The original MSI Claw, lol

Yes, do we really need a dedicated thread for this handheld? But you know what, I couldn't really find a thread to jam this in, so here we are. I appreciate only feltmonkey will read this.

I have an original ROG Ally. I love it dearly, and it's probably my main gaming platform. One downside is that the battery life is measured in seconds away from a wall plug, and its only got a 512Gb drive, which means juggling titles on and off it all the time. I have also never really liked it being white (OK Farage) as I prefer the screen to blend into the chassis of a machine. I'd been eyeing a ROG Xbox Ally X, but I think the new 20th anniversary Ally suggests a general OLED version is coming soon (the 20th Anniversary edition comes bundled with AR glasses and has a transparent case, and may well be more than £2000 quid all in, so I'm hoping there is a cheaper SKU). I had thought about doing the battery mod, and replacing the NVME drive in my original Ally, but it was all a bit of a hassle. And indeed, since the RAMpocalypse, 2TB drives are ruinous.

Then on rllmuk I saw an original Claw being sold. This was the MSI, Intel Ally contender that was an absolute shitshow at launch. Terrible drivers, terrible performance, more expensive. But for (what the guy wanted) 230 quid, you get pretty much an Ally with a 1TB NVME in. After some research, which showed a lot of the launch issues had been solved (maybe), I decided, ridiculously, that it would be more efficient to buy the second machine and have a sort of 1.5TB duel gaming set up across two machines, rather than spunking £800 on one that did it all. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, so far, not that you really care, my Claw impressions are…. pretty good! The form factor is similar to the Ally. Maybe a touch thicker, though there's not a lot in it. I'm not joking when I say it feels about twice as heavy. The Ally got some shit for needing strong wrists, but holy crap, this is built like a tank. I'm not sure if that's good yet (probably not). The thumbsticks are OK - they're hall effect, but a little higher than the ROG which I'm not sure I like. Buttons and triggers feel similar. The buttons light up! One area the Claw is better is the speakers, which are miles better than the Ally's. The rest of the hardware is similar - near identical 7 inch VRR 120hz screen, for example. Interestingly I think the screen looks a little better on the Claw, but I suspect that's because it sits in a black chassis.

In terms of software, I really like the Ally's UI for launching games. The MSI one is a bit worse. But both have a strong "you're gaming on Windows" vibe. As for game performance, there's not a lot in it so far. I think the Z1 Extreme is better at low wattage, but it's pretty fractional and not even sort of thing Digital Foundry would wank themselves stupid over. Generally the Core 7 chip in the MSI Claw is probably a lot better for office productivity, but isn't really the best choice for gaming (the extra grunt isn't going to make any difference over the Core 5 variant, and probably, if anything makes performance slightly worse).

I haven't noticed any horrendous performance issues, and the battery life seems slightly better than the Ally (52 watt/hr battery vs40 watt/hr, but the Z1 Extreme is a more power efficient chip) and yeah. It's a portable PC. I think if you saw one going super cheap it would certainly do a job. For £230 it's absolutely bonkers (even though there are about 3 subsequent Claws that have come out since). That's like a bag of chips in the UK in 2026.

This concludes a review you didn't need for a bit of hardware you'll never buy.

Thank you for your insights into this console/computer/handheld.

You are correct, I did read this. I read it with interest in fact! I remember when the MSI Claw came out, there was some discussion over the big three windows handhelds - this, the ROG Ally, and the Legion Go. The reviews seemed to dump the Claw firmly in the "naaah" category, but it is interesting how these things can be fixed through software. It didn't seem to have any particular fatal flaw, like that one from last year that comes with a huge, extremely heavy, semi-detatchable battery. You can't go wrong for £230 - that's roughly the price of a Boots Meal Deal, and lets face it those are sub-par. I'm glad you bought it because we have the same disease and I also find it hard to resist proper bargains no matter how profoundly I don't need the thing I'm buying. If you hadn't bought it, I would probably have been the one sheepishly admitting to owning the red-headed step-child of the PC handheld scene.

That scene has got weird over that last year. The one with the detatchable battery I mentioned is the GPD Win 5, which is absurdly powerful, having a Ryzen™ Al Max+ 395 chip, but over £2100. There's also the Abxylute 3D One, which has 3DS-style 3D and an 11-inch screen! Photos of people using it look hilarious. There is indeed a OLED Rog Ally coming (albeit limited edition, I think.) Also, the next MSI Claw machine looks pretty great too, although it is purple.

+3 on read all of it, as someone who is somewhat out of the whole handheld cycle loop, I still watch stuff from the usual CCers like Retro Games Corp every day like it's window shopping through the internet almost. I'm quite happy with my Steam Deck but I've definitely entertained a few what ifs over the last year or so (one 'what if' was what if I got a Legion Go 2 ha ha ) so it's interesting to hear about some of these being a fair bit more powerful.

The GPD Win 5 absolutely screams to me, albeit it's not saying very money friendly things, but I think every handheld should just copy the Vita right?

The main issue beyond a Steam Deck to me, is, I get that positives of Windows but I do not understand PC spec style information, I don't get what the selling point of Intel is, I don't know my Ryzen from my Nvidias.