One of the many great treats PC gaming has given us lately is a new generation of handheld PC that’s genuinely capable of desktop-like performances from within a pocket-friendly chassis. Valve’s Steam deck dispelled our old memories of greenscale Gameboy screens and constant battery-swapping.
Then the market exploded with even more performance-focused handhelds, giving us numerous options for playing Cyberpunk on the train. And with MSI’s mighty Claw, we might have found the one handheld to rule them all.
Expertly balancing high performance specs, ergonomics and cooling, the Claw delivers cool, comfortable, top-end gaming performance in a unit that weighs just 675g. And the internal componentry’s mighty impressive, so let’s dig into it.
It’s all built around a 7-inch, full HD 1920x1080 IPS touchscreen, for that rich, deep colour reproduction at any angle. It’s nippy too - the refresh rate’s 120Hz, so even in competitive game scenarios you can outpace the competition, keeping those high syned frame rates to better track your targets and react to enemies in an instant.
Down under the ergonomically designed chassis itself, the internals are specced with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU, packed with those innovative new neural processing units (NPUs) for an AI-assisted performance boost.
MSI’s shooting for the outright performance advantage over the competition in the handheld market, so the Claw pairs that powerful CPU with an Intel Arc GPU. It’s great to see Arc in the mix - the power-efficient, battery friendly graphics processing it offers here is perfect for a handheld.
Speaking of battery life, it’s usually the elephant in the room when we talk about mobile gaming devices. All that graphical grunt chomps through energy, so great battery life isn’t a given. MSI’s worked hard on the Claw’s battery though, achieving a 53Whr capacity – the largest in the handheld PC market right now.
For a spot of future-proofing, it’s also Wifi 7 compatible. So when you’re connected to a nice fast Wifi network, you get multi-gigabit performance, peak speeds of 5.8 Gbps on 5GHz and 6GHz connections. With 320MHz channel bandwidths, it delivers substantial throughput gains.
Since the Claw has a touchscreen, MSI’s designed a bespoke interface just for this device, MSI Center M, to help you easily navigate between the settings and modes that matter most, without having to delve into too many menus.
That means you can adjust brightness and sounds easily, select operating scenarios (realistically, it’s going to be game mode: on isn’t it), program your macro key and customise the colours of the Claw’s mystic light.
Finally, let’s talk comfort. As a handheld device, Claw has achieved the optimal balance between its grip and weight. With thousands of sample data collected from around the world, the Claw is ergonomically tailored for comfort and precision.
Pre-order yours at MSI’s official site.
