MSI Claw Review: Swing and a Miss
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ค. 2024
- The Claw is MSI's first foray into handheld PCs, and while they shot for the moon, their aim was more than a little off. Let's take a look at the good, bad, and ugly of this device and demonstrate why it can't compete with other handhelds on the market -- even against those that are significantly cheaper.
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MSI Claw impressions video: • MSI Claw: Exciting and...
MSI Claw emulation showcase: • Emulation on the MSI C...
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Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
02:09 how we got here
03:20 things I've learned about the Claw
06:14 the good things
10:31 the bad things
17:51 the ugly things
23:14 comparison with Deck and Ally
31:59 PC gaming and value summary
33:24 summary and conclusion
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#MSI #MSIclaw #handheldPC #SteamDeck #ROGally #pcgaming - เกม
not many reviewers actually spend time with a product and live with it in order to give a true objective review and i think thats why retro game corps is up there with the best if not THE best reviewer. Dude could be reviewing washing machines and i would still entirely trust the review because they are not rushed and are the results of weeks of living with the product. Thanks for putting that time in to make these reviews as honest as possible and i hope the channel just exponentially grows.
I absolutely agree. Some people grab a product and review it a few hours after launch. I appreciate the longer hold times on reviews to get a full depiction of how ownership of the product would be on a long term scale.
Yeah, this feels like a more expanded version of Gamers Nexus' review of the Claw. And that's a good thing.
Russ is a ex army man! Content from them tends to be very disciplined & well thought through. I enjoyed it too 🦅🇺🇸
Nah. This dude didn't wait for a year before reviewing the device meaning he's obviously missing out on all the fixes that are _just_ around the corner.
Fail of a review.
(Yes, I'm being sarcastic)
ETA Prime hands head in shame 😂
I appreciate the fact that you waited before doing the review. You were being more than fair with MSI/INTEL. I don't want to pay to be a beta tester for a inferior product.
Damn! Russ didn't tell me I needed a Snack and Drink. =(
Luckily I'm eating lunch =)
You needed lunch, and I hope it passed The Contra Test.
The fact that the Steam Deck with its now 2 year old hardware (except for the OLED screen) can still compete and in many cases outperform more expensive and more recent handhelds is pretty amazing.
not that surprising since amd and valve worked together to develop the chip, and it runs on linux which is infinitely customizable
@lofl6968 would could win the handheld gaming war if they just gave windows a handheld gaming mode and control panel to control tdp etc
@lofl6968but because Steam is working hard to get every Game to Run in linux I think 95% of the Games Run fine. I tried most Games from my steamlibary on my steamdeck and I didnt find one single game that dont Work on Linux. Even those Games which Had a "non compatable" sign on Steam run very well. And the craziest thing is there is one Windows-Game that didint work on my high-end Windows PC but Work on the steamdeck 😂
@lofl6968 Funny how running a Windows game on Linux through a compatibility layer can get you better performance than just running the same Windows game on Windows.
@lofl6968 no it isn’t. Stop complaining
34:48 “The only reason I’m keeping it is because I’m past my return window.” is a pretty scathing review all by itself. 😂
Finally a Claw review from my favorite TH-cam channel
This one is for people that say Russ is too nice of a reviewer... Great work as always btw
Tried one in-store and was shocked to see the hefty price tag. They need to price it similar to the Steam Deck to even get some consumers to consider
Excellent review! I appreciate you taking the bullet for us with this handheld.
You're putting more time and care into your reviews than MSI put into this handheld device. Thank you so much for this review and it's such a shame, that the Claw doesn't deliver.
I was waiting and anticipating this video for so long and actually didn't know if you were going to review this device. I'm glad you did, this was a fantastic and thorough review!
Retro game Corps is my fav channel. Period. Love this man's reviews!
Better than ETAprime
@@stormranger528not in the same league. The other is just advertisement at this point
Thank you
@@TOAST818989898 No kidding. I like that he always advises to not spend money on Black Friday and whatnot, but damn his reviews are so bias towards the product.
