The MSI Claw is a Mess: Gaming Handheld Can't Compete | Review & Benchmarks

ew it's

squishy that lag right there on the

explosion oh

man MSI initially didn't want to send us

a review sample for its claw even though

it had launched in non us markets it's

just it wasn't available in the us at

the time so we had few options to get

one that's fine we I was flying to

Taiwan anyway so uh I replied and said

no worries I'll buy one and I did it was

$800 MSI immediately replied and said

wait a minute we'll send you one that

always makes us a little skeptical just

because our past with MSI indicates that

the company's General strategy for

things is to delay as long as possible

not sure if that's what was going on

here or not but uh I genuinely we're

we're skeptical it's happened a lot in

the past and it'll take a while for them

to cure that skepticism but it was

immediately apparent when in on that

stock was plentiful in home turf and in

fact MSI has a different problem than

not being able to send units out the

problem is uh the store clerk was

extremely confused why I would want to

buy

one you're

first and that is one of the most

popular PC stores if not the most

popular in taipe uh and they had had it

for about a month at that point so

that's not good news uh I asked what is

everyone buying and he said the Asus

Ally and if you look at

them they're really similar when we did

get the unit from MSI oddly that unit

the review sample had been tampered with

despite them saying it represent retail

it had a Windows account created already

it had games installed it had 3 Mark

traces left behind and none of this was

included in the outof boox version that

we bought the US device clearly had been

used and we never trust review Hardware

when it's been tampered with and it has

an operating system on it not

necessarily for malicious concerns

although for some companies that is also

a concern in this instance it was really

just a concern of has it been improved

somehow like by changing power profiles

by changing some bio settings something

we might not be aware of so uh we sh

that unit and we decided to use the one

that I bought instead for this review

and this was my first impression of the

device ew and our second impression was

the claw sounded like it was dying

except it's a

feature before that this video is

brought to you by lean Lee and the o1d

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retaining heavy support for fan mounts

Drive Mount locations and flexibility on

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cable storage on the backside to

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this with a unique vertical GPU Mount to

