know that GN has both the means and willingness to go out of their own ways to get their hands on retail hardware. Don't they have a way to actually disguise the golden sample properly?
Did you timestamp that right? Not caring about the specifics of framerate is what you are talking about?
@@greasebob Yeah.
I had no idea you speak Chinese! I also speak, though I'm a few years out of practice at this point. I got by BA in Mandarin and lived deep in central China for a year a while ago, which was a wild and eye-opening experience.
12:00 nice job having the G.O.A.T for games in this clip
I am amazed to see how well the steamdeck holds up. The weakest of them all by a decent margin, but the over all design, the software special sauce is keeping it more than viable.
I definitely want to buy a Steam Deck OLED. If ASUS Ally had OLED I might consider it as I plan to run my games from GOG on it and would love that extra oomph on the emulation end. Even for the sound setup the Non-Z Extreme might be worth buying and adding a OLED screen mod if one comes.
@@XVa-uj8mOn the Deck, Heroic Launcher has GOG integration, and most emulators are both easily available and there are also utilities for directly integrating your emulated games (and GOG games) directly into the Deck's launcher. Even with third-party systems like that, it's amazing how nicely the Deck is integrated.
@@OmniUni If it requires Galaxy I don't use that and never will.
Steam deck has lower resoultion.
@@XVa-uj8mit doesn’t require galaxy. You can install and run any GOG game using proton.
Yoo let’s gooo! I myself hated the claw and had so many games fail to launch or crash. The 1% lows were terrible and the idle ram usage was insane. I had so many issues with the devices buttons being to hard to press like the d-pad and shoulder buttons. The backplate appeared to be very vented but ended up not being fully vented like the pictures appear. I’m very disappointed with msi. They should have consulted handheld experts and done more testing in the background in the hands of real gamers. We could have easily helped them. Also the temp monitor … why didn’t it have one the price to performance is insulting also. Lol. 😂 thanks Steve thank you so much for being honest!!! So many people seemed scared and hesitant to speak the truth on the claw and kept misleading people into thinking it was hopeful or useful. I saw some people cherry pick benchmarks and games and not show 1% lows or mention any issues at all.
Omg Steve your Mandarin is impeccable!
Yep, let's all wait for that 70% off sticker on the claw. Then I'd buy one.
I would love to see a comparison between the Taiwan and MSI review unit
Would love to see how the MSI sent one performed
same like there's a cat clawing at the bag's door rn
He doesn't do a comparison? That's disappointing.
@@honeybadger6275 yea would love if they just added the “msi sample model” lol
I would also like to know how the golden sample compared.
Needs to be done. The people need the truth.
Great work as usual, thanks!
Kudos to actually showing the support sites and the traffic and response there is on it! Since some gadgets rely heavily on community support, it has become a big factor for me. *I would prefer a slower or worst product when it has the better community or official support!*
Damn, Steve, new respect for you knowing Mandarin tf!
I almost waited for this, and I'm SO happy I went with the SD-OLED instead.
I don't know how the Steam Deck OLED perform compared to the LCD version. But my experience on the LCD version is that you gain A LOT of battery with minimal performance loss when going from 15W to somewhere around 8-12W. (where the APU is most efficient). This is the main reason why I feel the Steam Deck is leagues ahead of the competition as it succeeds in its mission of being a portable device.
Rog Ally has been a delight so far, minus few "unable to update" win11 issues. It's going to replace my wife's old laptop soon, but finding a good dock (in my country) is difficult and Asus eGPU prices are out of the line.
That's why they went with a proprietary cable so you won't use any egpu of your choice. Very scummy that's why I went with the legion go and it works like a charm.
Legion go is very expensive outside the US, the price makes it very unattractive. At my side the go costs $200 more.
@@fuentesjuanjose90 how much did xi Jinping pay you?
Especially on efficiency, the Steam Deck is still impressive. It really shows what's possible if you optimize the OS for the hardware **and** dumping all the windows overhead. It's all just so well balanced, the low resolution screen is of course kinda a bummer in some ways, but you'd probably not get that great efficiency otherwise and it's still enough at the formfactor.
Hardware compatibility is usually a big issue for Linux laptops. It's common for Windows to best much lighter Linux distributions on battery life. Pairing the Steam Deck's OS and hardware is probably a big part of why it performs so well.
Honestly, the screen (especially the OLED) looks absolutely amazing and I don't need 1080p out of my five inch screen.
