What I have in my hand now is MSI’s latest e-sports handheld console MSI Claw. The biggest highlight is that MSI Claw is the first e-sports handheld device equipped with Intel Core Ultra processor and provides both Core Ultra 5 and Ultra 7. Choose Core Ultra for the version. The biggest focus of this generation is the adoption of the new Intel 4 process and the internal display has also been changed from Iris Xe to Intel Arc. We can directly use the data to see how big the improvement of the internal display is . For example, 3DMark Time Spy MSI Claw's Intel Arc internal graphics scored 3526 points. Compared with the previous generation 's Iris Xe with full health of 96 EU, the internal graphics has been improved by 2.48 times. That's right, the performance has increased by 2.5 times. It is precisely because of the significant increase in internal graphics performance this time. This improvement also makes it possible to combine Intel processors with e-sports handheld consoles. In short, now that you have seen the video, we have also experienced MSI Claw for about a month. In this episode, we will talk to you in detail. Let’s talk about the ten key points you should know about MSI Claw. Hi, welcome back. I am a donkey. In this episode, we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of MSI Claw after long-term experience. Explain clearly and completely at once , test the performance of the data surface , and also Let’s talk about the actual experience after long-term experience. Ready, let’s start. Let’s start with the appearance design. I think the appearance is MSI Claw. One of the obvious highlights this time is simply that the feel and weight balance are really well done. Yes, according to our actual measurement, the weight of the MSI Claw is 671g . It is not light for a mainstream handheld machine because MSI has stuffed a very large 53Whr battery inside. However, I noticed this feeling when I first started using the MSI Claw. It’s really good. It’s not just about the good weight balance . I think the biggest point is that MSI has thickened the grip on both sides and the hand rest is also designed according to the grip angle. In vernacular, it means ergonomics for you to put it on. The palm of your hand can naturally fit on the body , so the physical feel of the MSI Claw will be lower than your expectation when you experience the 671g. When you go to the site and actually touch it, it will be most accurate. The feel this time is really good and MSI There should be special calculations about the position of the back keys , so you can put your fingers on them just enough to avoid holding the back keys. Of course, the more extreme way is to directly make the back keys concave , but it is not as easy to trigger as the convex back. The keys are relatively simple to trigger and I’m curious. I’m curious whether you use the back keys more or less often. What games do you usually use them for? Let us know in the comments below. MSI Claw also has a built-in macro setting for the back keys. In terms of menu design , MSI Claw adopts a blackened body design. The integration is quite good , but it felt a bit too low-key before the RGB was turned on. However, the reflectivity adjustment of the final commercial version felt better than what we had at that time. It looks good at the CES show. The current performance is similar to the black color of the Steam Deck . However, when turned over, the matte surface on both sides of the hand rest is finer , so if you often rub it on the desktop, it may leave bright marks , which is like this on the screen . At first glance, you can tell that we are really testing it carefully. In addition, the sticker of Core Ultra 7 in the lower right corner is also a customized mini version. There are RGB halos under the mushroom heads on both sides. There are enough matching partitions to make the RGB lighting effect smooth. The spiritual performance bonus is a bonus. What’s more special is that MSI has also added RGB lighting effects to the ABXY buttons. After you buy it, you can also directly adjust and customize it through the MSI Center M control center launched by MSI for handheld consoles. RGB effect. In terms of button feel, some people are used to calling the RB/LB buttons R1/R2 . Anyway, they are the two MSIs above. I chose a softer and fleshier feel. The triggering distance is slightly longer , but because it is relatively soft , it is actually relatively easy. It is triggered by pressing , but the feedback is not so clear. It requires a little getting used to the trigger point feel. However, this also makes the two buttons of MSI Claw very silent in experience . On the contrary, the RT/LT using Hall sensors below is The trigger volume is slightly louder. We also provide a short section of the radio for your reference. Other buttons include the mushroom head cross key ABXY. The feel is normal. I have played it myself without much problem . However, the mushroom head uses a relatively flat fog. If you are more concerned about the controllability of the surface design, you may find it slightly slippery and you can prepare anti-slip stickers, which should make it smoother. Of course, I