showcase the most expensive part in most

systems learn more at the link in the

description below Intel is rare among

handhelds it technically is out there

you can find it in the GPD you can find

it in some 1X Player devices but

generally speaking all the big names are

using AMD Solutions the 78 40u the 8840

U or the Z1 extreme all of which are

functionally the same chip MSI however

is selling three variants an ultra 7155

model with a 1 tab drive for $800 it's

what we bought the same but 512 GB for

$750 and an Ultra 5 135h model with a

512 GB drive for 700 bucks the $800

model is more expensive than the top

tier offering from valve that's 650 and

from Asus at 700 and Lenovo actually at

750 and that's just the MSRP for them

that's ignoring the sale prices MSI is

entering the competition against

powerful opponents that are already

slashing prices on first gen models and

open box units the Asus allly Z1

non-extreme can be had for 400 bucks now

and given that especially it's half the

price of the claw the others are all

cheaper than it the claw's performance

has to be indisputably strong

and it's not and we'll talk about that

in the review it's actually still pretty

interesting let's let's address the

obvious part first though it looks like

an ally could be coincidence but either

way the Ally was first to Market and it

makes this look and feel basically the

same there are small differences the

Allies grips flow into the back more

gradually the shape and positioning of

the claw rear buttons isn't as good and

these are subtle changes for the most

part the claw handle is exactly the same

as an ally except with a disgustingly

squishy bumper button that just sinks on

press it'd be like if you damped your

keyboard switch with

Jello for our money the cushy grips on

the deck and the legion go are more

comfortable than either despite the Ergo

gaming science of comfort achieving

Perfection through

anthropometry Define anthropometry

here's the definition of anthropometry

the scientific study of the measurements

and proportions of the human body

Perfection through that the Clause

weight is higher than that of an ally

670 G by our measurements versus 615 G

probably due to the claws larger cooler

which MSI calls the cooler boost

hyperflow Define cooler boost

hyperflow didn't find anything softwares

make or break for these devices so it's

time to move to that the inevitable

manufacturer front-end software on the

claw is called the MSI Center M and if

you're familiar with msi's recursive

acronym naming like the MSI me m a and

MPG where all the m stand for MSI and so

we have the MSI MSI performance gaming

where MSI stands for micar international

so it's actually the micar International

micar International performance gaming

then we can also assume that MSI Center

m is basically the MSI Center MSI MSI

really needs some more words that start

with M other than MSI MSI the UI is

Clumsy compared to the more mature

software from valve and Asus we ran into

problems immediately upon turning the

device on as well if you don't open the

software on boot opening the overlay for

the first time will bring up the main

window and trigger an interrupt once the

overlay is open tapping the B button

doesn't close it these are some really

basic things that you have to get right

on a handheld since it doesn't have a

normal mouse and keyboard normally we

also had some problems with the overlay

not intercepting clicks meaning that

menus behind the overlay would be

activated when in fact you are trying to

click on the interactive pop out overlay

in general the software doesn't respond

to input logically and when it does it

can be difficult to navigate and it

feels like it was retrofitted from a

desktop rather than built ground up for

a handheld device that has different

inputs the most important aspect of the

software though is the so-called user

scenario which is maybe indicative of

msi's other software problems because

the names are often nonsense or convey

little to no meaning to the user what

user scenario user mode actually does is

change the power profile these are

Extreme Performance or AKA performance

balanced super battery manual and AI

engine these profiles just set good old

Intel pl1 and pl2 values that we've

detailed in the past although they're

adjusted for this silicon we likeed that

the performance profile also offers the

option to individually customize fan

curves for each of the two fans which is

a great feature that MSI decided not to

logically apply anywhere else at all it

isn't available in any other power modes

again reinforcing a sort of half ass

approach that their developers can

probably navigate thoughtlessly but

actual users end up with an inconsistent

and unclear experience in fact even the

manual mode doesn't support fan curve

adjustment conversely manual offers the

ability to set pl1 and pl2 from 20 to 40

Watts on wall power and 20 to 35 Watts

on battery power but none of the others

offer this we'd like it if MSI unified

the software options more though we

secured an official table of the

predefined pl1 and pl2 values for each

power mode also visible through Hardware

info DC is battery power and AC is

connected to the charger and of the

predefined profiles performance changes

the most significantly based on whether

a charger is connected and it exceeds

the values that can be manually set

through the manual profile yet another

