MSI Claw hands-on: the Steam Deck rival with Intel inside

MSI simply introduced the Claw, a handheld Home windows gaming PC following the Steam Deck’s lead. It’s destined to problem the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go on the identical beginning value of $699 — solely this one has an Intel Core Extremely inside, which MSI claims is the clear winner over AMD in efficiency and battery life.

I simply obtained hands-on at CES 2024, and I can confidently let you know that as of proper now, it’s not possible to say whether or not it’s any good — that relies on efficiency and battery life, which aren’t ultimate. MSI is displaying off engineering samples right here at CES, ones that really feel like they want the months of tuning they’ll hopefully get earlier than a first-half 2024 launch.

Right here’s the excellent news: when you just like the Asus ROG Ally and need it have been simply extra snug and longer-lived, MSI might need you coated. The grips are larger and comfier than Asus, with out the overwhelming beefiness and dig-into-my-palms edges of the Lenovo Legion Go. In some ways, the Claw feels prefer it’s cribbed immediately from the ROG Ally, save for these grips: it’s equally formed, with related port placement (together with an SD card reader proper subsequent to a vent), near-identical button placement, and related display screen bezels surrounding the same 7-inch 120Hz 1080p IPS display screen.

The consumer interface feels lower from the identical fabric and equally wants creature comforts that didn’t come to the Ally for some time, like the power to map an Xbox button, and anti-deadzone to counteract joystick oversensitivity in some video games.

Importantly although, you get a 53Wh battery, which is bigger than the ROG Ally’s 40Wh pack and according to Lenovo and the Steam Deck OLED. And it’s obtained Corridor impact joysticks just like the Legion Go.

MSI says it would even embody the Ally’s greatest characteristic over the Deck and Legion Go: variable refresh price, which might make your complete Asus expertise smoother.

However easy just isn’t what I’m seeing from the Intel Core Extremely chip, no less than not but. The Intel Core Extremely-powered engineering samples MSI delivered to CES are a bit stuttery in gameplay, with a great deal of body spikes. The chip presently defaults to a 24W-27W TDP, which is greater than I anticipated from what’s supposedly a extra environment friendly chip than AMD’s. (Once more, engineering samples! Probably months earlier than launch!)

It actually isn’t aggressive with the Steam Deck at decrease wattage fairly but. Once I set it to the “Tremendous Battery Saver” 15W mode, like for like with the Deck, it struggled in an Murderer’s Creed Mirage benchmark even at 720p and lowest settings. I noticed a mean of simply 24fps amid large body drops.

Set your wattage, set your followers.

However like different Home windows handhelds, you do get turbo modes, too: as much as 35W on battery energy or 40W whereas plugged into the wall. Even the 27W efficiency mode gave me a mean 40fps at 720p and simply over 30fps common at 1080p in Mirage. And you’ll set your personal fan curves, map keys, and simply program as much as 12-key macros with per-key delays. And the Claw has Wi-Fi 7. Whereas an MSI rep says Home windows 11 might not formally assist Wi-Fi 7 till the second half of the yr, additionally they declare they noticed 4x the speeds in lab testing.

Oh, virtually forgot, this handheld has synthetic intelligence: you possibly can activate AI noise canceling, and there’s an allegedly AI-powered efficiency mode that makes use of the Intel chip’s NPU to dynamically alter the display screen backlight and chip energy, says a rep. I noticed chip wattage vary between 24W and 27W in Mirage once I turned it on, so it did appear to be doing one thing.

Regardless of the electrical energy it’s consuming proper now, MSI says we should always nonetheless see two hours of battery on a cost from demanding video games, with 4 hours from lighter fare and 5 or extra hours of video playback. That’s positively no more than I anticipate from the Deck OLED, but it surely hasn’t been a assure for Home windows handhelds. One rep says they’re already getting two hours of Forza 5, the place they’d see an hour from the Asus ROG Ally.

Whereas I can’t confirm that but, I did see the battery dip 25 % over half-hour of testing. The maths suggests I might need managed two hours if I stored going.

Hasty tradeshow images by Sean Hollister / The Verge