Worse Than I Expected - MSI Claw In-Depth Review

[@callumjones5451]

That transition from thumbnail to video was truly amazing

[@ThePhawx]

Thanks!

[@thetechnogeek6336]

Fr i was like sike that's so sick!!

[@6IXSTRING90]

On God

[@eli2210]

Honestly true

[@rosaria8384]

​@@ThePhawx hopefully you continue this style - it's so perfect

[@GameTechTalk]

Oh boy! Those first 5 seconds alone got me mentally prepared for what is about to unfold!

[@declangallagher1448]

''Hello everyone I am the Phawx and today I am dissapointed''

[@Asfanboy1]

He does the same intro when he looks in the 🪞

[@ThePhawx]

@@Asfanboy1 hahaha gat damn

[@EaglesAndStandard]

My man

[@ekinteko]

​@@ThePhawx So Intel Technology in Early-2024 is almost performing as good as AMD Technology from Early-2020. As expected. The Valve SteamDeck, ASUS ROG Ally, and GPD Win Max. That are the devices to consider. Forget the rest. They may have their charms, or tiny niche, but this trifecta has been it for the past 2 years and will remain for 2 years more.

[@InvidiousIgnoramus]

@@ekintekoWeird that Intel's first generation real attempt at a GPU architecture doesn't hold up to a company with almost 30 years of experience in the field.

[@battman505]

this guy is way more thorough than eta prime he should have more subs

[@chronossage]

ETA should honestly be loosing more subs with how much of payed shill he became.

[@ninjason57]

ETA is just a glorified commercial channel. I unsubbed from him over a year ago. He's no longer a trustworthy review channel.

[@Tatar_Piano]

Eta prime is one of the worst tech youtubers ever, if you can even call him a tech youtuber

[@tuanld91]

It's expected. The Phawk's videos are very technical. ETA stuffs are more "bite-sized" and "for the mass". Easy, short video will get more views (hence subs) than technical, long video. It's been working like that for every type of media consumption ever.

[@Dec4AllTimeAlways]

@@tuanld91ETA doesn’t criticize.

[@namcojr]

As i've said before, this should have been called "MSI Flaw".

[@coolhawk2003]

Just like when the steam deck was first out. Lol

[@athaibrahim7249]

msi CLAWN 🤡

[@X862go]

I blame Intel, not msi.

[@namcojr]

@@coolhawk2003 Heh VERY different. This is not fixable.

[@namcojr]

@@X862go Yep, true.

[@GuyWhoReviewsStuff]

My personal oppinion is MSI had NO interest entering into the handheld market but intel probably gave them a ton of money to make a handheld with intel chips inside to take on the marketshare with AMD. That explains why the claw resembles the ROG Ally so much, Someone on Reddit was able to find purchase orders where it appears MSI bought parts from ASUS or the company that makes the components for ASUS. If MSI took this serious they could of had a killer device on their hand, instead they just released a sub par product. And for the people that said the Steam Deck, ROG Ally and Legion go all had issues when they first launched, yes you are correct they did however MSI also had almost a year since the ROG Ally launched to be able to get things tweaked and working properly. One would expect the claw should at least be on par with the current handhelds not this far behind.

[@justswitched8841]

They basically rushed it out to get a quick buck and now it's gonna bite them in the as.

[@antwanowens4013]

And not to mention the price and that’s the least issues and that’s saying alot

[@katietree4949]

Curious how many other youtubers 'break down' this handheld but neglect to go this far into it. Well done.

[@werpu12]

Most youtubers are just salesmen who sell off their reviews for getting devices for free and getting viewers!

[@ThePhawx]

Thanks!

[@terabitdefiance8022]

Not to mention.. nobodys actually breaking it down. They dont even remove the back.

[@hornantuutti5157]

Warranty sticker.. Warranty is history if you swap ssd.

[@dewinter1411]

@@hornantuutti5157which is illegal in the US. You have a right to repair. They cannot void a warranty for simply opening up your device.

[@hluos7uhluos7u94]

This is what KZbin needs more. Good informative high quality videos with a nice presentation. Thank you for your work, im always happy to see a video of yours.