inconsistency in msis interface super

battery also disables the Clause RGB

lighting but that's a decision we agree

with if you're looking for help or

information like this it may have to

come to directly from MSI support if

they even have the answer MSI has three

resources the official guide the

official subreddit and the official

Forum the guide is moderately helpful

but the subreddit and the Forum are both

abandoned wastelands uh all of a month

after launch because nobody bought claws

apparently actually literally based on

our experience buying one as of this

writing the largest Ally subreddit has

70,000 members to the Clause 92 92 92

total it's not shorthand not

92,000

92 this of course isn't an indication of

success or quality but it's definitely

an indication of popularity even the

relatively Niche Legion go has a larger

community and that Community regularly

makes feature requests that are

sometimes impressively granted by the

software team but now we get to the

secret feature the number one guaranteed

sales generator right now it's two very

special letters strapped to a noun msi's

AI engine MSI says that it automatically

switches between profiles for three

things the power modes we just described

nimic audio and RGB lighting modes now

you might be thinking wait a minute

that's three simple options that could

be handled with a matrix and a lookup

table which would completely negate any

importance of AI and relegate it to

functionally a table

but moving on it seems like the idea is

that if you launch a game the device

will swap to appropriate Power Sound and

Lighting modes automatically we say

seems like because it isn't really clear

how or if it works or what working

properly might even mean Intel Graphics

Command Center was installed out of the

box but Intel Arc control was not even

on the review sample that MSI had

screwed around with and we decided not

to use even when updates are Del through

MSI Center M some of them just get

unceremoniously dumped into the

downloads folder this is uh expected

Behavior though for Center M for some

reason MSI has left display related

controls to Intel and Microsoft which

means that there is no battery saving

refresh rate cap available through MSI

Center M there is a bios function bios

appears to be a normal MSI laptop setup

but without any performance controls

beyond the ones accessible within the OS

it's definitely not as featur as the

goes by bios there's enough

functionality to navigate a Windows

install but that's about it that is

until you hit the secret right control

right shift left alt F2 key combo to

open up the real bios controls including

the ability to set ratios disable cores

or do anything else you'd normally do in

a desktop bios accessing the BIOS

already requires holding right bumper

and right trigger during boot so we're

not particularly happy to see that MSI

is hiding the actually useful functions

Beyond a second hidden key combo it's

not not supposed to be like an NES game

where you smash buttons on the start

screen and try to find Secrets this

should actually be obvious as for

control differences the claw comes with

hall effect joysticks out of the box

which is a plus but negated by those

bumpers we mentioned we suspect MSI is

using the exact same 7in 120 HZ variable

refresh IPS touchcreen on the claw

because even the bezels are precisely

the same size we measured them although

as a whole The Claw is approximately 0.5

CM taller and 1 cm wider we want good

competition for the Ally because the

Ally is becoming increasingly difficult

for us to recommend now arguably the Rog

Alli D1 extreme especially is still the

best choice among handhelds overall the

deck has a lot of strengths we've talked

about them at length now especially the

frame time pacing but generally speaking

the Alli z1x is extremely competitive

it's had big price drops on the Z1

non-extreme uh and all of that makes it

compelling in sort of the upper echelon

of them and in the budget class but

during our testing the Rog Ally for this

review had more problems than any other

device we worked with and that is

starting to become concerning because

it's been a trend for the Ally we had to

reset windows on the Z1 in order to get

any updates to install we already have a

defective thumb stick a rapidly

degrading battery and a broken micro SD

card slot unless we want to send it out

for warranty so let's look at the claws

Hardware all claw variants come with 16

GB of lpddr 56400 matched to the Ali and

the deol Leed and a 53w hour six cell

battery but only the top tier comes with

a 1 TB drive we generally prefer the 1

tby option so saving 50 bucks by

dropping to the 512 GB claw we think

isn't worth it disregarding the drive

size the Ultra 5 model might deserve

some consideration if it were

meaningfully discounted the CPU core

count is really the only meaningful

place you see big difference with a drop

from six PES 8 e cores and two LP e

cores with 22 threads total to 4 P cores

a e cores and two LP e cores but the GPU

component is almost the same between the

two models so with a big enough discount

the 135h could definitely become

interesting because on paper it's less

of a downgrade than the allly Z1 versus

the allly Z1 extreme or just the Z1

versus the Z1 extreme Parts in general

having a single port for charging and

for Io has proven extremely annoying on

both the deck and the Ally and we were

hugely appreciative of what Lenovo did