It's the chip and less on the OS. Switching to Bazzite still has the Deck winning by quite a margin because the chip is more efficient. There's a reason valve had AMD make a custom chip and didn't use a modified laptop chip like the Z1 and Z1X
Windows 10/11 doesn't do handhelds any favours, but a lot of the problem is the hardware - the Ryzen Z1 (Extreme) SoC could be a lot more optimised than it is for handheld use - though AMD market it for this use it is spun off a general purpose mobile design and not the most power efficient, the GPU especially has relatively high idle wattage.
@@crestofhonor2349 Well, the Z1X and Z1 are also custom chips, it's not like the Steam Deck's chip is mich more custom than that. In fact it's likely a repurposed VR chip, so it's not like Valve had "AMD make it", it's that AMD had a lot of chips and Valve could get them for cheap. Most of its advantages are down to Zen 2, everything else stems from good hardware choices, the firmware and the OS. And yes that includes the 800p panel, no RGB lighting and more, which makes soo much more sense for something that needs to be efficient. There's a reason Valve didn't go for the more powerful Z1X, they explicitly said that they want more efficiency from the processor before they upgrade anything and they won't trade performance for battery life. All the other handhelds try to market themselves with higher performance, higher resolution screens, more Features and RGB, but Valve has understood the game and the went full on efficiency and UI/UX and the users seems to agree with them.
I'm just happy as a clam with my OG Steam Deck, thank you very much.
At high tide or low tide? 🤔
Ugh. Sometimes I miss being able to do stuff easily outside of steam but I always appreciate the simplicity of the steam deck. It's been a great companion since going full mobile.
eyyyyy Brew Barons! that game has looked interesting to me and had been planning on playing it, indeed! cool to see super niche games be mentioned anywhere.
I thoroughly enjoyed your actual real life gaming experience on the plane. You should do this for every handheld review! Keep up the great work guys! 👍🏽
Now i see why i heard about this console some time ago but it went Quiet. Thanks for the testing. Keep up the excelent work guys.
Love the annual/biannual MSI special from GN, massive entertainment
massive review, thank you
If not MSI or Asus's incompetency is shown here, then Windows 11's shortcomings in the handheld space sure is another spectacle to behold...
Yeah, Windows is the main user experience drawback of all of these handhelds. Steam OS on the Steam Deck is like next generation in user experience compared to Windows.
Damn. Almost 100 users trying to fix the broken.
LOVE your work folks!
I've owned one MSI product ever, about 4 years ago. I only owned it about a week, then returned it due to several defects. The primary defect was in their support department. Thanks for reassuring me they still deserve a spot on my blacklist.
I really like their motherboards. I think they have a good record
I've never had an issue with their GPU's.
In fairness, Asus support is also terrible. I haven't had to get support from lenovo so I'm not sure about them. Looking at this review, I think the only valid answer is a valve steam deck. It has battery life and the screen actually makes sense for a device like this. 120hz to 144hz refresh is silly when the devices are in the 20-60 fps range.
@@coochie8670 In europe their GPUs have been good to me, i'm on a first gen 3090 gaming X, no issues. Haven't tried any of their monitors or handhelds because I know it's different HQs/teams here same as the reason they're unreliable in the US for GPUs apparently.
@SyncF I live in the US, and have had an MSI branded 1080, and now a 4070, no issues. Maybe i just got lucky with the silicone lottery.
Thats weird about your ally mine has none of those Defects, bought it at best buy on sep 2023 and still kicking amazingly good, especially with all the updates
$800 is too much for something that doesn't perform as well as the Legion Go. I don't think the Claw is going to sell very well because it's neither as good as a Legion Go or as cheap as a Steam deck which makes it really undesirable for both sides of the market. I would steer clear from this handheld, it's going to get phased out and become unsupported.
And the ASUS Ally and Steamdeck are cheaper if you don't want a handheld that is Chinese owned and likely put a backdoor in the UEFI for the CCP.
@@XVa-uj8m dude MSI is Taiwanese... just like ASUS... And Taiwan ain't China. Plus the info is literal google away
@@PrograError Huh? I was talking about Lenovo.
Chart suggestion: a scatterplot FPS vs battery life. That should show efficiency outliers well, as they would stick out to the top right of the chart, and it would remove the need to put FPS data in the line labels at 15:47
Hey steve, will there be reviews for the dark base 701 and or the shadow base 800?
I almost bought a Legion Go. After all these reviews I wait for the next generation. Thank you for the excellent content Steve & Team!!!!!
Rumours suggest there will be an Ally 2 either late in 2024 or early in 2025, which is what I'm currently waiting for. AMD has their new Strix Point APUs coming soon too, I'm not sure when they're supposed to launch exactly, but Computex is not far off, so I would not be surprised if we get more news on them then.
got the deck, rog ally and legion go. legion is my fav. not as weird with its windows jank like the rog ally is. and larger screen than it and the deck.
