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.

This has been a really interesting death by a thousand cuts experience. In many ways its made me really appreciate the Ally.

Take Sonic Crossworlds:

ROG Ally experience. Install game, integrated into the Ally game launcher seamlessly, with all my custom binds, with no issues. Start game, with a few tweaks it achieves a comfortable 60fps with cart models on high, most other stuff on low. Play game at 15 Watts. Fan totally silent in the Ally, game runs smoothly.

MSI Claw: Install game. Not picked up by launcher. Force a scan in MSI software. Finds it. Launch. Has no custom binds (MSI software says they're set, but they never work). Sound doesn't work. Restart Claw. Sound works. Tweak game to run. At 20-25 Watts need to reduce everything to Low. Game runs at about 50fps, with fans BLASTING. Give up on MSI Software - try to make device work with Handheld Companion - a universal handheld PC frontend. Seems to work, but only after all MSI Software stripped. Eventually sort of works - but continuously tells me to update it, even though it's updated, and now both eh Claw's own performance panel and Handheld Companion come up when you try to tweak something in game. Handheld companion has all the wrong box art for the games, and also some games have duplicate entries. Even after all this tweaking and fiddling, the game runs worse than the Ally.

Imagine that sort of experience duplicated over 10 games in a row and it does feel like the Ally gives you a console-like experience, and the Claw is very much like trying to get a early noughties PC to play anything at a decent frame rate.

That said, I have tried to focus on the Claw to just hold larger games I can't really fit onto the smaller drive in the Ally and have had some successes. Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered I think runs a little better on the Claw than it did on the Ally (and looks amazing). I also have never managed to get Apex Legends to run properly on the Ally, as there's a bug, or maybe something connectivity related that means it causes big hitches and lurches when you're playing online. No issues on the Claw (possibly because of the better WiFi chip?).

Anyway - again, I know nobody cares, but I do think if you were recommending to a casual player who wanted a portable gaming PC second hand in the 250-350 bracket, I would absolutely not in a million years suggest the Claw over the original Ally.

I wonder if the money would have been better spent on a 2tb SSD replacement for the ROG Ally.

Captain Hindsight away!

I think you might be right :(

I also now have a Switch 2, ROG Ally, Claw A1M and a laptop sitting by the sofa. There might be such a thing as too much optionality….

I have like 7 emulation handhelds, you can never have too much

Yeah, I mean I've got three different Android handhelds as well as the ROG Ally and PS Portal. I think I just like handheld gaming. The ROG Ally is the largest screen I game on these days.

I did the 2tb SSD upgrade on the Ally a while ago, before they got too insanely expensive. It is a bit of a faff to be fair. You have to clone the 512gb drive you get with the machine so that you keep Armory Crate and the cut-down version of Windows. I had to buy an adapter thing and I think download some software, but it wasn't too bad. Then you can scroll up and down through a hundred games instead of fifty. Let me know if you do decide to do it (or put the Claw's SSD in the Ally), Cav, because I can link the video guide I followed and post you the adapter to borrow if I can find it. I think I know which drawer it went in.

You probably don't even need to do the cloning if you don't mind setting it up from scratch again.

I'd like to upgrade HDDs but the part of the process where you have to snap apart both halves of the shell with a spudger scares me, I dropped my Steam Deck a while ago and the area near the shoulder buttons opened a bit but I clamped them together with my fingers and they stuck back together with a click, that was already a heart attack moment for me.

Haha yeah, that was a horrible part of the process. The noise every clip makes coming apart makes you think you've broken it.

Spudger is a great word though, isn't it. If I have a fourth child I'm calling them Spudger.