believe there are many friends who bought it and directly disassembled it and replaced it. It depends on everyone's habits. In addition, MSI Claw also provides customized settings for all buttons in MSI Center M. You can adjust the corresponding buttons, adjust the dead zone of the mushroom head, adjust the trigger vibration level , and even set the back button macro key combinations just mentioned, etc. However, I would like to knock the bowl and feel that each company can consider adding an interface with real-time experience buttons to instantly demo the adjusted feel or when adjusting the vibration intensity, you can directly give a corresponding vibration intensity. Currently, there are really few people in this area. Once done , it should be quite practical. You can immediately test the adjusted feel . In the fuselage configuration, all I/Os are on the top. The power button is on the far left and uses a design that combines power with fingerprint recognition. After turning on the phone, you can unlock the phone by touching it. The efficiency is pretty good, but there is one small problem. Currently, it is not possible to directly turn off the screen and enter standby mode by pressing the power button. I hope MSI can add this function as soon as possible . After all, this is a handheld machine. The need to turn off the screen anytime and anywhere is relatively clear. Next, there is a microSD slot. The official specification of the slot is UHS-II . We have also used the 512GB Samsung EVO Plus with a maximum of 130MB/s. The actual measurement can reach read: 94MB/s and write: 85MB/s. The next thing is interesting because MSI Claw adopts It is a handheld machine with an Intel processor, so this C port actually supports the Thunderbolt 4 protocol. With Thunderbolt 4, it can be connected in a daisy chain. I think this also gives MSI Claw a lot of room for imagination. If you are For those who occasionally use a handheld machine as a small host and transform it into a desktop computer for work, the Thunderbolt 4 interface is really practical , and the Intel processor also has a bonus effect on many office and creative software , so if you buy a handheld machine, you need one of them For friends who use it as an external connection for paperwork or simple work , I think MSI Claw is indeed a very attractive choice for friends with these complex usage needs. For example, we briefly tested it. 10-minute 4K video output of Premiere Pro 2024. This is a test project designed for general YouTube 4K video editing needs . MSI Claw took 12 minutes and 40 seconds to complete the output, while AMD Ryzen™ Z1 Extreme took about 14 minutes and 26 seconds, saving 13 % of the output time . Video output is also a traditional performance bonus item of I family. I really didn’t expect that in 2024, even handheld computers can be used to output videos. And the performance is really not bad. It is faster than many thin and light laptops. After that, after looking at the TRUE GAMING mark in the middle of the I/O, there is a 3.5mm audio jack and volume buttons on the right side. After talking about the appearance, let’s test the actual performance of the MSI Claw, the most important part of this episode. So let’s not waste any time and just pierce the anti-tamper sticker of MSI Claw and take it apart. Let’s look at the hardware specifications first . Disassembly of MSI Claw is not too difficult as long as the steps are correct. There won’t be any big problems. My recommended method of disassembly is to remove it first. There are six screws on the back, five of which can be removed. The one with the anti-disassembly sticker is designed to be fixed. Just gently open it from the bottom and the bottom will separate . Then use the buckle on the top . Don't use too much force to cause a miracle . Gently lift the left and right displacement. When the angle is right, the entire back cover comes off and you can see the inside . If you want to replace the SSD by yourself, MSI puts the network card and SSD under the fan. The advantage is that it is driven by air flow, so there will be no heat accumulation problem at all. But if you disassemble it, We need to take out the entire module. Here we will also teach you about disassembly and assembly. First, it is very important to cut off the power, so I will teach you to pull the battery cable three times and pull it up with a little force . Then it will come off . Then remove the four screws on the battery . It’s easy to remove the battery. This 53Whr battery is very large for a handheld machine. It ’s very heavy when you hold it. The measured weight of the battery is about 200g. Then remove the heat dissipation module. There are two screws in total , and there are three more screws on the CPU. After unscrewing, disconnect the fan cables on both sides. It is recommended to use a simple disassembly stick to slightly loosen the thermal paste between the radiator and CPU. Then you can completely remove the cooling module. Turn it over and you can see the back. The heating positions are also filled with thermal paste. MSI Claw uses a design with two heat pipes and dual fans. It is a very luxurious heat