Love my Legion, use it docked as a desktop at my girlfriends place. Using the screen combined with either Moonlight or GeForce Now makes it an easy choice out of the 3.
I'll wait for the next gen leap too, still stick with my ol switch
@@MorkaiAUHopefully ASUS adds touchpads, currently the only handheld with a current gen chip and dual touchpads I'm aware of is the Ayaneo Kun, which obviously has its own issues
Thanks Steve!
Thank you so much Steve for these reviews. I know that as someone who has a partner who sometimes can't access a computer easily, the ability to play their games on a portable device has been very helpful. I hope that competition really drives these handhelds to be better- so far we've been very happy with the steam deck, but it's good to know there's no real reason to switch up quite yet.
Steve: *pain* is a great summary of the experience with the Claw.
It's interesting to see how hampered the Claw is by its tighter power envelope, given how comparatively strong the Arc iGPs' performance was in larger, less restricted mobile devices. Still, as a first gen adopter of Arc, I can be humble and acknowledge that Alchemist had and still has a lot of rough edges that need ironing out, and while it's interesting to see Intel making a showing in this market, MSI needed to go a lot more aggressive with the pricing on this to justify its existence. Edit: Wow this doesn't even seem to be a power envelope thing. What did you do MSI??? How do you mess it up this bad?
msi mess up alot both in build quality and code see toms hardware forums for how many msi boards you can see with issues lol.
@@jamv2122 Asus motherboards blow up, Gigabyte motherboards are a security risk, ASRock has absolute dogshit warranty, the list goes on. There's not really any good manufacturers, so I try not to have brand loyalty _or_ disloyalty, but just judge things on a case by case basis. AND OH BOY THIS THING'S ONE HELL OF A CASE. It's got the bones of a solid handheld, but it drops the ball in so many easily avoidable ways. The pricing needed to be far more aggressive than it is, as the most important thing, and I'd be surprised if these aren't on extreme fire sale in under two years.
Dude it has 8CUs…Intel stuck an ultra book cpu in a handheld. If they wanted an actual gaming chip they would of only had the 6 pcores and more GPU, don’t waste die space on e cores and super e cores and BS AI
@@jamv2122 when it finally happens to me, I guess I won't be surprised, but two PC builds using MSI mobos and GPUs and I've had no issues at all. My 3080 has handled everything really well with a moderate undervolt, is quiet, etc. I'll keep buying from them until I have an issue that customer service can't or won't remedy.
@@radugrigorasactually some e cores are good for gaming. Not for actually running the game per say, but running background tasks like the screen they end up being more efficient which is good for battery life. Super e cores are also not even used except when idling which increases battery life.
I think we are mature now and have more info showing that having high frame rate is only one part of the overall experience when playing vgs. A stable framerate is the absolute key to great experiences. I have noticed stutters in games before but never really stopped to know why. Didnt think anything of it, unaware because that seemed to be part of the deal with gameplay. Now I have a better understanding of what this stuff means. Especially when playing certain games on the switch and how terrible those experiences are. I am glad frametime and other new terms of info explaining what is happening with hardware/software are being added to your overall breakdowns when it comes to devices and gameplay. Huge fan of it. Very informative. Your one of the best. Keep it up.
Seeing the bars so close together for the Deck and knowing how consistent that makes it's experience is shocking. It's the oldest but still one of the best. Glad I took the plunge.
I like how you included FPS in the battery benchmark, it would be similarly helpful to include approx battery life in the gaming benchmark for each (as it applies)
Even though I had low expectations, I had high hopes that it would be competitive with the other handhelds. Too bad it seems to just be about 2x more expensive than it should be.
I'm curious if there would have been any performance difference between the one you bought and the one they sent you. If they changed something and what the effect of those changes was.
Nice vid. How much do you think it costs to review the things u review
Wasn't expecting to see The Brew Barons show up at 29:17, but I'm certainly happy I did!
Lol, the MSI naming convention section was gold.
Why? As someone who once her a brand new MSI X570 motherboard catch fire on first power on, MSI, that's why. Everything about this screams that it's a product MSI wasn't planning to make, but then saw the success of ASUS and some executive said "Get one of these done! You have 6 months!"
And now ASUS has crapped the bed with its borderline scam after-sales support, so they’re *both* bad, but for different reasons.
