Sorry for the jump scares around the 4-minute mark, my video editor was acting funky last night and I missed those! Also I mislabeled Dragon Blaze as Dodonpachi. This channel is really going downhill!
Hi Russ, Is there any reason why in your emulation section & written guides (specifically handhelds that have the widescreen) you don’t talk about setting up bezels/borders for the individual console emulators that are in the 4:3 aspect ratio? Do adding these actually affect the game’s performance or is this just a case that you prefer not having these? I always enjoy your content. 👍
@retrogamecorps the idea that the review isn't valuable because it would be mostly negative due to the product not being ready for release misses the point. Situations like this are exactly the places where the review is the most valuable it can be. You are providing buying advice. Removing critical perspective from the conversation doesnt help your audience and MSI shouldnt get a pass for whatever state of product they chose to put out. There are many ways to update impressions or account for products that launch poorly but are turned around. This isnt one of them.
That's a great point, and I should have done better to articulate my intentions. My plan is to give the Claw about two more weeks for the promised software updates, and my expectation is then I'll be able to make an assessment that is indicative of what the Claw experience will be like over the long term, to make a video that is more fully matured and long-lasting. I realize this is contradictory to the typical UA-cam method and will generate fewer "clicks" for me. I don't consider my approach to be giving this company a pass, but that all of these perspectives will be addressed in my final review -- the buggy launch, slow software updates, power and performance issues, and so on. This is the same approach I take with other devices, like the Anbernic RG35XX H700 handhelds that came out a few months ago; I made in-depth impressions videos to let early adopters know what the experience will be like right now, and then waited until software caught up before making a final review and recommending the devices to others. There's also a practical perspective, since I'm only a one-person project. To spend 40-60 hours making an "initial" review of a device to say something we already know (it's not worth it right now and it needs fixing) means that I will have to pause other reviews for the sake of making that video, and then also do another follow-up review two weeks later, requiring me to pause even more videos. Early buyers will have to wait a couple weeks for my mature and informed final opinion, but I would also wager that early buyers are the most informed already and they already know what's going on with this launch. It's a tough balance and I appreciate your perspective on when a review should be made!
@@RetroGameCorps One thing to keep in mind is the overall sentiment for Arc from Intel. They've been doing a great job of fixing problems, but they are a single soldier versus an army. True this isn't a graphics card but it is the same architecture, Which is why it has some of these issues that it has. It might offer you perspective and help further inform your opinion. I just think it was too early for them to release a handheld powered by arc in general. I do understand that they need to be in the conversation early to stay competitive tho
I'm a little confused about the title as well. Based on what I saw in this very video, emulation was absolutely awful for an $800 device. The power demands were insane
@@liupk123 I apologize if it was confusing; the title refers to the context of its PC gaming performance (which is currently terrible); by comparison, the Claw's emulation performance is not half bad when you look at the Claw's power demands to play simple PC games. Whether it's worth the $800 price point is what I will address in my review, since this is more than just an emulation device, and I like to take a whole-shebang approach in my reviews. Hope that makes more sense!
yeah tbh i don't get it. with the Anbernic RG35XX H or the MiYoo Mini 4 the reviews were negative accurately because the products were bad. When they improved later, they got revised reviews the be positive. I don't get why the msi claw gets a pass instead of the same treatment
This is such a hard value proposition for emulation when the base Z1 ROG Ally can be had for less than half the price. Even the Z1 Extreme is often on sale at $599 with open-box units dipping into the mid-to-high-400s.
I feel like MSI (and anyone who buys the Claw) are betting on the future. Microsoft is currently working with Intel on custom drivers and software to make them a real contender in the GPU market, and it's a safe bet Xbox is making a handheld featuring Intel internals. If both of those things come to fruition, the Claw and other Intel handhelds will be in a "rising tide lifts all ships" situation
About PPSSPP freezing for a couple of seconds during gameplay when the games are stored in the SD card. The emulator allows you to load the whole game into the RAM before starting, you should enable that to circumvent the trouble of having to move your PSP games into internal storage.