[@ramrodbldm9876]

Gulp GULP 🤤

[@zergslayer69]

Intel must be paying a good chunk of money for handheld companies to partner with them despite already knowing how good the amd chips are

[@GodofGHz]

Or selling the chip at a HUGE discount

[@chronossage]

@@GodofGHz Which would be great is that got passed onto the consumer. I would consider buying an Intel handheld if it had a nice hook like being a clamshell and it was a good price. This is more expensive than the ROG ally besides the great value of the steam deck.

[@guillaumebackelandt7381]

I completely agree and I think this statement can be extended to the entire laptop market. Idk if intel's throwing money at the right persons from every big brands or what but that's definitely weird.

[@TRX25EX]

It's not that, Intel offers long term contract, these companies like MSI and One X Player infact paying more to get these chips but they did because they believe Intel will beat AMD in coming generations..... If that's Arm chips related or not I'm not sure, but I know that some companies if not majority believe Intel will beat AMD in terms of APUs soon

[@ibrohiem]

@@TRX25EX Nobody believes Intel will beat AMD in the long run handhelds because it's clear they're scaling down desktop cpu's. So with Intels desktop CPUs drawing insane amount of power just to keep up with AMD, scale that down and then do the math. Amd is making custom APUs for OEMs JUST for handhelds. Also Intel also historically gave rebates to OEM not to use AMD, which may or may not be illegal. So I'm guessing they're either giving rebates to MSI just to get some hold in the handheld market, or they forced MSI to use their chipset or they would withhold cpu's from them in the future for their laptops. People also forgot companies GPD used intel a few years ago and it sucked ass.

[@Wilson27PT]

Finally something that i can skip! Tired of some KZbinrs recomend every single gadget. Some be like : "i am a huge fan of ..." thanks for the video!

[@werpu12]

That describes about 99% of the tech youtubers out there, stick to those who give an honest review, they are a reare species, thanks ThePhawx

[@josem.garibay5478]

Like the fraud ETA PRIME

[@yusepbcn]

I can smell the scent of ETA PRIME in that comment.... And I totally agree

[@protocetid]

Some tech channels are more like "influencers" (marketers) than reviewers.

[@RamdozaCh]

I love the way it transitions from thumbnail to video

[@MasterPJ86]

In 2024 steam deck oled with its price tag, performance at low tdp, accessibility, software support, trackpads, steam input, and flexible and open source Linux base, has just NO competition. Raw power is nothing. Control, optimization and the good user experience on the software side is key. And the steam deck is just on another level.

[@LordFreizaAndFreizaArmy]

Absolutely Some games might be better suited to a laptop but having the ability to just game, without Windows. Windows is still the main issue. And sure most people go around it but I already have a laptop with Windows, that's more than enough Windows

[@GodofGHz]

It is, but some of us really need more of a handheld laptop rather than a mobile gaming console. That's why I ended up selling my Steam Deck after getting my lenovo legion go. The Deck is a fantastic device, and the new OLED one especially is amazing for gaming- but sometimes I a tablet to browse the web and I actually do need raw CPU grunt. Battery life isn't a concern for me

[@Muhluri]

It has no competition at that price point. But if you're looking for a portable AAA machine the steam deck falls behind FAST

[@HooktonFonnix]

Steam Deck = best value Legion Go = best overall

[@Rashimotosan]

I literally only have a gpd for anything the deck can't play. It's so enjoyable playing on the deck though hands down

[@Falkentyne07]

This key combo was known back on the old MSIbooks on notebookreview, back in 2016! Amazing that it's still there. It's basically the AMI menus that are locked out. But some options don't do anything. Also, the VRM "trip" current limit (hard shutdown), sometimes linked to SKU ICCMAX, can't be controlled by hidden advanced menus, as this is hardware specific and has to be enabled as an option by MSI directly.

[@randomuser-vs3oe]

A handheld that basically needs to be plugged in at all times really sucks. What a bummer.

[@MrVariant]

Lol hold my beer game gear 😂

[@Goalier95]

First handheld flop of 2024. Glad I didn’t pre-order this garbage. Will wait on ROG Ally 2 and hopefully they won’t use Intel iGPU.

[@stephenj37824]

My bet is strix point......

[@aikafuwa7177]

Late to game and not cheap enough... wtf is Intel thinking?