with the legion go which was the utterly

mindblowing revolutionary concept of

adding two USB ports and MSI proves our

own point about the USB thing MSI says

you'll need a powered Hub in order to

update BIOS they say updating bios

requires USB drive and a hub or docking

with an adapter connected MSI sells an

$80 Nest docking station with definitely

not Asus inspired p packaging but it

recommends upgrading to a 100 W charger

in order to use it one tiny feature

worth praising is the tactile bumps that

have been molded above the USB and the

micro SD card slots which we like

because it makes it easier to tell them

apart in a dark room our first set of

bench marks is for battery life and it

includes some normalized results where

we can look at either FPS normalized or

battery life sort of survivability

normalized The Claw is equipped with a

53w hour battery it's the largest we've

tested so far although it's essentially

tied with the deck Leed and the legion

go all automatic power saving features

like screen dimming were disabled for

testing for now we set a 50% screen

brightness however this is one of our

only uncontrolled variables in testing

since 50% can be different things on

different screens our future testing

includes nits normalization though so

that'll be pretty cool once we roll it

out this first chart is super

interesting we've added average FPS and

The Benchmark next to the devices and

then the battery in the bar remember

that this doesn't tell the full story of

course so we'll look at the lows and the

frame times later but it allows us to

start showing performance and battery

life at the same time since both are

critical this test uses F1 with the

frame rate cap disabled but resolution

enforced on all devices to the same we

have a chart with performance results

using the same settings coming up as

well and that'll give us a look at

efficiency this is super cool though

because as a data point we haven't seen

it discussed elsewhere too much the

Clause Asus z1x competition ran for 2.1

hours in silent at 38 FPS not much of a

performance Contender and 1.4 hours with

performance at 84 FPS average average

the Z1 performance and the claw balanced

are equals for battery life which means

that normalized for battery drain the

a1m is actually far superior in this

specific title its normalized Advantage

is around 50% here and it does have a

lot of problems but we'll talk with

those with the frame time pacing later

the heavier workload allowed the claw

power profiles to differentiate

themselves but even here there's only a

5 minute Improvement between performance

and balance they're just not that

different reducing profile the super

battery significantly extended the

claw's battery life up 35% from

performance and at nearly 2 hours but

that does come with a hit to FPS the

drop is from 84 fps to 68 between

balanced and super battery meaning that

balanced performs about 24% better for

FPS and more on that soon the ghost

power saving profile tops the chart but

at a basically unplayable frame time

consistency that makes it irrelevant the

more useful comparison is in performance

mode where it holds 109 FPS average at

.4 hours of Life The Deco LED as a chart

leader here up at 2.3 hours for 84 FPS

average normalized for FPS and this is

the really cool data the Alli z1x and

performance also held 84 FPS average so

they're the same there but at a reduced

1.4 hour battery that means the deck

OLED lasts 64% longer at the same FPS in

this very specific test and that's

pretty impressive and we can do a lot

more with this data in the future as we

expand it our next battery life test is

dead cells run at the native resolution

and vsync refresh rate for each device

this is intentional and it represents

normal use the Clause performance is

good among the high refresh devices

we've tested although there's no

specific Improvement between performance

and super battery modes the super

battery power limit is too high to show

a significant Advantage with this light

workload as compared to the AMD devices

which have stricter limits and that's

good here so Intel definitely could

improve because AMD can go lower on the

limitations and the performance and

balance results for MSI are within

variance of each other here the claw's

best time was 4.8 hours in this test

which gives it a real advantage of the

Allies Z1 X's best of 2.8 hours

obviously helped by the larger battery

because this test allows native

resolution and refresh the legion go is

disadvantaged and falls behind the Ally

however loses in a scenario closer to a

like for like and has the worst battery

life of all these devices the steamed de

OLED comes out on top by a huge margin

at 8.3 hours with its large battery and

efficient screen although it's

relatively low resolution and refresh

rate also benefited here and the same

applies for the deck LCD there's more to

it than all that though that's what the

gaming tests are for and that's what

we're getting into now so for gaming we

eliminate FPS caps we do not use any

variable refresh rate features that's

for measuring accurately and all tasks

were performed on battery power unless

otherwise listed using different

profiles the steam deck does not have

different Power profiles it's got

basically one thing it does uh and it

also does not benefit from being plugged

in while gaming so so that's how we test

these now important thing here is that

