MSI Claw: Everything you NEED to KNOW! (Intel's NEW Handheld Gaming Console)

this is the brand new MSI claw one of the most anticipated handheld gaming devices to release this year and in this video we're going to break down everything you need to know about it and is it worth actually buying so this was an unexpected release when I was attending CS 2024 usually MSI they do laptops motherboards and so on but when we checked out the booth I was like what the hell is this little device that they've got here now this looks like the Asus Rog alloy the steam deck stuff that we've sort of seen before before that Lenovo one as well but there's a huge difference compared to all of those competitors and this is an Intel based system all the other ones run AMD sort of like AMD processors and so on whereas this is Intel's very first sort of handheld gaming processor chip so we're gotting completely different performance and a few other features on a completely new generation of Chip and architecture now before we get into my overall fors of actually testing and playing some games on the MSI claw let's go through some of the key specs and also some of the things that it does slightly differently so coming in at a price of around $699 this system will be releasing in sort of Q2 of 2024 so you'd expect that sort of like springtime so it's not too far away now price-wise is exactly the same as the Asus Rog aloy which I think is its main competitor that it's going for so obviously because the the displays there's a lot of similarities in terms of the display technology it's literally almost identical so this is its key competitor and for your $699 you get an Intel Core Ultra 5 and also 512 GB of mvme SSD storage 16 GB of RAM and it's also running Windows 11 I really like this feature of it where you could between cuz i' I've owned a steam deck in the past and obviously that runs like a Linux sort of thing for the desktop side of stuff whereas with this you can jump into Windows 11 have a complete desktop experience that means you can install a much l larger range of games of steam origin Ubisoft games stuff on the Epic Launcher as well like fortnite and so on and also while we're discussing the performance and specs let's take a quick look at the Intel CPU so this is the Intel Core Ultra 7 it's 16 core processor and also has got art Graphics now I'm going to be interesting to see how the AR Graphics performs because obviously if you put an Intel CPU and an arcs GPU inside of your like main desktop system it has really cool technology that sort of leverages both the Intel architecture of the CPU and the graphics card which gives you a little bit of a boost in fps compared to having like an Intel CPU and an Nvidia graphics card or an AMD graphics card they sort of work together in tandem to just give you a little bit better performance it's very clever what it does so I think it will leverage both of the CPU and GPU very well inside of this little processor for the handheld system this might hopefully result in a much more efficient chip that gives you better battery life but also better fps in certain tiles obviously once the device releases in a couple of months we can test this extensively compare it to the Asus Rog alloy and obviously the steam deck that are running the AMD CPUs but for now my assumption would be that it could be slightly more efficient the reason why I believe it could be more efficient is because of its power profiles that it's got so inside of the MSI claw there's multiple different Power profiles that you can choose from you could do this this on the Asus R and steam deck basically effectively how much fan noise the system is generating and obviously the power draw for the battery life this has got a much higher power mode than the Rog alloy you can run it at 40 watts versus 30 Watts on the Asus variation but interestingly the lowest power profile is only 15 watts on the MSI claw versus 10 wats on the Asus Rog allo so if you want to run any form of emulators on there the Asus Rog allly can actually run a much less power draw obviously resulting in much better battery life for that style of gaming but it does show that you'll be able to get higher performance pumping more power through the system when you run it in that higher mode so you could expect higher graphic settings and also FPS but obviously maybe just slightly worse battery life if you are running it at 40 wats in that mode it does also have similar cooling modes are found on the MSI motherboards usually for when you're overclocking you've got like these cooler boost modes that you can activate on the desktop motherboards that is present within the MSI claw but the fan noise is excessively High when you do run it in this mode so it could be quite irritating for somebody that's next to you but from some other reviewers that I was chatting with they found that it didn't really need to be in this cooler boost mode you can sort of run it in normal fan mode and it was sort of unnecessary so it be interesting to see whether there's any extra performance you can get out of the system