The Steam Deck OLED is just too good. I can't live without the trackpads, gyro, the comfort, the 4 back buttons, battery life and user friendliness of the Deck.
That's fair not my favorite device though
Steam deck is awesome, but my favorite of all the devices is the Legion Go, but Steam deck is definitely the second favorite for me.
and it runs Linux
@@deleteduser3455 good thing nobody cares about your opinion. 😊 Love my OLED😊
Steam Deck is King. The rest are copies. Will always stick with the OG 😊
absolutely love you're channel, and i'm honestly refreshed to see you didn't bullshit on the title with some clickbait bullshit of 'will they won't they?' so just judging on knowing what it generally is and that i usually agree with you and that it looks like this isn't up my alley i can actually skip the vid for the most part and get on with my day. great work great work great work x3. keep me updated on all the minutiae when u can, damnit!
Subbed. Gorgeous review. Really like how you showcased the sound. It is good af. But I own a steam deck and this review makes me happy.
Good review and analysis! I am more than happy with my Steam Deck. Valve already really set the bar insanely high!
The fact that the MSI Claw has constant stuttering in many games (amongst the other issues) at its current price is completely unacceptable. Hopefully MSI will be able to work out a lot of these issues, but I'm surprised many of these issues weren't already addressed and corrected before it even hit the market!
I saw the Claw out in the wild (Costco in Ontario, Canada) and thought I should check out a review. Thank you for confirming what I thought, I'll stick with my OG Steam Deck for now :)
crazy how every handheld pc review is basically just an ad for the steam deck 😂
Without the benefits that the steam deck is with battery life.
Tell you own a steam deck without telling us you own a steam deck lol
But the ROG ally is better.
Love it. Steam Deck is King and the original. The rest are copies 😊simple as that
@@paulkendrick4153 not really. These run windows so are much more flexible.
Nice video I like how you label the name of the game that you’re playing on your devices
Massive respect for you waiting to review the device. Wasn't there day one like other reviewer's after a quick buck.
THX for your review
21:10 I would have locked the Ally to 60FPS like the SD. Could have been closer to 2 hours and I'm sure if you lower the TDP you can still get 60 FPS and increase the battery life more.
Seems like steam deck OLED is still the best bang for the buck
Yeah, especially if you want more than 1 hours worth of battery. All these other companies have missed the main point of a handheld. Glad I sold my rog ally.
@@V1CT1MIZEDfr. Rog Ally defenders say they aren’t ever far away from a wall socket so battery life doesn’t matter. I think that’s more of a them problem.
@badmoose01 wall outlet, car outlet, train, bus or plane outlet...all the same.
Beyond that I carry a battery in the case that I carry my Ally in. So just with the internal battery and my extra battery I get about double the battery life.
Great review, I've seen many others say the same about the Claw... The MSI claw is a lemon, unless they can patch it...
@@badmoose01heliterally said he got 3 hours in inde games tho😂
Good video. Thanks for staying objective. Your review was certainly consistent with other reviews of the device. It was an interesting prospect, but I'm sticking with my Steam Deck as it offers a superior user experience.
The claw is a lost cause. Let's move on to the next device. Great review by the way
great video, and kudos to great ergonomic features from MSI
This was great, thank you for the work getting this video out.
I am wondering if you would advise on a device. Where I am, the standard Steamdeck is the price of the ROG ally, would this make the Ally the obvious choice?
Man this review just made me realize how much of a beast the Steam Deck is. 750$ for the MSI Claw... the stutters are unacceptable, this really feels like a prototype. This is why I'm always on guard whenever there's a "Me-too" product from other brands, even well known ones cause I know the lack of polish that the "original" does not have will always make the product suck. When I bought my HP PC tablet many years ago that supposedly was just like a Microsoft Surface, the UI and overall experience was just so bad that it still leaves me with a bitter taste to this day.
the OG steamdeck was a metoo product too
The shader cache was too much for me lol I had to give it away. Can't really say ythe steam deckw as polidhed when my drive was always filling up due to steamworks files and sbader cache.