the words don't mean anything so when it

says performance that's a manufacturer

defined name for whatever their power

profile does so performance on for

example the legion go and the claw

they're not the same especially because

they're two completely different CPU and

GPU Solutions uh so you shouldn't be

looking at those likewise the actual

Power number so how AMD and Intel Define

TDP that's different uh but what we're

doing is showing you the mix of battery

and gaming to help with all of that

Resident Evil 4 was entitled frame

pacing issues that are difficult to

represent on a bar chart because of

their inconsistency and we'll look at a

frame time plot for that in a moment the

claw performance and balanced profiles

are tied for about 59 FPS average but

although the balanced in super battery

profiles appeared to have Superior lows

in reality the run-to-run variance was

so high that they end up just being sort

of unreliable in the lows altogether

they were equally stuttery in real life

you can't extract any meaning from these

lows because the singular spikes blow

out the averaging we'll look at that in

a second this instability overshadows

the fact that the claw is actually at

the top of the chart in terms of average

FPS surpassing the legion go and the

Ally z1x and actually out stripping the

deck OLED by as much as 31% from best

from the claw to worst of the deck but

none of that matters here's where it

gets really bad this is a frame time

plot we're representing frame time or

the frame to frame interval on the left

axis and then the frame counts on the

bottom in this instance the claw ran

into a seriously bad frame time Spike to

600 milliseconds and another nearing 400

milliseconds a 600 millisecond frame

time is clear as day to see and it feels

like a heavy stutter we can actually

simulate one really accurately in

postproduction so you can just see what

it feels like we'll put it on the screen

now and that is how long the pauses in

real play or matching it to the exact

600 millisecond window you're seeing in

this chart at 1080p the claw frame

pacing issues continue making it

difficult to get reliable results the

addition of a wall powered result pushes

the average FPS for the go and the allly

z1x to equal the claw but the top

results on the chart all level out

around 43 FPS the more stable pacing of

the non-claw handhelds make for a better

experience here regardless of the

overall averages highlighted by the 4

FPS balance to 0.1% low result which is

terrible and that is a particular

particularly nasty frame time Spike once

again maybe a different game will help

so cyber Punk we set each upscaling

method to an equivalent percent

upscaling from Source resolution that's

66% of the width and 66% of the height

in Intel AMD and Nvidia terminology

here's the chart cyberpunk 2077 was one

of the worst performing games we ran on

the claw relative to the rest of the

chart we saw consistent hitching that

persisted even when we exited the test

area unfortunately the frame time

inconsistency down at 3 FPS yes with

0.1% lows made the game unplayable in a

way that the overall 30 FPS average

doesn't reflect now we're showing this

up front we actually have an example on

the screen because this is what you can

expect from the claw some games will run

terribly or not at all the z1x handhelds

top the chart here led by the Ally Z1

X's 25 watt turbo mode at 59 FPS average

with the steam deck OLED demonstrating

its typically stable frame times and its

primary advantage which is frame time

pacing remember that for asus's turbo

mode will drastically shorten battery

life and in this instance you can expect

a sub 1H hour battery the more balanced

performance mode would put it at 41 FPS

average with a better battery time the

low power modes for the two allly

handhelds and the go land at the bottom

of the chart by a lawn shot these modes

aren't suitable for anything beyond 2D

gaming meanwhile the claw super battery

mode isn't much worse than its

performance or balanced modes if

anything MSI could cut the power further

here if the Intel part supported it but

super battery is the lowest power level

accessible through the UI matching the

minimum assured power for the 155h on

Arc not again not that Arc that's a

different one the Claus performance and

balanced modes are tied at about 30 FPS

average with the 5 wat power limit

increase not enough to make any kind of

difference here the Z1 non-extreme is

about half the price we paid for the

claw and its performance is roughly

equal to the claw's best result which is

embarrassing for msi's double the price

solution even more more embarrassing is

that the Ally the Z1 the cheap one non

extreme is blowing out the claw for

frame time pacing and that matters more

than just the average 1080p we drop the

low power profiles and ADD test with

wall power the MSI claw positioning

Remains the Same the bump to pl1 and pl2

from connecting the charger is relevant

to its performance in this test and the

average remains 27 FPS with the worst

lows on the entire chart they are

consistently inconsistent making for a

consistently bad experience this is in

contrast to devices like the legion go

and especially the Alli z1x both of

which gain some additional performance

when plugged in the deck doesn't benefit

an FPS from being plugged in everyone

2023 is up now these pair with our

thermal and battery test the claw is