[@nickentros]

Poor Russ took this thing on his trip to Japan

[@Muhluri]

He must've had a boring flight after the battery died 😂

[@kenobi639]

He undoubtedly has a smaller handheld as a backup lol

[@TechnicolorTube]

Extremely informative and very well presented. This same Claw chassis would be great with an AMD APU.

[@trogdorburninator6627]

I had backed the OneXPlayer X1 Ultra (same chip as the claw) and dropped support for many of the reasons this video showed. First clue was OneX would stall when asked for true numbers showing frame rates between AMD and Intel - and the made handhelds that used both chips. Got worse stalling when asking for lower wattage data between the chips. Was waiting for this review. Not sure drivers can fix a lot of this….

[@marksapollo]

I guarantee they’ll be launching an AMD version sooner or later, you know it. They should have stuck to what they know with their previous models and used AMD.

[@CuriousTinkering]

Intel and good drivers don't match. Like ever since. Just take a look at the Arc GPU users asking for updates.

[@DingoOnMy40]

Really wonder why they went with intel for a "Gaming handheld" there game driver is still not on par with amd or nvidia.

[@JoeL-xk6bo]

intel probably begged a few companies and MSI is a good little doggy.

[@dzibanart8521]

They probably gave the chips basically for free.

[@TheRealTera]

I love that transition from thumbnail to video you're doing. You're probably the first one I watched who did that. Keep that up!

[@ThePhawx]

Appreciate it!

[@bullymaguire243]

You know it’s bad when the phawx hates it. Just get a deck or an ally (sale) EDIT: Oops forgot the legion go

[@smcauley600]

or legion go

[@frenchyfrenchsilver1331]

Legion Go is the best in my opinion and I will hope a refresh on Ally

[@High5Authentic]

Good thing I found the ally on sale @best buy for $399.

[@theguyhimself222]

A legion Go is more appropriate, Either that or the steam Deck oled

[@High5Authentic]

Either way I'd maybe go with a deck than Legion Go, Steam Deck I previously owned. Rog Ally is not shady at all. I dimmed down most of all settings I had no reason for use including bloatware. I got the adrenalin driver up and going. Also as far as playtime with the battery on Cyberpunk and Call Of Duty MW2 it's acceptable for me. On the Steam Deck CyberPunk drains more rapidly and I'm only playing on the z1 processor model. I really don't even get my games above the 80°F heat mark.

[@ninjason57]

Been waiting for this! I've seen so many other reviews and I could tell the reviewer was trying their hardest to not totally say it was garbage. I've been waiting for yours because you tell the brutal truths we need! Keep up the good work!

[@ThePhawx]

Thanks! Truthfully I tend to want to be positive myself, but I couldn't find anything redeeming here.

[@SIPEROTH]

​@@ThePhawx Does the APU use Arc tech? Because I bought ARC and one of their issues is consumption while idle. Maybe is a flaw in the XE cores of Arc tech that continues even in an APU form.

[@deuxforever13]

Lol, i love ur thumbnail to video transitions Carey. Now i see why u werent in the nerdnest podcast yesterday lol.😂

[@Ludecan]

Was so waiting for @ThePhawx 's review on this. Got to make some time for watching it

[@eiceys4612]

The king talked.

[@ThePhawx]

That means a lot to me! Thank you so much

[@High5Authentic]

​@ThePhaw, you've been my only one recommendation since I had the first GPD WIN.

[@DaveAdams222]

Wow, that 50 minutes FLEW by. That's a good thing! To me and my brain that means you didn't doddle or wafer too much on a single thing. You didn't beat any dead horses, you stuck to the point, and changed topics and talking points perfectly. This is what I would call a gold standard on a deep dive review; not too long, not too short, and never did I feel the need to CMD-Tab over to something else.

[@Muhluri]

Nice profile pic

[@HanmaHeiro]

I'm happy that intel is in the scene to compete. Unfortunate that this device has so many shortcomings

[@Omar777i]

Im soo glad you did this video! Cause I know you don't mess around and tells it how it really is! Great job on the video!