@@SWOTHDRA How exactly? They basically made an entire operating system, a verfication system on games, insanely cheap price, years of development and innovation, its the opposite of a metoo product.
@@SWOTHDRAhell no
Great review.
I am now starved and parching because I was not prompted to grab a snack and drink.
First of all, thanks for putting in the time and effort to get this video out. I personally was interested in seeing what Intel could do in this handheld market that AMD has almost full control over. A first model, beta at best and it shows. Maybe they will fix it or maybe they will give up on it and it will be on the clearance racks for $250. Even at $250 with those studders, it would be a deal killer...
It's like my experience with MSI, last gen PC I went all out on MSI (was a ASUS fan but, wanted to try MSI), flagship motherboard, Video card, all MSI, on 2 machines. My main gaming PC, RMA'ed 4 times, and finally when warranty ended, I picked up a used ASUS board (never a problem) on the 2nd PC a bios update screwed up(not my fault) and I needed a manually through command line re-flash the bios (a non-PC user would have had a big problem here) and got it up....
Never will buy a MSI PC part again and this just shows more of how they treat their customers....
This is why you’re the GOAT when it comes to handheld tech reviews! In depth, thorough and non bias, well done!!!
Intel is at least two years away from anything efficient enough to be competitive with AMD. This seems a misguided product.
Exactly.
From a business perspective and consumer perspective, absolutely.
From a technical one, I am all for companies trying their own thing to see what works.
It will be nothing but great from the consumer if Intel tries to take all the feedback and data points possible.
@Fernando-ek8jp there's no point experimenting with hardware components known to not handle this type of application. It's a waste of time, effort, and resources. That's why AMD chips are used in other handhelds with success because they know what would work.
My dad works for intel and he says it's actually 1 day less than 2 years
@@mechanicalmonk2020 Winning!
Brilliant review & much appreciated.
The SBS comparison of all 3 top dogs speaks volumes in a way that typical tech specs never do.
Great video as allways, the quality fo your reviews are just amazing. It´s a "cheap" copy of the Asus Rog Ally, a not finished product at a very high price, seems that the Steam Deck Oled is thes best choice for the price.
Good review thank you, I think the issues were unforeseen but I'm confident a fix will be done to bring it up to the MSI branding we all know and love. hopefully some bios/driver updates will resolve this. I can see why MSI went with Intel, there is a lot of talk and focus on "AI" at the moment, being an intel ultra core it ticks that box.
Have you tested the new update in this one? , how is the new performance boost in comparisson with the 7840U , do you have any news about the MSI Claw 8 AI+ ?
I bought the ally at launch and I am still amazed at the efficiency of the z1 extreme chip.
The honesty is what makes this SO GOOD. I appreciate you!
I really appreciate your honesty, just a quick question, while it should have been released with better software/firmware. Do you think in the next couple of months these updates will close the gap in experience between it and the Ally?
Those stutters would be enough to rule it out for me. Great review, as ever.
Man, thats a lot of battery testing, cant imagine how long it took you stuffing around doing all that ☺️.
Very good video btw 👍
1st: Steam Deck Oled
2nd: Rog Ally
3rd: Lenovo Legion Go
4th: MSI Claw
15th: MSI Claw
@@loz9324 👍🏿👍🏻
The Legion go is above the rog ally
@@KIIVx lol no it isn’t 😂 not even close
@@paulkendrick4153 it is close, and the Legion go tops it
Excellent review. Steamdeck so dominant in this market. Valve's voodoo producing amazing battery performance.
I think a huge reason is because it isn’t running windows. Windows has gotten progressively worse and bloated and resource hoggy ever since XP
I mean the Ayaneo products (while support is bad) definitely pushes for interesting handhelds like the flip, slide, and DS.
The OXP2 is another detachable controller handheld with a bigger screen, the X1 is practically a tablet with controllers and it’s awesome and unique.
