The MSI Claw has been obtainable to buy for a number of weeks now, with no evaluations of the hand-held gaming PC being revealed previous to, or on the day of, its launch. Nevertheless, with the Claw now within the fingers of reviewers, it’s sadly develop into all too clear that it’s something however a worthy rival to the Valve Steam Deck.
Competitors for the title of greatest handheld gaming PC is fierce, with the Steam Deck OLED setting a excessive bar for all would-be challengers to satisfy. The MSI Claw seemed to be a doubtlessly welcome maverick, with its Intel silicon, containing an Arc A-series GPU and Meteor Lake CPU cores, however its specs and different issues depart a lot to be desired.
Probably the most in-depth and damning assessments of the MSI Claw comes from YouTuber The Phawx, who describes the hand-held as, “actually inconceivable to advocate.” Digesting their evaluation of battery life, efficiency, and different issues affecting the Claw, it’s laborious to argue with their conclusion.
Benchmarks reveal that whereas the MSI Claw’s Intel Core Extremely 7 155H chip can maintain its personal towards the ROG Ally and Steam Deck OLED, its exhibiting is much much less spectacular when you look previous body charges. The Phawx notes that in Doom Everlasting, the Claw wanted a further 10W to match the efficiency of Valve’s handheld, whereas the Ally managed to compete with 3-4W much less. Each watt issues on a handheld in the case of battery life, and the Claw’s Intel chip merely can’t compete with the AMD chips contained in the Deck and Ally.
This efficiency turns into all of the extra problematic when you think about that each the ROG Ally ($699.99) and Steam Deck ($399.99) are less expensive than the Claw ($749.99), leaving the MSI handheld feeling massively overpriced.
Tom’s Information shares equally adverse sentiments concerning the handheld, with its evaluation working with the title: “I wished to love the MSI Claw — after which I examined it.” Ouch. Because the system finds its approach into extra fingers, from purchasers and press alike, these few essential voices look more likely to develop into a refrain.
As ever, it appears like the one substitute for the Steam Deck will likely be a correct successor from Valve itself. Fortunately, the Steam Deck 2 launch date shouldn’t be an excessive amount of additional away now, notably given the elevated degree of competitors now confronted by the unique system.
