MSI Claw: The WEIRDEST PC Handheld Yet 

Apparently I got the amount of RAM WRONG SOMEHOW??? This one only has 16gb. I’ll try to remove any mention of RAM with the RU-vid editor. Might take a bit to do. If you see some weird jump cuts, thats why.

The Claw hurt itself in confusion.

Typing this on an MSi GS63VR 7RG Stealth Pro that, just a few days ago, I had to REMOVE THE MOTHERBOARD on just to clean lint out of the fans. Not only do you have to do this to access the fans, but to get to the RAM slots and SSD. MSi, unlike every other manufacturer, seems to actively enjoy making their devices unnecessarily difficult for the end user to service. On the plus side, other than needing fan servicing every couple of years to remove built up dust from the guts and replacing the battery when it wears down, it's been a powerhouse of a machine for the roughly 6 years I've had it.

The aesthetic is like that old school gamer look from 15 years ago, where everything was chunky and black + red, and EVERYTHING needed a grille on it.

$800 and you can’t even upgrade its storage. OUCH…that’s very disappointing.

Bare in mind, the MSI Claw ISN'T the same price as the Z1 Extreme handhelds. There IS a Claw at $700USD, but that one is the lesser i5 variant. The i7 variant costs something like $750-800USD.

Three for Three on the Not Recommended list. First it was Retro Game Corps, then The Phawx, now Mr. Wulff. This thing is gonna have an uphill struggle.

I love my legion go. Such an amazing device. I’ve had it almost a month and I use this thing everyday. I haven’t tried playing Fortnite or undisputed at max settings yet but my performance mode runs for 2 hours on full charge.

i had that EXACT thumbstick issue..... on steam deck. the original run of LCD models (mine was a Q3 first year version) actually had a lot of reports like this. most people (including me) just bought some cheap joystick protectors from ebay, little silicone rings that slip onto the joystick stem, and then you forget the problem ever happened. good to know my OLED deck had this problem sorted from the beginning tho

I love hearing your experiences with these devices. Love the content Bob.

Thanks Bob I will not say "I-knew-it-all-along" AFTER learning the outcome of a thing. What I will say say, Steam Deck wins again and again and again and again

Thanks man. This info is helpful. I'm maybe possibly considering obtaining on of these units.

Even without all the vents and other holes, there's no way I'd take a portable PC/gaming device like that to a beach/boardwalk like Coney Island in NYC.

The major Flaw with Claw is the fact it used Intel

I gotta say that I love your thumbnails, they're always insteresting and well designed, and I appreciate that you don't do a dumb face in order to attract viewers

32gbs? I only see 16gb...

was waiting for you to review this piece of tech Mr Wulff nice👍

I love how the most replayed moment is the moment immedietly after the sponsor, lol

Love the elegant black outlook and how you hold it looks very comfortable!

Your B Roll cinematography is awesome, makes the MSI Claw look really cool!

Handhelds are so cool and I hope they keep innovating!

The Claws charger looks like the exact same one we got with the ROG Ally in Australia

when the engineers were making it, i can't understand why they felt the need to even produce the 155 version, the processor robs way too much power from the igpu, this is a gaming machine so the extra p cores were just not worth it, if you want a fast processor, get a laptop? these are meant for gaming so they just don't need such a power hungry cpu. I'm disappointed because I've always been intel with my desktop builds. also I am very sure that it only comes with 16gb of ram like the rog ally does, it would have been really smart of them to bump it to 32gb, but they didn't, we saw false benchmarks of the claw running with 32gb of ram but they must have deemed the performance gain to cost ineffective.

Love the way you present it in the first few rolls. Look cool when you put all handhelds together. Still trying to get used with my Claw. Transferring mobile game on handheld is quite hard🤣

Great Stuff, as always!

Always awaiting for the Wulff logo and raising the music appears

What settings were used in the benchmark? Or was it stock settings?

Also major points towards valve for making their upgrade process for the Steam Deck as user friendly as possible, holy balls 16:35 was just cringe once you told us what all that was.

My Steamdeck OLED had one of those crunchy portions on the R stick too

Hey, I be playing HD2 in Steam Deck and its smooth and amazing

Please do a review on the Ayaneo Flip DS upon release 🙏

I'll grab one because of the cooling perks you mentioned. Something less "toasty" suits long gaming sessions better.