Nice tip, thanks! I just tried it and it definitely improves things; instead of getting an average of four pauses/stutters during the beginning sequence of God of War, I only got two. So something else must be happening beyond just the SD card read/write speed. Just to be sure, I played for 20 mins with the same game but from internal storage (with the cached ISO option off), and didn't get any stutters.
For an $800 price tag, I'm still of the opinion this device was rushed to the market. Personally, I'm tired of device manufacturers and game studios rushing half-baked products to the market and expecting us consumers to be patient while they fix their mess. Moving forward, I'm no longer pre-ordering anything without watching countless reviews first. I have no doubt the Claw will be optimized but I have already lost interest. I was ready to buy the Legion Go as I'm not a fan of the propriety eGPU port on the Ally, but Orange Pi announced their upcoming device with Manjaro Linux OS, no diss to Windows but let's face it, Windows on handhelds is cumbersome. I will wait a while for reviews of the Orange Pi before making a final decision, until then I still have my Vita and Switch to keep me company while in transit. Great review by the way.
"From now on" this has become a meme. I'm sure you won't preorder, but there will always be enough ignoramuses to keep this shit business practice alive. The cycle of hype>preorder>didsappointment has been a constant for a decade and a half.
This seems more like an issue from Intel rather than MSI. The Claw itself is fine and if it had the Z1 Extreme it would be a great handheld. However Intel and drivers have always been an issue
@@crestofhonor2349 I respectfully disagree, MSI decided to use an Intel chip in their device fully aware of Intel's chip's driver issues, from my perspective this is both Intel's and MSI's problem. They need to work together to better optimize the device.
For most casual users Manjaro linux would be cumbersome as well, heck even Steam deck can be cumbersome if you use games outside of Steam. There's a possibility that Microsoft is looking into handheld gaming, will be interesting to see if they release a portable Xbox.
I've got to say I think you may be being overly kind to MSI. Don't forget, as far as I'm aware, no-one got an early review unit of the product. All the reviews came out after the handheld was on sale to the public. Never a good sign. Personally I could "Imagine" a world where MSI gets a call from Intel. "Hi MSI I hear you want to make a handheld. Everyone else is going AMD and we feel left out. Please make one with our parts. Pleeeaaase." No-one doubts that Intel chips can kick out the performance, it's just they often need to have the power to get there and power is at a premium with handhelds. What I'm saying is I'm not sure there will ever be super performance boosts, fixes and minor ones yes, but getting close to the Ally in general or the Deck for battery life I just can't see it.
This handheld doesn't have a single redeeming feature and has zero reason to exist. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, unless you just like collecting these things, to throw money down the drain on it.
@@AkaHoodieYeah someone that's dumb enough to spend over 1k to buy MSI Claw and get worse battery life, and even at 25w this enough struggles to run old AA games at 60fps, where as Steam Deck can run AA games especially if it's older on 60fps at 15w consistently and. Manage to get great battery life, performance and screen especially the OLED model. This thing is trash even Rog Ally is a better deal especially now since the price has dropped for. Base ally from 600 to 400 some are even 300 bucks on ebay and craiglist. You'd have to be foolish enough to buy msi claw out of sheer fanboy nothing else this device is gonna flop harder than PlayStation portal!
It's called business my friend, if you create a product that is successful and overall just works.... expect copy cats and expect competition, some can compete some can't, MSI cant compete apparently....
Originally I was looking at what kind of handheld I want. Recently, just saw MSI claw has promotion and also updated driver. So I had them and it worked really good🎉
Because it wasn't until recently that they are even trying to get into the gpu for gaming space. Their iGPUs have always been basically just to have the ability to display stuff and do some hardware encoding/decoding.
@@stevemclovin1566 Yes, it's a good step, and it'll take them a bit more to catch up. Heck, look at AMD in the cpu space, over a decade of experience and they still almost went under
That's what you're for. The conspiracy people wanna know when we gave away our data. I just wanna know when the fuck we all signed up to be bug testers.