I wouldn’t ignore or denounce these other Chinese manufacturers and their innovations simply because everyone prefers the US based companies that are known pc manufacturers. I enjoy them and definitely will look forward to seeing someone like Acer, HP, Dell, Alienware, or Microsoft to release their version of a handheld.. heck even an nvidia based handheld pc would be dope. That being said with a little research and good reviews I’d consider Onexplayer or these other handheld pc manufacturers when purchasing one
I was waiting for this! Saw some reviews and was unsure how it will uphold in the future.
Question if you unpark the cores does it fix the stutters. also if that does work what does that do to the battery life?
This was a good reminder of why I've stuck with a Deck. Not only have at this point gotten a fantastic two years of use out of my 256GB Deck but there's also not a ton of reasons to jump to a different handheld as the OLED Steam Deck refresh would be a better minor upgrade than the alternatives. I'd also argue the Deck still has the best input set up on the market to the point that the track pads honestly give the Deck a larger library of games that work well given how much the track pads allow for stuff like very keyboard and mouse oriented games to be playable on the Deck with less friction than the alternative.
Have you checked to see if you have a defective unit in regards to the controls stopping working? I haven't seen any other reviewers with this issue.
its crazy how far ahead the steam deck is right now, they already said theyre planning on a second steam deck once they can improve it enough
Ok Russ you convinced me.. I went and bought a SteamDeck OLED.
Thanks for the video. I am even more happy I got the steam deck oled
Do you think performance will improve with driver updates? Arc saw a lot of improvement with time
Arguibly the best of having ARC integrated graphics is being able to use the XMX version of XeSS, which is really close to DLSS image quality and performance and is overall better than FSR, a nice feature when you are playing at 480p upscaled to 1080p the most of the time.
Well... when the ARC graphics decide to execute your title decently in the first place.
Did your testing include the BIOS and driver updates of the past week? I don't think that it would change your review but I'm curious.
I'm a fan of arcade flight games. I was curious as to what the game shown here is? 0:21
Great video, Russ.
Unrelated to this video, but are you going to be making a RG35xx Plus garlic OS tutorial in the near future?
This is cool and I'm glad there's competition. I have a Steam Deck and it has a bunch of minor bugs that need to be tweaked as well. Software bugs aren't just limited to this thing.
I really felt like I was rolling the dice with the ally, but it ended up being my favorite handheld pc. Glad I didn't go for a claw when I had the chance; it doesn't seem like its there yet.
These battery life tests are amazing to have, I actually came away liking the Claw a bit better after this. Still not worth the price, but not terrible entirely. Great video my friend! - Stubbs
That battery feature got me on my deck! I actually started a RMA on it lol! 😅
you're amazing for going to so much trouble with this device, and giving them lots of time and chances. But personally if the performance was that bad, and the stutters were that bad, your initial review should've been scathing. if a device gets better later it can get a updated review. this device got more passes than it deserved
Although I’ll never buy it, I’m glad it exists. AMD is already stagnating with the 8000 series not bringing much to the table. With competition there will be more incentive for progress
AMD isn’t really stagnating, they have always had a history of having partial or full generations that were refreshed hardware from the prior gen, every other gen.
Ryzen 8K is a refresh of 7K
Ryzen 6K is a refresh of 5K
Ryzen 4K has a ton of its chips being refreshed from prior gens.
Ryzen 2K was 1000 series designs on an improved node.
The budget AM4 APUs were refreshed Bulldozer chips.
The R9 300 series were refreshed 200 cards. The RX 500 series was refreshed 400 cards and a new top card.
@@reaperreaper5098 6K wasnt a refresh of 5K right? 6K has RDNA 2 GPUs while 5K had the old Vega ones
@@EmuQuest7k even has Vega GPUs so it’s more likely a refresh
There's no competition though. Intel is bad for handhelds. It got worse performance than the steam deck with early tests.