I owned an MSI laptop years ago. Let me guess, if you open it up to upgrade nvme, will it void the warranty? Is there a sticker on the last screw hole that says VOID?

Wait how do you have a 32gb memory model, the only models announced so far and the only one's I see for sale only have 16gb of memory.

Ayyyy I see you're also a "gentle leader" enjoyer. Isn't it amazing how much more comfortable our four legged friends are with it as a medium of communication instead of a collar? I love it and can't recommend enough.

Love seeing some competition here (blue and orange) hahaha keeps things spicy!! I try it out in-store, gotta say, the feel is 🥰! I think comfort is key, right? everyone's got their own grip~ better try by yourself

The look grows on me. After having it for awhile the heat doesn’t bother me, it mostly on the top side where it away from me. Also, performance might not be great in the beginning but they’ve been updating so far and performance are going up. Hopefully, with more updates I think it would do well in this platform.

Sounds a lot like the launch of the ROG Ally last year and all the problems it had at launch. Hopefully some firmware updates will make it competitive

My ROG Ally did not come with a case. Not sure where you got that from.

Fascinating exterior design and great handheld experiences.

Not to take away from the L of the ssd under the fan but im assuming it was to avoid faster ssds from overheating which may not be possible in the other handhelds.

Tried the Claw - ergonomic grips, haptic feedback, and grip feel great! Thinking of snagging one for my birthday!😍

great video! hopefully with future updates from MSI/Intel we can see better performance. I love the design and feel of it!

Looks cool, feels cool + amazing display...can't wait to get one of these!

brilliant segue!

The ally goes up to 30w on a turbo and you can technically further increase it into the 40w range manually if you felt like it

what's with the weird bar at the top of the video?

Interesting lens choices today.

The ad though. Woofden was just pure genius 👌

Got one already😎 the grip is so comfy and it's actually quite light!

I bought it despote these rewievs. Ind 3rd day i love it. Best joystick of all handhelds, best grips (as SD). Downside is only battery. But i played only at home on chargers. So no big deal for me. In real world is ok in comparison rog ally price is enourmus, but ergonomy is much more better

You took this handheld to the BEACH?! No nonono. From my experience, it's not a good idea. When I was a kid I went to Maine for vacation and went to Pemaquid Beach. It's August and it's cold outside and the water is even worse. Through this boredom, I had to novel idea to bring my new Gameboy SP NES Edition to entertain me. Didn't quite used it as much as I thought however. But afterwards when I got home... The sand had somehow entered in between the lens and the screen and I couldn't remove it. But the most damning was that the sand had eroded the NES design on top of the shell. I was pissed. It doesn't matter how well you protect your electronics, the little bastard sands are coarse and rough and gets everywhere!

Not seeing this 32GB RAM model anywhere online.

How is the gpu compared to Deck or Rog's?

Videos always on point ✨🌊💎🌊✨

“Freakish look” 😂 it does look a tad bit strange doesn’t it lol

Ahh the Lumix G85? Got the same for my primary video

My left thumb sticks grinding on my Rog ally now. I never noticed it till you said and I looked though. I never push it all the way to the outside I guess. But it's probably those RGB light circles that aren't meant to be surrounding a thumb stick. Wrong material maybe.. but I thought all thumbsticks did that. I always used to notice White dust on my controller thumbsticks since forever. Dreamcast Xbox GameCube etc etc. Haven't noticed it on steam deck but I play my Rog ally way more. Hardly play my steam decks I have 2 LCDs

I liked the video because of that amazing segue to the sponsor 🤣🤣

The changing benchmark numbers are most likely due to Windows power profile. Maybe it's in auto/balanced mode or whatever, you may want the max profile though.

hi, i like your videos , you do good work , nice handhelds you have and i use nintendo switch and xbox. have some old games too🙂

10:39 How in the hell are you getting 60fps on helldivers on the steam deck? Mine cant push a consistent 30

one of the biggest issues I see with these other non steam deck handhelds is the controls layout. It is entirely user preference but for me the dualshock-esque layout with sticks and buttons at equal heights and overall symmetry of the controls is a major W for the steam deck. None of these other handhelds seem to even offer parity with the SD controls either. 4 back paddles and two touchpads give me access to potentially 100 inputs, instantly, on other own. (seriously, radial menus on trackpads are op). it's a handheld console, i don't expect preformance to be very good, im firmly in the camp that a portable system should prioritize comfort and capability over raw processing power. essentially a "can it do it well" instead of "can it do it the fastest".