dissipation stack for a handheld machine. We have actually tested the stability of the 3DMark Time Spy stress test by running 20 rounds in extreme performance mode. Reaching 99.7% CPU, the average temperature on the front is 69 degrees, and the maximum temperature on the front is 36.6 degrees, and the holding area on the back is 36 degrees, which is still cool. The cooling performance of MSI Claw is indeed good , and the noise control data is also very good. The environment is about 42db in automatic mode, which is 45- 46 db can reach 56 db if the fan is manually turned up to full capacity (slip of the tongue) , so MSI's fan strategy is still conservative, but it is reasonable. After all, you hold the handheld in your hand. If the fan is close to 50 db, it will start to interfere with the experience. It is also quite special. What's more, MSI has also added an internal flow heat dissipation design this time. To put it simply, you can see that MSI has added sealing strips on the fans on both sides. When we turn the fan sideways, we can see that it is close to the inside of the motherboard. It is completely empty. In this way, when the fan is running, there will be air flow inside the machine, which is the place I framed. This design can take away the accumulated heat on the host and avoid thermal decomposition of the CPU . As a result, the motherboard will be seriously damaged. The heat dissipation of the MicroSD memory card has also been optimized and there will be no problem of overheating and burning the card. After taking off the radiator, you can see that the m.2 SSD on the right side is from KIOXIA 2230 specifications. After our actual test of sequential reading and writing, The speed can reach 3541 MB/s and 2950 MB/s. A small surprise is that the network card on the left uses the Intel Killer series BE1750x , which is a network card that supports Wi-Fi 7. We also tested MSI Claw through a Wi-Fi 7 router. It can indeed receive Wi-Fi 7 , that is, 802.11be signals. It can also receive the 6GHz frequency band and supports MLO network. This network card has 5GHz + 6GHz and can reach up to 5.8Gbps. The connection speed also supports a large bandwidth of 320MHz. I think it is MSI Claw. A small bright spot. Then we wipe off the thermal paste on the core and we can see that the highlight of this time is Intel's new generation processor Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 155H. I can also see from the screen that there is a slight light on the CPU. There are four partitions , and these four small blocks are really built separately and finally packaged together through 3D. The block in the lower right corner is the Compute Tile , which is the location of the CPU core and the main computing block . The new Intel 4 process is built. Next to the small strip above is the large block on the right side of the I/O Tile, which is called the SoC Tile. These two pieces are built using the TSMC N6 process. The most special features of the SoC Tile this time are two . Intel has directly built-in the Intel AI Boost NPU in the Core Ultra series. This year you will keep hearing about AI laptops. The reason is that the NPU is built-in. The NPU is more conducive to the computing needs of AI software. For example, in the past, GPU was used for video processing. Achieving background blur mostly requires more than 20-30W of power consumption , but now it only takes about 5-10W through NPU . Anyway, it is the concept of letting the right people do the right things , and SoC Tile also includes low-power E-core That is to say, the more power-saving version of E-core can help achieve lower power consumption in standby . The highlight this time is the piece on the far left called Graphic Tile , which is the internal display part . It is built by TSMC N5. And this year Intel's internal display has also been greatly upgraded. The previous Iris Xe internal display has been directly upgraded to Intel Arc. The internal display of the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H equipped with MSI Claw has 8 Xe Cores. We have also tested MSI here. Claw scored 3526 points in 3DMark Time Spy. Compared with the previous generation 96EU Iris Xe, the internal display has been improved by 2.48 times. This time the internal display improvement is really huge. This performance is also higher than the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme from the next camp. 24.5% Intel's internal display is really messed up this time , but there is still a small place inside. I think the control key module of MSI Claw is pretty easy to replace this time. You can remove the entire module by removing three (slip of the tongue) screws. If you want to replace the mushroom head , you only need to remove two small screws and the black cable at the back to remove and replace it. Overall, I think the disassembly and assembly of the MSI Claw is not difficult for those with strong hands-on skills, but there are many screws. The heat dissipation and battery capacity are sufficient for a handheld machine. The in-flow heat dissipation design is good . However, if you want to replace the SSD , you need to remove the battery and the entire heat