@@DoubleDragon5180 7K has an RDNA3 GPU doesn't it? That's an upgrade from 6K's RDNA 2
My theory on why the claw exist is simple.they designed %90 of the device and left the decision on what processor to use until th end. They couldnt get enough allocation of the amd chips andddd went intel or the amd chips would make their margins thin.
I wouldnt be surprised that intel is offering them a good price per chip either. Cause they want their foot in the door for this market.
Probably upper management said “we need a handheld PC. Here’s your R&D budget, here’s your deadline” without really paying attention to what it needed to be good
That higher power draw on the Ally seems like CPU Boost was enabled, which is just unnecessary in many situations, especially playing 2D stuff like Balatro.
I wish he told us whether or not he turned it on
The 90% battery thing is a bit weird yeah. GPD does a similar thing in some of their machines. If you plug it in between 95 and 100 it goes into passthrough mode and doesn’t charge. It’s actually useful if you want to eke out a few more FPSs
I wonder if the stutter is something odd if the fan curve is hammering on the systems eprom. Russ I might try setting a constant fan speed just as an experiment.
If you already own a pc, steam deck is a no brainer, the experience is unmatched, why would you want windows on a handheld device
Because of other launchers and more compatibles games. You can‘t play games from Game Pass natively on Steam Deck without using Windows and also many Games with Anti-Cheat Software don‘t work on Steam Decks. There are big reasons to use Windows.
Because the SD is underpowered slop
@@ilm91 what part of "if you already own a pc" you dont get? i know there are a lot of things steam deck wont do, my point is that windows is horrible to use in a hand held device, if its going to be your only gaming device its obvious windows is the best choice
maybe you have a PC but if you mainly play games on PC game pass or otherwise incompatible with steam deck, that would still be a reason to get a windows handheld over steam deck. Even if steam deck is better for compatible games. @@SanOcelotl
@@ryulanda9399 You’re too poor to afford one. It’s okay kid 😊
Excellent review!! Need a decent Dpad these things. I had to uninstall Street Fighter 6 off the Legion Go because of the awful Dpad choice
Makes me so glad I got the Legion Go and not have to regret it.
Regarding the ARC drivers, you may need to install Intel DSA, a separate app in order to get the check updates to work. utterly stupid I know but that's the situation with my laptop for example
Dang. Why would you pay $800 for a worse experience than a Steam Deck at half the price? Russ thank you for your honest and unvarnished review of the issues here.
XeSS is available and usable on AMD GPUs too, you can use XeSS on any GPU AFAIK, both Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding work with it on my AMD set up.
Sorry to hear you're stuck with this just because of it taking so long for issues to potentially be resolved via updates. If I were you I'd go direct and argue that returning it to the manufacturer due to the delays in their own updates etc. being why it took so long for you to decide.
Fantastic review, thanks for saving people's money
I think the claw has potential especially if they fix the freezing up and power draw issue. I believe the two are related and will be eventually fixed by software and firmware update. Should also be going on sale by that time so for anyone picking it up later it will be a double win.
Not sure if it's already been mentioned and I'm not sure I can skim through all the comments on the video to find out, but, the VRR "test" you showed from testufo is just a simulation to demonstrate how much smoother motion appears on a VRR display as the frame rate changes versus a display with fixed refresh rate and vsync on, and does not actually test a displays VRR capability.
Glad, I'm Team Deck, great video dude!
Seeing things like this make glad I got the OLED SD man crazy
Bought the steam deck loved it but returned it was hurting my right thumb button layout differently
How do you get emulators onto the claw? Trying to play some ps2 games on it
Cant you cap the MSI framerate to 90fps with RTSS and set the resolution to match the Steamdeck if this is only a battery test?
I have tried the MSI claw and I’m glad I stuck with the rog ally despite being an older product because of its shoulder buttons. It is not comfortable using it for games relying on it soo much which I did and you cannot fix with a software update duhhh.
I really outright felt the Claw is out of the competition out of the bat because of this. Yes , updates will come but being that this is the first intel device means a lot more work than normal needs to be put in to optimize those drivers which also takes a good amount of time.