[@toxicgamer4123]

Give it 3 or 4 months tops for the MSI Claw price to drop drastically, every outlet and channles have the consistency of being disappointed and turned off by the Claws performance overall, especially seeing a KZbin channel made a video saying why their returning their claw

[@heromedley]

wait the way the thumbnail transitions into the video was amazing i wish more channels do that

[@kenobi639]

Great intro from the thumbnail. I dont think ive ever seen anyone do that in all the years ive watched youtube. Well done and subbed

[@Winnetou17]

Regarding the power, especially idle power, I wouldn't put all the blame on Intel. I found out from Wolfgang's channel that different motherboards and the number of ports and if they're connected or not, can matter a lot, especially visible in power draw. Also, Windows itself is pinnacle of bloat. Seeing 216 !! processes at 6:37 makes me think that MSI did jack $#!t at debloating Windows. Also also MSI's own MSI Center, I wouldn't bet on it being made to be power efficient. So, what I'm trying to say, I wouldn't be surprised AT ALL if it's all MSI's fault for the power management. If this is fixable through software, driver and firmware updates... that's another question. Hopefully it is, but it's not guaranteed. Very solid review though! Is there a chance we can see more fiddling with cores active ? Like only running on E cores, or only running with 4 P cores. Checking with and without the 2 LP E cores. Checking if it can be undervolted. Things like that. Oh, and manually trying to debloat Windows, who knows, it might actually do wonders :))

[@muizzsiddique]

That is a sick transition from the thumbnail.

[@richardjavier7236]

Yea I liked it too. Was a different approach

[@ThePhawx]

Thanks!

[@tipsy634]

The unit has such high spikes even on idle. What are the causes of these spikes? They must be the same that cause it to freeze frequently while playing.

[@jackwilson5542]

This is just unacceptable, 1.5 hour of gaming... Microsoft seriously needs to improve ARM support or when Macs will be able to AAA game, Windows laptops/portables are literally dead in the water. The SD X Elite or even mobile SD 8 Gen 3 have all the power to run AAA games and could run them for ~10 hours combined with such large batteries.

[@richieb9675]

Ok this was the last and best video i needed,,i factory resetted my Claw I7 and its back in the box…refund it tommorow

[@raguel259]

This is the best analysis of Meteor Lake's performance in video games, I always hate that in these types of videos people use FSR or XeSS with like 50% internal resolution.

[@WillySou]

It's sad but kinda hilarious that the MSI claw is already with 100€ (around 108 USD) discount here in Amazon Germany. It's still 100€ more expensive than the Ally Z1extreme (the lower end MSI Claw!). What was MSI thinking?!

[@StanMog]

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops as the firmware etc matures. For me it’s not an option at the moment as there seems to be an exclusive seller in the UK and they aren’t a company I’d willingly buy from

[@z590iGeeeKReBoRN]

Disable xmp or reduce xmp memory voltage to reduce power draw. And if available try real-time memory overclocking to regain xmp at load

[@danpatrick7176]

That intro trick still gets me everytime. Excellent job!

[@rosoboy]

Amazing in-depth review, subbed

[@YouthInAsia1]

Love that the first 8 minutes of the review is a deep-dive into advanced BIOS settings. Never change Phawx.

[@s01itarygaming]

I've never watched a video where you could hear disappointment in the reviewer's voice for the whole 50 minute video Thanks for being so dedicated Phawx, I really appreciate the time and effort you put into your videos!

[@ThePhawx]

Thank you :)

[@mikilysPOL]

Yes, MSI had a problem with drivers and BIOs on release day. However, it has already been fixed and further improvements are being implemented. Additionally, the price has dropped significantly. Reviewers who have not re-tested are simply behaving unprofessionally. Additionally, they are showing a false picture of the hardware at this point...

[@kylerclarke2689]

The more I use the ROG Ally the more I feel as though it's an unfinished product, and the Claw seems the same. Windows can be very frustrating to use on a handheld and these manufacturers are not doing enough to mitigate those problems. Armory Crate feels more like an additional problem most of the time.

[@Jonnyd05]

Very nice video review the best I’ve seen so far. I see the high idle wattage on this is very much like the issues on the arc graphics cards. I’d say this is hardware related issues and won’t be fixed and again the drivers took a year to improve but a lot needed again to fix games. I agree it’s not recommended to buy this device as the next gen Amd will be around the corner and are power efficient. I want a competitive market maybe intel down the line can improve

[@budthecyborg4575]

It's amazing that in the last 5 years AMD went from having no products of any particular value to now creating and commanding the entire handheld PC market (Yes Valve helped a lot but AMD had to develop the architecture to use in that application in the first place).