When did it get 32gb?

Can't it support thunderbolt for egpu support?

After I tried it in the shop I decided to have it, is the best handheld design that feels great while holding it on hand.

nice to see that more different hardware gets used, kind of a shame that so many use windows though. would be nice to see more with some sort of linux

Poor MSI, it seems their first attempt is a failure mostly because they joined with team blue.

So from what I've seen between all the different reviews is that on average, this thing barely beats out the Steam Deck Oled while set to twice the TDP and gets annihilated by the Z1E chips while costing as much as it does. I wonder how fast the price will plummet.

So far, I haven't had any serious issues with the Claw since I mainly run FC24. Love its ergonomic as well. Hopefully there will be more driver updates that could allow me to run ultra settings on it

Its pretty rough right now. I would get one on sale probably

I would like buy a handheld recently, it seems like a good choice.

Great machine and just needs a few more updates to be optimised but should eventually be a great investment

4:35 could your phone have tethered internet to get it going?

For me the Claw looks sexy, and it does the job because I only play light games occasionally, and it could be docked with that Thunderbolt 4 which is not bad as a versatile portable light gaming/office machine.

it doesn't say its from an unknown source. @9:00 says intel corporation. this is UAC and was added in Vista in 2006. Which can be turned off if you dont like those pop ups.

What's with the weird green effect on the edge of the screen throughout the video?

Ally can do max 30W plugged in, 25W is the max on battery.

My ROG Ally also hurts hitself in the same way as the Claw :-( the outer ring of the joystick digs into the sticks plastic, couldn't they just make the sticks out of metal as in many other controllers?

Is it possible that the boosted performance is actually because the SSD is right behind the fan keeping it cool? Obviously an L for upgradability but could this be a justification for the design choice?

ASUS ROG Ally does 30 watts max TDP when plugged in. Just for clarification.

the steam deck was my first amd device but honestly these past few years make me wanna run full speed in the direction of amd and never look back

I have one, hoping for drivers to get updated before my 30day return policy

so which handheld is the best ?

From my experience all joysticks get stuck like that if there's nothing limiting their range of motion. In this case and probably the others noted, the plastic circle around it is too big and let's the mechanism get to the point it binds up. Probably all of them are just cutting the allowable range of motion too close to their maximum.

I love my steam deck and I also love valve's new update to steam family, but what I really like is how this is basically the new era of the steam machine. All of these other handhelds are most likely going to have steam on them so Valve is going to make their money, they were able to get way more people into this space and drive up competition. I remember loving GPD products but them being too expensive for me, but now there are options at many price points and with different features, and with the claw different hardware. (I know there have been intel handhelds before but intel can actually compete now and I hope they keep improving). I look forward to what competition will bring to the market and hopefully it will keep pushing prices down.

Im so glad i bought the lonovo now lol..

Did bro shoot this in Cinescope??

Intel ARC is made for modern graphics APIs (DirectX12 and Vulkan), given Proton is translating DirectX to Vulkan it could be great if it used Linux OS like Steam OS instead of Windows where it will use old DirectX for various games.

i fuckin love your ad spots

Is it my speakers or are there some audio issues in this vid?..

I had the same joystick scraping on the steam deck. It's so annoying.

There goes my hopes of an ally but whiteout the SD problems, maybe using the thunderbold port you can easily pair a decent graphics card, but that kills the point of a handheld pc entirely

holy hell 40w thats absolutely crazy

"for starters, they run HOT!" well, we learned this from the Pentium 4's and saw nothing really change with the Core series so yeeeeeeaaaaaaah

This would be good for the games i wanna play

0:12 can we get a knife collection video???

ASUS Ally can do 30W TDP when plugged in (Turbo Mode).

Claw still my first choice because features the hall-effect joystick and offers a comfortable grip than others~

Too many negatives when compared to what's available. Maybe they can make it an option after some updates / price cut