saying that my time with the brand's gaming handheld was curt but at the very least, it gave me an idea of what the company has in store.
Even the back buttons of the CLAW are mimicry of the Ally in the design of them, although MSI has installed them horizontally instead of diagonally, like the ASUS handheld. But again, the feel of pressing them into the handheld feels meaty, with a mildly satisfying click when fully depressed.
Around the back, you can see that MSI decidedly cut a lot of holes into it. In fact, the whole back panel is practically a giant intake vent, in the same way, as the entirety of the top of the CLAW is just one long exhaust port for the console. Other physical traits include the power button cum fingerprint scanner on the left of the console, a USB-C port that supports Thunderbolt 4, a microSD card slot, the volume rocker, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Now, with the physical aspects of the CLAW pretty much covered here, let's move on to the other half of the console: software and performance. As mentioned earlier, this is still just an engineering sample, and MSI tells me that it is still open to suggestions on how they can improve it. And with that, onwards with this in-depth look.
As for gaming, take note that the performance metrics mentioned here aren't final nor official, on account that this is still an engineering sample. I will say this: gaming on a 40W power envelope sounds and feels impressive, but unsurprisingly, the experience is still far off from what I get with the other Windows 11 consoles powered by the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme. And honestly, the fault falls less on the console and more on the choice of chipset.
On titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield, though, the most the CLAW ekes out is 30 FPS on averag, and this is with XeSS turned on and set to run at Performance mode. On a side note, I can also confirm that AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolutin upscaling tech does not play nice with the Intel's GPU. Even worse, with FSR3, which is available on Starfield, turning on Frame Generation leads to a completely unplayable experience with the processor.