[@xuimod]

Nvidia is too busy printing money with AI. Once Nvidia gets serious about the handheld PC market, I expect them to dominate like they do in the PC market in general.

[@ETophales]

@@xuimodIt's more a big if than a "once". NVIDIA has the Switch, and that's worth a lot more than the PC mobile gaming market.

[@SIPEROTH]

​@@xuimod Nvidia can't make an APU based on x86 because they don't have the rights so that will never happen.

[@reaperreaper5098]

@@SIPEROTH Nvidia can make an APU based on ARM, and with Microsoft looking to expand into the "high performance" ARM device market (as evidenced by the Surface Pro 9 that has a Microsoft spec SnapDragon), it's safe to bet that they'd back that horse the nanosecond Nvidia could produce something with the horse power to allow x86 emulation good enough to keep up with what current iGPUs can handle.

[@npcimknot958]

It’s crazy because people said this wouldn’t be good before it even launched.. damn.

[@DingoOnMy40]

holly crap i just realize i watch this 50-minute long video.

[@ThePhawx]

Thanks!

[@DingoOnMy40]

Knowledge is like a vast ocean; the more we explore, the deeper it becomes, and the greater our understanding of its boundless depths. @@ThePhawx

[@andidagoat813]

That thumbnail transition caught me so off guard that I had to double take AND double check

[@dzibanart8521]

I knew this (MSI Claw) would be hot garbage.

[@flows30]

for a copycat of the Ally it's DoA, it's slow, it looks like those chinese no-brand generic pc controllers and in my country they charge it slightly above the Ally w/ Z1 Extreme, the nerve.

[@pkilljoy5797]

im happily waiting for my VRR capable gpd win mini. so done with this controller setup on windows. trackpads are essential

[@malavpatel77]

Would have been interesting to see different core counts (4P+4e) and (4P) to see if it improves as should reduce power the cpu tile draws

[@CharletteGHz-oi7ox]

45:10 Could it be that setting it to a value lower than 100% just makes it "go" the the edge quicker? I.e. you only need to push the stick 70% of the way for it to report a 100% push of the stick. Still, this probably doesn't resolve that bottom right corner imperfection though.

[@chrisrobinson3494]

I heard they based this handheld on the Rog Ally, and it does bear a resemblance to it, maybe the one good thing you can say about the Claw, is unlike the Ally, their isnt a problem with the sd-card reader.

[@PyroCatus]

This is $200 more expensive than the Z1 extreme Ally... Who made business decision at MSI?

[@mikele7982]

How do you not reach 100k? This quality is insane and the amount of work...

[@TicoDK]

nintendo stuff

[@DrewDragoon]

Most people aren't into the technical details and jargon, it's boring. I like this channel and even I had to skip like a third of the video

[@protocetid]

handheld PCs are finally mainstream but still dwarfed by Nintendo and regular PC gaming

[@David77]

That thumbnail to video transition 🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶🥶

[@dempsy40]

Hey this is porbably such a weird comment, but that thumbnail tranistion into the video was really cool, wasn't expecting to mouse over a video in my feed and see soemthing that smooth, it immediately drew me in!

[@zillagto]

Thanks!

[@ThePhawx]

Dude thank you so much!

[@zillagto]

@@ThePhawx I appreciate the honest, fair and enlightened videos. You clearly love the hobby but won't be simply a fanboy. Thank you.

[@RurouTube]

Perfect circularity should be the desirable and more logical result since the stick gate is circular thus should map into circle, but the main issue is mostly whether the app/game mapped to a more square result or circle result. Is a game accept 1,1 as the most bottom right corner or some value that correspond to the actual stick position in a circle (which definitely will be lower than on each axis). The difference can be that a stick that have more square shape in the circularity test can have more range of motion or the stick can have an outside dead zone which is not desirable when you want it to be precise. The reverse is also true, where a stick with perfect circularity can ended up have less range of motion or being more precise. As for power consumption, this is basically the same problem that AMD encounter with their chiplet design which is higher idle power. There is really no way around it, something with chiplet or multiple chip glued together will have power consumption penalty. Intel trying to mitigate it with basically have the main SoC tile that contains pretty much everything to run the device (thus 2 low power E-cores) thus they can disable the compute/CPU tile, but probably still not enough to reach the same idle efficiency as non tile architecture. AMD Phoenix and Hawk Point are of course monolithic thus didn't have the glue penalty. Honestly I don't think this is something that can be solved entirely. Maybe with more optimization you can get the power consumption to be closer to a monolithic architecture but again, it will never be as efficient as a monolithic approach. Physics.