dissipation module . However, the MSI Claw is 512GB, starting with the Ultra 7 version. It is directly 1TB , so the need for replacement should not be too big . By the way, remember to prepare thermal paste when disassembling the machine. The modular design of the control block is quite good. It is very easy to disassemble and replace. It also uses Intel Killer's Wi-Fi 7 network card. One of the Highlights Okay, let’s move on to the actual testing. The MSI Claw we have this time is equipped with Ultra 7 155H version, paired with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. As usual, we will first test the theoretical performance. First we saw Cinebench R23 MSI. Claw scored 1766 points for single core and 13854 points for multi-core. The peak performance is similar to that of Z1 Extreme. The performance is around 1700-1800 for single core and 14000 for multi-core. In addition, we also add the wattage gap that everyone is more concerned about. This time MSI Claw is in Center M. There are a total of five levels of performance options. The first level is AI. Artificial intelligence , that is, AI will switch the performance mode according to your usage scenario. The highest level in the game can reach about 40W. In addition, there are three levels of ultimate performance balance and super power saving in the game. You can instantly switch to MSI through the quick control menu on the right. You can also directly add the wattage limit on the quick menu. The design adjustment will be more intuitive and faster, so of course we will also help you test each one here. The first wattage setting can release the CPU to 37-40W in the power mode when the power is plugged in, which is about 35 watts in the balanced mode. It is about 20W in the super power mode , and the performance in the battery mode is about 30-32 watts in the balanced mode. 30W super power 20W , and in super power mode, the CPU will also change to power saving settings simultaneously. Like you see, when I switch to super power mode, RGB will be turned off immediately . In addition, Center M can also be switched to manual mode before plugging in. The maximum can reach 40W and the minimum 20W battery is quite radical. The maximum can reach 35W and the minimum is the same as 20W. We also provide the Time Spy score difference under different wattage limits for your reference. First of all, the highest can be reached under 40W. 3585 points 35W 3475 points actually only reduced the performance by 3% 30W 3271 points 25W 3041 points 20W 2646 points In addition, in the MSI Center M control center, in addition to adjusting the performance and lighting effects, you can also customize what to put in the shortcut menu . At present, it can only hold up to 12, which is a bit insufficient. I feel that it can be opened a little more. In addition, you can directly see the list of all games on the homepage and quickly start the games you want to play with one click. The latest games will also be automatically placed first. In addition, I really like this one. It has launchers for each platform directly. This is easy to use and special. MSI Claw also has a built-in MSI App Player application that can directly run Android games on MSI Claw. In addition, MSI also has built-in monitoring. A small advantage of OSD is that when touching, you can directly penetrate the OSD to click on the following options without being blocked by the OSD. This is a good comment, but the OSD does not yet display the FPS option. I look forward to adding it in the future. This is 2024/3/7 As a result , MSI immediately pushed out the update of MSI Center M within a few days. FPS has been added to the OSD and the power consumption of the whole machine can also be directly seen in battery mode. Quick update. First of all, give a thumbs up to the control mode. You can set the handheld and desktop modes respectively. After talking about the theoretical performance, we will now test the actual performance of the game. We will focus on testing two gears. One is the ultimate performance when plugged in, which is the highest gear that is released to 40W. As well as the super power mode with the battery limited to about 20W, these two modes should be more in line with the average player's gear settings under plugged-in and unplugged conditions. First, let's test the mainstream Dota game LOL . This time Ultra 7 is used to play LOL. It’s really interesting! In plug-in performance mode, an average of 310FPS can be achieved in battle scenes . We also tested that even in the super power-saving mode set to 20W under battery , it can still achieve an average performance of 262FPS. It seems that the Core Ultra generation of thin and light pens The electronic display runs smoothly throughout LOL. It’s not a dream! Next is the new generation game software Cyberpunk 2077. This result is quite surprising. It should also be affected by the Intel driver. MSI Claw ran an average of 38.5FPS at 1080p low quality and turned on XeSS . Under 20W, it was only The average performance of 31.3 FPS is obviously not the full strength of the internal display of Intel Arc this time . It seems that even the internal display version of Intel