Welcome back to Claw In Hand! Today, I'm going to talk about my experience with the MSI Claw and share my initial thoughts on its game performance and design.
The model I have is the Intel Core Ultra 7 155h with Windows 11, the Intel R Graphics 1080p 120Hz 7in screen, 512 GB storage, 16 GB RAM, hall joysticks and triggers, 2x2 watt speakers in the front, and a decent battery life. It's priced at $699 but I got it for $749.
Firstly, let's talk about the design. I absolutely love it! The black plastic is high quality and doesn't easily pick up fingerprints. It's a very solid and sturdy device with a well-balanced feel. The joysticks and triggers are great, but I'm not a fan of the squishy shoulder buttons. The additional venting in the back looks really nice and the grips on the back are a nice touch as well.
Moving on to game performance, there are some issues at launch but there are both goods and bads. I tried playing Cyberpunk and it was a rough experience, especially when unplugged. No matter what settings I used, it just wasn't smooth. However, when plugged in, there was a huge difference in performance. Helldivers 2 was another game that gave me trouble, but Spiderman Remastered ran surprisingly well at 1080p low FSR quality. Sonic Superstars ran great with no issues and Last Epoch ran quite well too.
The power delivery is not well-balanced, especially between the CPU and GPU, which causes hiccups and lack of performance in a lot of games. Turning off CPU boost in the BIOS helps a bit with the GPU side, but some games require that CPU power. The locked out auto VRAM is also a big issue that needs to be addressed.
Overall, the MSI Claw has its issues but it's still a solid device with great potential. I hope MSI and Intel work hard to improve its performance and address its issues. There's a lot of room for improvement and I look forward to testing it out more in the future.