[@smcauley600]

every thing i own is amd, my laptop, my desktop, my original steam deck, my legion go heck even my ps5 has AMD chips it in.

[@AdmV0rl0n]

what I take from this - - is just how awesome AMD did in making their mobile/game soc/platform. We are years into this now, and Intel really has no viable answer.

[@Rokabur]

And the AMD chip is set to use LESS power while still having better performance.

[@JoeL-xk6bo]

Why don't the windows handhelds have TRACKPADS?

[@bullymaguire243]

First: you misspelled trackpads Second: there’s a thing called the legion go

[@PM-xc8oo]

For serious. After having used the Steamdeck a couple of years I cannot comprehend how anyone can even use one of these type of PCs without at least one track pad. Especially with windows, I cannot imagine using one of these things without access to a track pad or one of the optical sensor things that some devices use instead of a track pad.

[@pranze3484]

@@PM-xc8ooIf you have a proper touch friendly desktop like gnome you don't really need it

[@rhrendy7]

​@@PM-xc8ooTrack pads are a heavenly feature

[@0LoneTech]

GPD Win Mini and Win Max do have trackpads, and the Win 4 has one of those optical fiddly bits.

[@WickedGamerCollector]

I had this new generation mini pc .. .same story right 😅

[@710FARMER]

The best review by far the tear down the breakdown of power consumption shutting things off going into the BIOS this is all the s*** I want to know first time finding the channel best review by far looking forward to many more videos awesome keep up the good work I subscribed👊

[@RipeStories]

How is it in emulators? Should be good, no? With all those cores

[@Greez1337]

These chips are interesting. From what one can garner, them basically chopping up the chip and futzing more with Northbridge and segmenting it more, are we not just adding latency and inefficiency? There's a reason why old monolithic architectures feel snappy .

[@cppctek]

There is hope on the performance side and battery life side. I’ve made pretty decent improvements on mine with both. Playing forza horizon 5 i can get close to 2 hours with around 80-90fps at 900p with some really fine tuning which I am going to make a video on the deep dive today. Also for performance it’s best to not try to neuter any cores out or set wattage limits. There’s a few old school tricks to force it to use less cpu wattage and then it ends up having a better gpu performance when the system isn’t stealing the power from it. The balance between the cpu and gpu power is wonky factory. Also the idle ram usage is something you didn’t speak about which is going to be a major problem. One of the reasons you see the really bad 1% lows is your out of ram. Most games it’s doing two things 1: it’s overshooting how much vram it thinks it needs, leaving even less ram available for the millions of services and apps running in the background also disabling the noise cancellation and stuff in the msi center does nothing unless you manually track down the services and disable those which is a bit tricky but I did it. I was able to cut the idle ram usage down more than half. That also helps idle power draw too. Harping too much on power draw and focusing on it will lead you down a rabbit hole where you end up just sacrificing too much performance. There’s other ways to help with battery life and gain performance. The end result is always the goal and the pathway there isn’t always a or b. Lastly we see when we hit the limits on ram usage I see more game stutters especially loading into new scenes in a game or when more players enter the map or somethings changing. When my system is fully and I mean fully tuned those drops are far far better and I’m not able to get better results overall. The one thing I ran into was mw3 menus buggin out sometimes. Benchmarks never load the first run and matches never run the first match. You have to let it freeze at the menu and time out. Then try again. Some games just do that and there’s only a driver update or game update to fix that. The other thing you can’t do is easily upgrade the nvme drive. You hav to take out the entire heatsink and fan assembly which is not the best for user service. The d pad is horrible let’s be honest I’ve most def not been the only one to mention it. Also the shoulder buttons are rough and not always easy to press for everyone. I’ve watched quite possibly every review for the claw and most of us are all saying the buttons on d pad and shoulder are bad. Also with temps you can significantly lower temps with some other simple methods as mentioned earlier as well as I can say confidently the cpu stock just is pushing too much power and the gpu just isn’t getting enough due to the total system power balance being wonky. If you tell it to use less cpu wattage (don’t go crazy and neuter it though or the performance is crap) if you tell it to use let’s say between 20-35w that’s the sweet spot. Otherwise it gets all the way to 45 in benchmarks and games and you’ll regret it. Cinebench or primarily cpu workloads is the only reason you’d want more cpu power as we are heavily gpu bound in most games and creating a bottleneck when it’s running at 45w. There’s been several discoveries I’ve made and I’m really thinking msi has a chance to save this with a lot of tweaks and tuning plus they really should revise the d pad and add a softer or thinner membrane to really give it a better feel. The sticks though are the most accurate sticks I’ve tried and feel better than the ally as well. The caps could be better though I agree. Overall it’s not good though they came in at 799 and it’s most definitely not the handheld of choice but if someone wants to fafo and have something different there is hope ! I do think I may can even come up with several mods that can significantly help in a few areas and I’ve started on one already when it comes to cooling as everyone will probably know me by my cooling mods lol. 😂