Thanks for making the video, after so many years of watching your content, and seeing that you actually use the products that you review in real environments and situations, I can trust your opinions and data obtained from the tests you do, which after seeing this video I am going to stay far away from the Claw, and I can really appreciate that as I was considering in getting one. If I may be so bold to ask a favor is there any chance you have a way to obtain an AYANEO Flip DS and test it? I am really interested in purchasing the 64GB RAM version as after watching the video by Retro Game Corps, I am somewhat convinced that it is the handheld PC that I have always been waiting for, but if you did make a video on it then I could trust your opinion and finally come to a decision.
Good job speaking Mandarin, your handled tones pretty well.
As someone who bought a Legion go a month ago... I feel better about not waiting for this!
I would love a comparison between the unit you bought and the review sample
I love the new PC handheld market. Stoked to see the upcoming 2. gen devices
Sick of AI being strapped to literally everything in this desperate corpo world of "less humans but more buzzwords"
It's basically the crypto of the NFTs… everything and anything that was not labelled AI but resembles “AI” get AI'd
AI is about to hit mainstream marketing and be a buzzword used everywhere to wow people with too much money and not enough brain. Our space is only the beginning.
You'd rather have humans strapped to the products? 🤪
This just illustrates what a fantastic job Valve did with the SD, I never had to worry about what Valve was going to deliver.
Got the Asus ROG Ally yesterday. I love it, it’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a handheld gaming console. The MSI claw was on display there and I couldn’t believe how similar it was to the ASUS for an extra 400$
Most honest tech channel on the web. Integrity at its finest!
Looks like I'll wait for the Steam Deck 2
Enjoy waiting 2 years then 😅
@@Sebbz eh time flies my friend
@@Sebbz 2 years? Thats hella generous, considering the Index is near 5 years old. I'd say maybe 4 to 6 years before Steam Deck 2 tbh, the tech needs to be there for a big leap in performence to make it worth it and we arent quite there yet.
I would say 2026 earliest as they just refreshed the OG steam deck with the OLED model and seems to be selling well and just enough of an upgrade to not rush out another model. There should be a more powerful AMD APU with 18 Cu’s that Valve can use and probably use only 16 of those along with a Zen 4 or 5 cpu and get it to 15 watts
@@denniia There are rumours of a new Valve VR set. But I think the Deck 2 would be something different because it needs the performance to make a notabel improvement. I think the 4 to 6 years was accurate for when the Deck first launched, but time has since passed. I think we're looking at about another 2-3 years in reality because it'll need to compete with other handhelds and it is already losing in terms of performance, give it another 3 years and it'll be a laughing stock. The Ally is able to push 30W and in some games hit double the performance. If Valve gets an APU in 3 years, they could easily have a 100% performance increase at the same TDP. Put in USB4 or 5 for an eGPU support and 32GB RAM and it'd be a PC killer for many.
you should had still tested the unit they sent you anyway just to compare and see if they did try to alter some thing to make it perform better before sending it to you...
Steve speaking Mandaring is something I totally didn't expect. That's really cool
*Chinese the language is called Chinese, mate (even though there are lots of regional dialects)
@@PrograError ah, okay. Thanks, dude.
Unrelated but Steve continues to be one of the best tech voices on KZhead. They always feel so casual, yet informative, and very easy to listen to!
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@@christaylor86 They. Them. Ooooh spooky 👻
@@XPISigmaArt He
Seeing how clumsy and unresponsive even something as basic as menu navigation is, I'm glad I'm stuck with a steam deck, lol!
Seems like the only selling point for these non-Steam Deck handheld PCs is that they can run the latest live service garbage without having to worry about anti-cheat. It's a shame that due to Windows and the lack of a trackpad (on most of them), you're dealing with 6,000 new issues that don't exist on the Deck.
Windows should be considered malware on end user devices at this point.
I seriously haven't needed the trackpad at all on my ally. and if I ever were to (since it still has a touch screen) I would 100% use a mouse.
@@alen2937 Track pads aren't just for mouse. You can create radial menus for each that can be any hotkey/macro you want. Or you can make them into a Dpad, joystick, mouse, pretty much anything. Hell I can turn the right one into xyab and program a full combo for street fighter into each button if I wanted. Steam input is like cheating lol.
Quality content 👌 as usual
There's a surprising fix for the SD card slot coming from reddit, Next to it is a PPTC fuse (looks similar to a smd resistor) which needs reflowing
I love that haptic motor sound. Steam deck, great haptic feedback, nice and quiet. The Clawwww, sounds as if the motor is trying to get out.
What were they smoking at MSI my lord
I do not blame the motor, i'd want to get out aswell!
My deck actually had an issue with the left touch pad, it'd make a noticeable clicking noise when haptic. They fixed it through a software update! Love the deck