Arc has the characteristics to compete in the future! I hope Intel can push mainstream 3A optimization updates to squeeze out all the performance in Arc! There is a similar situation in "Forza 5" at 1080p low image quality. It reaches an average of 53 FPS without turning on XeSS. After turning on XeSS, the first test actually dropped slightly to an average of 50 FPS. This was obviously due to some driver problems until a few days ago. I pushed another version of the driver to reach an average performance of 54FPS . However, the DLSS of Forza 5 was also broken for a while. It was only fixed a while ago. Is it Intel or Microsoft ? We may have to wait for them to fight. But on the other hand, we are currently During the testing process, the update frequency of the Intel Arc driver is still very high! We just finished testing and launched a new version of the driver. I believe that Intel Arc internal display optimization should still be one of Intel's most core projects. Then when I saw Tomb Raider: Shadow, the performance was relatively normal. In Tomb Raider: Shadow 1080p Turning on XeSS in low-definition plug-in performance mode can achieve an average running performance of 67FPS , and it can also achieve an average running performance of 55FPS in super battery saving mode . However , XeSS is not currently supported in God of War. So you can only apply FSR 2.0 in 1080p low-definition plug-in performance mode. Before turning it on, the average is about 29.2FPS. After turning it on, it can reach an average of 38FPS . If you want to play God of War on battery, it is recommended to lower the picture quality slightly and choose 720p low-quality. At this time, the average can reach 38.8FPS . Remember to update the latest version of the Intel driver, which will greatly reduce the lag problem during scene switching. The performance of another classic game "Death Stranding" is also OK. At 1080p low quality, the average can reach 63.2 FPS. And when the battery is selected to be super power-saving, it can still reach an average of 43FPS. Finally, when running "Assassin's Creed: Phantasm" at 1080p low quality, the performance mode of the plug-in test can reach an average of 43FPS even when the battery is running. In the super power-saving mode, the average running performance is 37 FPS. If you choose the 720p low-quality plug-in performance mode, you can achieve an average of 53 FPS. In the super power-saving mode, the average performance is 46 FPS . The game will be tested first. The only important reminder here is that you must remember to update the Intel graphics card driver after buying it. Take "Assassin's Creed: Phantasm" as an example. Before the update, the 1080p low image quality only had a movie-level frame rate of 25FPS on average. The latest version can already reach an average of 43FPS . We looked at the occupancy and frequency and there should be room for improvement. We look forward to Intel continuing to optimize. After testing the game, let’s see how the MSI Claw screen performs this time . It uses a 7-inch FHD 120Hz display and this screen also supports VRR variable refresh rate . We have found that although the screen of MSI Claw is glossy , it has anti-reflective treatment and is more durable than ordinary glossy screens. It is not easy to reflect. As for the display effect, I won’t waste everyone’s time and go directly to the test results. After the Bonnie team actually tested the MSI Claw, there is no built-in description file, so we can only test that this screen can reach 96% of sRGB, 73.4% of Adobe RGB , and 70% of DCI-P3 CCTs came to 7500K and also chose an eye-catching style. We also measured the color accuracy here. The average Delta E can reach an average of 2.01, which is almost less than 2. The maximum Delta E is 5.67 CCT. Delta E chose the eye-catching 7500K , so it also came to 7.5. However, for a game handheld machine, there is not much problem with this screen. The performance is similar to that of Windows handheld machines of the same level. The screen brightness performance is also very good. The maximum brightness can be adjusted manually. Breaking through 510 nits, it is quite capable in relatively bright environments. Another small highlight is the speakers. The speaker performance of MSI Claw is really good this time. Here is a set of comparisons for your reference. In terms of battery life performance, MSI Claw is equipped with 53Whr. We also ran the PCMark 10 test and got 6 hours and 55 hours of battery performance. From a laptop perspective, it is actually above the standard . If it is a game, 3A can reach about 1 and a half hours in extreme performance and balanced modes. In super power mode, the battery life can reach about two hours to two and a half hours. However, because the built-in option of Claw is only 20W at the lowest, it should be a trade-off considering the sweet spot of energy consumption, so it is divided into two. In this case, if you use MSI Claw in multiple scenarios, such as using it for simple documents outside, the battery life advantage can be fully utilized, which is indeed a highlight. However, in games, the minimum setting can only be 20W , so the limit