when you get your hands on the retail version why this mode actually exists now let's discuss the efficiency of this Intel CPU just briefly for a moment here now when it comes to the actual battery it does have a 35% bigger battery than the Asus Rog alloy inside of this MSI claw so this is obviously going to naturally result in a higher amount of battery life and hours of active gaming on this handheld device however because of the efficiency of this new Intel chip versus the AMD one MSI claimed that you can get around 50% more battery life out of the MSI claw which is a lot of extra gaming and this is probably one of the biggest weak points of things like the steam deck and also the Rog alloy is the amount of hours you can actually play on the system when you're going out and about you know I think when I had my steam deck and we tested it it was maybe like was it like 2 3 hours maybe 4 hours at a p sort of playing games like Spider-Man very intense games but obviously if you're traveling on like a 10 12 hour flight that's not much use obviously this is currently just a manufacturer claim and we need to test it in the real world once it launches but that is a huge step in the right direction for this portol gaming format and also a massive improvement over previous Intel architecture for these style of devices which back in the day used to run really loud were also terrible on battery and overall performance as a whole so when it comes to the display inside of the MSI claw it is rumored to be the exact same display inside of the Asus Rog alloy they look very similar when you you look at them but also the spec is the same it's like a 1080p 7in display 120 HZ but I do believe that the MSI version has got variable refresh rate So that obviously will hopefully result in a much smoother gameplay experience uh with the obviously the higher refresh rate gaming if you can pump the FPS that high so when it comes to the overall aesthetic and design of the MSI claw it's got loads of different buttons very similar again into the steam deck and Rog Ally you've got some little Pro buttons on the back that makes it great for games like Street Fighter and those those sort of things where you want those extra triggers at the rear it's obviously got like a d-pad and also your standard sort of controller buttons that you find key difference is with the sort of abxy buttons there's some RGB lighting hidden under these they're very dim you can't really see it h because there's sort of like a a coating over these buttons but that is present so aesthetically it does like a lot different and also very gamery with all of the RGB effects on the thumb sticks and so on but for me personally I found the overall build quality was a little bit rubbish right so this is probably one of the hottest products of CES this is the new MSI claw this is sort of like the new handheld device compete with the Asus uh Rog is it that was super popular last year probably the better device if we honest we've tried that out here at the event and now obviously MSI has just released this this device is cool but it feels pretty cheap compared to the Asus one that we had a look at so it's got like a real cheap plastic build quality and make these triggers they a joke these triggers are like AB joke I don't know how this will like sort of perform in robust over like got to be in mind this seem to be thrown in your backpack the joysticks going getting pushed absolutely everywhere so you'd have to really take it on the road to test it but fundamentally it's a pretty cool little device this claw right here so it's got a 7in full HD uh 1080p display pretty good performance- wise is decent we played Assassin's Creed Mirage on this yesterday when we had a little quick play on it overall was pretty happy it was dropping frames a little bit but you also have to bear in mind this thing has been on 24/7 for like a few days so it's a it's had a lot of you know hardcore gaming so it could be a little bit hot while that was happening but it does have multiple different modes you can run this in which could potentially make it a little bit better than something like the valve steam deck you obviously the steam deck can run like Linux stuff like you can get Windows on it but it's a bit of a pain so you basically switch between steam full pitch mode and steam standard but this comes with Windows 11 Pro Bild onto it so you can literally use this as like a portable desktop laptop you Vibe with Windows 11 access lots of different apps then switch into the handheld MSI dashboard for more of that tablet gaming experience so that's quite good I am a huge fan of that for making it a little bit more usable like when I picked it up in my hands it just felt very plasticky I know obviously all of these devices are made out of plastic and that's a ridiculous statement but it just felt very MSI plastic just just a little bit cheap compared to you know the steam deck that is quite solid feeling in your hand and the Rog alloy with that white design that it has just looks a little bit more premium also the triggers just felt very