[@Winnetou17]

Paragraphs, man! Use them! I'd read what you wrote, but my head hurts just from seeing the huge wall of text... before trying to go past the 3rd line.

[@AlvaroAvalos]

Thanks man, appreciate all the hard work you do. Very informative and honest, keep the great work!

[@antwoneb.9829]

Why is this handheld have 232 processes running that's crazy if that's at boot. Need to cut that down to under 100.

[@betag24cn]

windows is like that now, tasks, services and all the other crap

[@will3641]

Just a crazy thought, possile to only use E cores?

[@crow132]

how does it compares on the emulation side of things? specially interested on rpcs3

[@el_kalle]

So Msi is the alternative to... Steam deck? But at double the price?

[@mannkeithc]

Where is MSI Claw's 6-axis gyro, that Steam Deck, Asus Rog Ally and Legion Go have?

[@betag24cn]

a better question is, who uses that in a tablet?

[@jinx20001]

This review really needed some indie game benchmarks to highlight even more the power struggles, we could see how 10w was performing in AAA games but how does 10w perform in indie games like dead cells etc because we know handhelds like steam deck can play those kinds of games set to 4w and get 60fps plus and the ally can play those games pretty comfortable set to its minimum 7w meaning on steam deck i can achieve 12 hours plus battery life in some cases and the ally i get around 4 hours still set to 7w so terrible but we all knew that... at least it still performs well... it seems like set to 10w the claw is barely able to function and this may crumble even indie game performance, so would have been good to see some indie testing, especially considering that these machines are perfect for indie typically, far more so than AAA gaming. great in depth review as always though, cheers.

[@ennio5763]

Shout out : Great work on equalizing the power consumption across these diverse chipsets, giving a much more reliable and useful perf/w comparison.

[@sindrisuncatcher653]

Couple of questions... You did your 'even when doing the least possible, this still uses a lot of power' bit right after the 'this his how to disable all the efficiency cores' bit. That makes it look like you were testing the 'idle' power consumption while forcing everything to run on the less efficient but higher performance parts of the processor. I assume that you re-enabled the E cores off screen in between, but maybe mention that in the video? And you mention in the bit about the fan at the end that the TDP can be set to 30 or even 40, but all your game testing is done at no higher than 25. Is that because you tested it going higher and there was no actual improvement in performance, because you couldn't do a direct comparison to AMD devices, or just because you believe that any configuration that uses up the battery that quickly is useless in a handheld? If somebody was only using this plugged in for some reason, could it outperform other small-form-factor machines? I agree that sacrificing efficiency for peak performance would generally be a bad tradeoff when you're trying to make ultra-portable hardware. But it should be clear whether this is actually worse in every aspect, or if the problem is that they tried to optimize it like a gaming laptop instead of like a handheld. All that said, I think the driver compatibility issues alone would be enough to kill this for most people. If only a fraction of games are looking polished and a significant number just never start up at all, that's pretty much a dealbreaker. Even if there's ways to find a workaround, it's a big investment of time and effort where any other handheld would let me just run things out of the box.