should be That’s the limit of 2 and a half to 3 hours. When it comes to charging, the official package comes with a 65W USB C charger. However, this charger is a bit unexpected. It has a two-section and three-plug design. I think it has advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are very clear. Considering the lightweight nature of a handheld device, this is indeed too big, but on the other hand , this should also be the longest handheld charger , so if you care about length , this may be a plus for you, but I take it out with me. You should buy a smaller 65W or 100W GaN charger. It will be lighter to carry and the charging speed. According to our actual test, the official 65W can charge 43% in 30 minutes and 81% in 1 hour. In fact, it has been charged to 99 in one and a half hours. % The last 1% took 12 minutes to charge , so a complete charge took 1 hour and 42 minutes. We also tested that the original PD 65W can reach a maximum of about 60W. In addition, MSI Claw also does not have a built-in touchpad in terms of control , but it can be used in the control mode. Select the desktop to operate through the joystick . However, it is worth mentioning that Windows 11 23H2 has a much better touch experience. For example, most of the system-level software on-screen keyboards will automatically pop up and even some will automatically adjust the position of the input box , but the second The three parties are still quite confused and suggest that it will be more practical to set the on-screen keyboard callout option to the shortcut menu of the Control Center. This can only rely on Microsoft to continue to work hard. Finally, I have summarized the overall performance of MSI Claw and who is suitable for it . I feel that the handheld category has always been a category with a very clear goal , which is pure gaming. However, since the emergence of Windows handheld consoles, it has just met our previous imagination of small size and high performance, so I can completely understand the following handheld program we did previously. There must be a large number of users leaving comments about how to use it besides games. How to use it to connect to the TV and match the joystick. It is basically used as a small console for documents. There are also many people because the high-standard NUC small console may be almost the same as a handheld console. The handheld console is even more expensive and has become a special choice. It just so happens that this time MSI Claw uses an Intel processor, so I believe that users with these needs will be happy to see the success of products with Intel processors. But in other words, MSI Claw has benefited from the Intel Core Ultra generation. The greatly improved Intel Arc internal graphics can be said to be the strongest internal graphics handheld in terms of theoretical performance . However, we can also see the productivity from our previous tests. Video output has indeed improved significantly. In the game part, if the game is already stable, it can indeed take advantage of the performance that this internal display should have. However, if the game has not been optimized by Intel, such as Cyberpunk, for example, it cannot fully unleash the performance of Intel Arc . Therefore Speaking of which, as usual, let me talk about three impressive points and three expectations for the first MSI Claw. The feel of the MSI Claw is very good. The battery and heat dissipation are very good . I hope that the next generation will also inherit it. It is also a very clear advantage and orientation of MSI Claw , especially the large battery capacity, which will be obvious to multi-purpose users. On the other hand, I personally hope that the appearance can be better or more MSI's e-sports style. It is currently black. In the end, it feels a bit too low-key , or it could go in the direction of details and texture. I think that’s a good thing. Secondly , the speakers in the audio-visual entertainment part perform very well. The performance is really good. The color gamut and brightness of the screen are also at the average level of a handheld machine. The performance is There's no problem, but if you're looking forward to it , you can add a screen effect menu or increase the screen-to-body ratio , or even just consider... OLED! Finally, judging from the specifications and performance, MSI Claw can be said to be a product that takes into account all aspects of heat dissipation, feel, screen, speaker, and battery life. Even the heat dissipation and battery hardware are very luxurious. And the theoretical performance of Intel Arc is also strong. MSI is up there again. It has good heat dissipation , so it performs well in terms of output and productivity. However, whether the game is powerful in the end really depends on Intel's next performance. I hope I can see that after a driver update in a few months , the performance can be achieved. Liberate FPS and double this scenario. Intel, please work harder. Okay, in this episode, we also tested as much data and experience as possible in a limited time . If you have any questions or what we didn't measure, please leave a message below. Let’s discuss together
