I recently made videos about my experiences with the Legion Go, Steam Deck OLED, and others. These videos received a lot of attention, and now, after spending 2 months on the road with the new MSI CLAW, I wish I had skipped it, at least for now.

Where to Buy

For those in North America, I recommend purchasing your MSI Claw from Costco. They offer a bundle that includes a free carry case. While the MSI Claw case is soft and doesn’t match the quality of the hard shell cases from Legion Go or Steam Deck, it’s free, so you might as well take advantage of it.

You may also want to check the best price in your country today over here, as apparently in Asia MSI decided to sell Claw for $300-400 USD while in North America you will be lucky to get it for $600+ USD. This price difference makes a huge difference as well 0n this entire review as I will be comparing it with devices that cost in the same ballpark.

Design and Build

The MSI Claw bears a strong resemblance to the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. It’s slightly shorter than the Steam Deck due to the lack of touchpads but a bit wider than the ROG Ally, featuring a similar Xbox controller layout. The front looks almost identical to the ROG Ally. On the back, there are only two additional keys, compared to the four found on other devices. I guess they copied ROG Ally here too.

You will also notice how well the MSI Claw is ventilated on the back. The back plate is made of a mesh, yet, the MSI Claw tends to overheat during graphic-intensive games on max settings while plugged in, causing games to crash. This issue only occurred to me a couple of times and couldn’t be recreated on camera, so let’s pretend it never happened. On a positive note, it never overheated while playing on battery.

MSI Claw Battery Life – Not as Expected

The biggest disappointment for me was the battery life. I chose the MSI Claw for its 53Whr battery, the largest in its segment. However, the decision to use an Intel chipset seems to have backfired, I mean when was the last time you saw a battery-friendly Intel chipset? In super battery-saving mode, I got around 3 hours of Death Stranding and 2-2.5 hours of Fortnite. This mode means playing at the lowest settings (20 TDP), with a dimmed screen, laggy gameplay, and significant frame drops, making action scenes feel like slow motion. Watch the full review video for video samples. I guess this is a common issue with handhelds nowadays in battery-saver mode.
The charging brick also caught my attention. If you plan to use it on a plane or train, it may disable your power outlet due to high power consumption, as it did on my flight. Thankfully, I had my Nintendo Switch handy with its best-in-class battery – 7 hours of pure fun! On the return flight, I used my laptop’s 45W brick and battery-saving settings to make it through the entire 7-hour flight.
Ok enough complaining, let’s jump into the ergonomics, display, user interface, and more.

Ergonomics, Display, User Interface, and More

I like how they integrated the fingerprint scanner into the power button, making it super easy to log in. Next to it, you’ll find an SD card slot and a USB-C port, both marked with unique braille code dots for easy access in the dark. The grip is great, preventing hand fatigue and feeling as good as a controller.

The Hall Effect thumbsticks are also excellent, although the Xbox controller has a better thumb cap with a thicker, deeper concave design for nearly 100% slip resistance. MSI opted for a nearly flat plastic cap with a bit of rubber around the edges, offering zero slip resistance. I wish they had made them replaceable like on an Elite series controller, so you could choose the thumbstick that fits your play style.

The triggers are Hall Effect too and work like a charm. However, the bumpers need some work. On most controllers, you can activate the bumpers equally well from any point. On the MSI Claw, if you have long fingers, you’ll have a hard time using the bumpers as they are not pressable at the top. WTFudge, MSI?

The rest of the exterior works as intended.

The sound is alright, with AI features and noise cancellation for both sound and mic. Some people have complained about it, but let’s be real – you’ll use a headset 99% of the time when playing on it. Nothing more to say here, so let’s look at the user interface.

User Interface

As with any Windows-based portable system, getting the virtual keyboard out is sometimes a challenge. The only handheld that did it right was the Legion Go with their shortcuts for it. On the MSI Claw, the keyboard either blocks the input cell, won’t appear, or you have to use the side menu. This side menu is super necessary as it has all the primary functions to control your Windows OS. From here, you can call for the keyboard, free up memory, close tasks, change battery modes, and most importantly, put your console into sleep by choosing hibernation. This is the only way to ensure it won’t wake up by itself and drain the battery.

The MSI Center M is somewhat useless, except for key mapping and performance settings. It also brings all your games into one place, but what stops you from launching them directly from one of the launchers? Both the side menu and MSI Center can be activated with side buttons, and they work well, but once in a while, you have to be patient.

And the rest, well, it’s Windows 11 – the same one you get on your laptop and desktop. So you have to update the MSI bloatware and Windows separately, something many other competitors have solved with one-stop update centers.

Display

The 7-inch IPS FHD 120 FPS display was rather disappointing, especially after using the Legion Go or even the Nintendo Switch OLED side by side with the MSI Claw. It feels dull and low resolution but does the job just fine. After seeing its thick bezel for the first time, I could predict with 100% certainty that Gen 2 MSI Claw will have a proper display to fill all that space. This is what they did with the Nintendo Switch back in the day.

So I was right. When you see all of that next to the Legion Go and practically at the same price, you start realizing that the MSI Claw was at least one year late to the party, and they knew that when they put it together.

No wonder when the chocolate hit the fans, MSI started moving fast and already promised brand new versions with fixed bumpers, two USB ports, an 8-inch screen (though still FHD), a Lunar Lake chipset that’s said to have up to 50% more GPU power, and – hold your hats – 80WHR batteries! Yep, just like the ROG Ally X! Wonder if playtime is going to improve – wink wink. Just don’t keep your hopes up high; they plan all of it for Claw 7 or 8 Gens. Only the handheld god knows when that’s going to happen. You can view the interviews and more opinion on the matter here:

Let me know if you got MSI Claw and if I missed anything? How do you feel about it?

If you are still deciding, then what are comparing it to and why?
Lets chat!
My conclusion is simple, for the price and value, I think Legion Go has it better today and so does ROG Ally X, but there are still improvements I wish Legion would fix. Check it out my other handheld videos on the channel and don’t forget to sub!
On this note, I will see you in the next one!