[@DeckWizard]

Thank you Phawx

[@prdsatx4467]

I don't understand why MSI decided to partner up with Intel on this. It was basically DOA on launch. I know exactly 0 people who are interested in this product.

[@betag24cn]

money, intel surely paid

[@zen.mn.]

sorry but the way the thumbnail blends into the video is just fantastic

[@CrunchyMaggots]

You have the most godlike thumbnail/intro game imaginable. I'll never get over it.

[@ThePhawx]

Thanks so much!

[@kroketkitu]

thanks, you have convinced me to not buying this crap. i decided to sell my steamdeck led and buy oled.

[@budthecyborg4575]

44:10 "Zero Tension Analog Sticks" That's prefect, every videogame hardware maker should use weaker springs because mechanical deadzone stays in good condition 10X longer if you use weak springs.

[@betag24cn]

it is more often that the analog has problems with the resistors, the mechanical part does get damaget but it is alot more rare to see it happen, i only saw it happen on xbox, playstation rareoy has this, not after many years

[@budthecyborg4575]

@@betag24cn Valve says there is no reason to change Steam Deck to hall effect sensors and I fully agree, after I've modified the spring in my Xbox controllers I can use them for thousands of hours of perfect operation. I have seen a dead potentiometer in an Xbox controller once so I'm not denying that it ever happens, but bad potentiometers are extremely rare, oppositely it's an absolute fact that the mechanical deadzone will wear out rapidly on every analog stick ever made.

[@betag24cn]

@@budthecyborg4575 i broke a xbox controller in like a month my ps3 controller finaññy has analog problels i was talking about a different topic, not magnetic sensor, but all comes together these days

[@budthecyborg4575]

@@betag24cn You were talking about "stick drift" which is almost always mistakenly attributed to a faulty potentiometer (the digital readout for stick position). If you measure the mechanical deadzone with a game that allows analog deadzone tuning you'll see the deadzone rapidly degrade in the first few weeks of use, this is the cause of practically the entire stick drift issue outside of the Nintendo Switch joycons which actually do have a poorly designed potentiometer, but that's also not industry standard.

[@betag24cn]

@@budthecyborg4575 i was talking about the spring that locks in the center the analog, not about stick drift i have seen stick drift caused by the spring failing and also by the resistor wearimg out you can change those resistors, but the spring, cant be chamged and the spring is what makes the analog be too hard

[@Seeytube22]

Man i subscribed cause i like the depth of your reviews. Please make legion go next. See ya

[@Briancansen]

for msi first time doing handheld i think theres definitely improvements. with the recent software updates i see on their website i hope those help with performance!

[@GX27-69]

Picked up the Rog ally recently so good in terms of performance. good it doesn't have intel.

[@dis6900]

Crazy what a SteamDeck can get with damn near half the wattage used. It's all about optimization, not brute force in these handhelds.

[@CuriousTinkering]

I wouldn't be surprised if Intel paid MSI to make this product.

[@Bidwellz9]

i have a steam deck, because it makes sense at 400.........none of these other handhelds seem to understand i dont want an 800 dollar handheld, at that point im buying a laptop and curbing the convenience

[@Thrash666Wolf]

Sir, that transition from the thumbnail is fucking ART

[@jamescampbell6728]

One of the main points of meteor lake was low idle power consumption... That's the point of the E cores on the SOC die. The fact that they messed it up so badly boggles my mind.

[@swiftlysinking]

Woah, that thumbnail to video transition is slick

[@vikram5491]

Hopefully it gets better with software updates. The Rog ally wasnt doing too well at launch against steamdeck given the power difference, but now after all thr updates the steamdeck doesnt stand a chance.

[@Saschabrix]

Thank you for being honest with the product.

[@gregyance9901]

I hope you can bring some insight of the new MSI Claw 8 AI+ and if that one will solve the many flaws of this one , also release date , price , etc , so we can know if it will be an alternative to the Ally X (if the price is around the 800)

[@TheGrizz485]

The Intel nonsense in this is turning it into a meme. It's just too slow, inefficient and expensive to make. I hope msi doesn't dissolve the handheld unit.