Hmm I love the steam deck but if you ran those games at the same setting as deck would the battery last longer on those devices? I'd assume so
What’s brand name of steam deck case and skin? Looks awesome link please thanks😊
I hope all the negative reception the MSI Claw is getting doesn’t discourage other competitors to enter the handheld market.
If they did the same thing with an AMD processor, it would likely be considered a solid alternative to the ROG Ally. Intel is the problem
If they're Intel chipsets, they need to wait a few years anyway.
This should discourage stupid competitor to accept money from intel, no way they intentionally putting intel chip without getting anything in return
Intell chips suck at low wattage. You'd think a company like MSI would know such things. Any company that has a solid understanding of the hardware won't be discouraged. This was just MSI creating a flop.
@@jonesymeow9487 Intel probably paid them to put their chip in the Claw
Note: the fan configuration you set up on performance also affects the manual profile. I found it in my review, very poor UX design.
Would the intel chip make it more compatible with eGPUs vs the other handhelds? That's the only possible redeeming quality I can think of for this product.
Hey Russ, i have a suggestion. for the last few weeks i've been trying to flash ADAM image to my RG280V with no success and i'm not the only one, many others are reporting the same issue. for some reason it just wont work anymore. my last RG280V which i flashed with the same image last year worked just fine but for some reason now it just wont work. i have been on many forums about the issue but cannot find an answer or solution for it. and i was wondering if you wouldn't mind diving into this issue at some point when you have a moment and create an RG280V ADAM IMAGE UPDATE video. THX
I like the dragon logo and it’s cool that it supposedly runs cooler than others handhelds, but it’s just a shame that everything else is, uh, bad. 😀
So, I’m still planning on replacing my iPad Air 2, Raspberry Pi 4B, and my refurbed Inspiron something other with hopefully an iPad Mini 7 in the fall, a Minisforum, and a Steam Deck OLED.
The Steam Deck is such a balanced device. It's of course got it's limitations, but they're so well considered for the form factor. 9.9/10 for me since I got the OLED. A VRR display would have pushed it over the edge.
It’s a good looking handheld in my opinion. Basically a black Ally, which I wish was a choice.
I’m still worried about the Ally and card issues.
This review reminded me how good the original Steam Deck was when it was released 2 years ago, not only it match and surpass its competitors released later in term of game smoothness (for me, the smoothness is way more important than the average FPS u got), it is also more battery efficient (even though original SD has smaller battery and slightly less battery efficient SoC, it should still beat ROG and the Claw). The more new players step in following the success Valve achieved with SD, the more I appreciate how polished the original SD design was.
This is the exact same title as a few other review videos of the MSI Claw. That's hilarious.
Hades has such a solid soundtrack.
I dread to think what a souls like would feel like with those bumpers.
If comes why this exists speculation:
Intel sees that handheld gaming market is dominated by AMD APUs. But also if it comes to mini PCs there is a lot of them using AMD APUs often similar to ones found in handhelds. Not to mention the previous and current gen consoles from Sony and MS also are using custom AMD APUs
This means that this is the part of the market Intel gave away, and now they woke up stating well we need do so something as investors might be looking at this as growing market and we need to show we are present there.
So they partnered with HW manufacturer and created a device.
I’m guessing the chipset was not really ready or was not optimized for power consumption as Intel looked at it as we need to have something rather than we need to have something good.
Regardless of the device (handheld pc, mini pc) with low power consumption I’m impressed how much they can achieve. In terms of performance or everyday use in comparison to power consumption.
How is that whisker game? It looks so good but the reviews on steam say it’s super short. It’s it worth the price?
I like it a lot. It's a roguelite in that there is a game loop to it, so I've never felt it was short. Gives me Star Fox vibes but with leveling up!
If It Does Play On The TV How?
Props for trying to give them time to patch/update it.
Sadly, it didn't work.
Will The MSI Claw Play On TV