weaken as if they would break over period of time there just wasn't much resistance to the triggers when you were playing so if you're playing like FPS shooting games I feel like they would just become very irritating over a period of time especially compared to my experience with the steam deck that I did obviously own and have a lot of hours hands on with however one thing that I do like about the design is the active cooling this MSI claw has got so many Fang grills everywhere and also inside of the system itself it's got like a dual chamber design on the heat sink so I do think the cooling is going to be much better than all of the other devices thus resulting in a much lower Thresh hold it's got a lot of fang grills at the rear a lot of stuff going on at the back and also with the front because things like the steam deck and also the r Alo B get pretty loud when you're actually gaming on them which makes them bit very disruptive if you're like on an airplane the guy next just think can use this chump with his you know portable gaming thing so that would be interesting to see if this allows the fan speeds to be a little bit lower because it's got a little bit more active cooling with all of these fan grills this is the key thing when I reviewed the steam deck everyone was like fun noise doesn't matter just put some headphones on but it's the ambient noise and impact you have of the other people around you like the courtesy of like other people on the train on the plane or even people in your living room sure if you've got noise cancelling headphones on that's fine for you you can hear your Spider-Man cinematic stuff all all cool but the dude sat next to you on the planes probably thinking who is this irritating guy with his steam deck that's like the whole time while you're playing on the topic of desktop mode you will obviously be able to dock the MSI claw and then use it on an external display but the dock is an additional option it's not included with that retail price of about $699 it will be an additional extra and cost for you to then obviously leverage the docking performance this isn't like a shock it's the same thing with the uh steam deck if you want the the the official dock you got to buy that separately the Rog allly did come with a dock but it was like just a crappy little 3D printed thing that was super cheap and then you would just literally throw a port like a plug into the back of the the the um the device so guess you can't really complain too much that it isn't included but I guess it would have gave it a little bit more of a Competitive Edge if it was thrown inside of the Box on the topic of ports that are available on on the MSI claw there is one micro SD card which will allow you to expand the storage of the device very similar to a Nintendo switch and also the valve steam deck you also have one Thunderbolt 4 Port / USB type-c this will obviously be leveraged for the display output if you wanted to connect this to an external uh screen there's also a headphone jack so you can connect a pair of wired headphones it does also support Bluetooth so you can throw in some wireless headphones if you would prefer I'm assuming that's what most people would use in 2024 anyways and then finally it does have a power button with a fingerprint reader so an element of security on the device that we have haven't seen present on any of the competitors so you basically got like an apple style your thumb print or fingerprint scanner to get yourself into the device just to keep it a little bit more safe and secure now there will be other variations of the MSI claw available you can upgrade the internal storage and also the ram they still all used the exact same Intel Ultra 7 chip however so the overall performance will be the same but this uh additional storage and so on will be around $749 personally I think it will be worth that upgrade for the 1 TB internal storage like doubling it will give you flexibility for more games cuz obviously the modern games are so big and if you're traveling a lot you know you don't want to have a lot of a large range of titles for you to choose from on there but overall I think the MSI Claw is a very impressive product and it's great to see more competition being in this field of the handheld Tech Market if you want to see more coverage from CES 20124 and some of the incredible products that have been released by Asus you should check out this video next where we take a look at the world's first 480 Herz OLED gaming display

Channel: Ben Rowlands

Views: 29,199

Keywords: ben rowlands, xbox, playstation, pc gaming, Asus rog, Asus rog ally, msi claw, new msi handheld, intel handheld, new intel cpu, ces 2024, oled, gaming tech, ps5, xbox series x, pc gamer, gaming pc, pc build, windows 11, portable gaming, steamdeck, valve, amd, msi, xbox series s, playstation 5, playstation portal, lg, samsung, pc hardware, desk setup, gaming setup, msi claw review, msi claw unboxing, msi claw first look, msi claw first impressions, xbox game pass, ubisoft

Id: PgnqlASeiro

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024