We need more reviewers that don't exclusively talk about positives. People need to hear when a product is half-baked. I bought a Steam Deck totally unaware of the pains that come with Linux/SteamOS because, for whatever reason, every review I saw was nothing but glowing praise. The same is especially true of the Windows trio of the Go, Ally and Claw.
yeah, the number 1 reviewer in my country did that, they only pinpoint the positives, and if there's no positives, they did not release the review hoping that the company fix their shit while people still buy that crap because that reviewer refuse to acknowledge that the product is shit
But thats not happening… instead of ONLY talking about the positives he chose to talk about nothing…. Reviewing it now demonstrates what you get now… not what is owed to you in some unknown point in the future. If msi are going to improve it then they should launch it then… not launch trash and correct it at my cost
most of the early STEAM DECK reviews were about the obvious software issues that were much worse when it first launched... even LTT did one like that it's your own fault for not doing proper research
Battery life performance is what I care about most, it seems does great job and has a good software to control settings. like the display too, looks good enough for my indoor playing. I will wait a little bit to look intel and MSI update their performace, want to see more MSI Claw reviews.
I was interested to see Intel finally entering the handheld market. Will be good to see them with further updates to improve the performance, maybe now that XeSS 1.3 has been released
Anyone who is familiar with computer hardware is not currently buying a laptop or a handheld with an Intel CPU/APU (it is impossible to say exactly what will happen in the future).
I accept the MSI Claw should improve with updated drivers, but for me, its biggest negative is the lack of 6-axis gyro support. So. if I am going to purchase a Windows gaming handheld in addition to the LCD and OLED Steam Decks I already own, it will be ASUS ROG Ally, which is especially tempting at the moment due to the discounted pricing for the Z1 Extreme model.
I enjoy my Steam Deck so much, I forgot my iPhone SE 2022 a few days ago at home and I need it for work. I’ve never been so attached to a gaming device since maybe my PSP or PS1? Steam Deck has literally been my DAILY driver that I use it even more than my daily driver smartphone at times. Now what if I finally beat FF7 Remake? Would I play the Steam Deck as frequently again? Maybe not. Maybe I’m only using it so much now because I finally got to play Shenmue III and FF7 Remake that I never got a chance to play them on my PS4 nearly a half decade ago. But I believe I will continue to game on the Deck long after I beat FF7R. And if I’m bored with gaming, it can still be used for UA-cam and Netflix. It can still act like a laptop. I use my Deck so much, my brand new Switch Lite which I got two weeks prior to my Deck has been collecting dust. I might play the occasional Mario Kart 8 Deluxe race but that’s it. Same with my modded Vita, modded PSP, and all my Android smartphones. I recently charged all my Android smartphones because all their batteries had died thanks to only being on standby mode while never being used. I do wonder what the next Steam Deck will be? Valve makes a Deck to serve as a baseline for all PC handhelds. The next Deck doesn’t need to be super powerful. With indies being more fun and being released more frequently than AAA titles, what’s the point having all that power? I wouldn’t be surprised if the Deck 2 is only on par to the base PS5. Even slightly lower teraflops than the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme. Powerful performance is great to have but not if it means sacrificing power efficiency. No point owning a handheld that only offers an hour of battery life. And AAA titles seems to be dying out. Too risky to spend all that money while taking 4-5 years to make it. I look at current indies like 16-bit/32-bit gen games but with more modern graphics. Fun and highly replayable. More playing, less watching. Steam Deck changed the game. It wasn’t the first PC handheld. We had many PC handhelds during the mid 2010s. But Steam Deck is responsible for making PC handhelds becoming more mainstream thanks to the far more affordable price and Valve’s already established ecosystem and fanbase that supports other users. It’s like what iPhone and Android did for smartphones. Changed the industry forever. Prior to the Deck, you were paying $1200+ for a PC handheld. There’s no ROG Ally and Legion Go without the Steam Deck. And Valve seems to love their fans unlike a company based in Kyoto, Japan.
The MSI Claw team definitely has some polishing to do in terms of performance. Overall, it's really quite disappointing to see an android handheld like the AYN Odin 2 Pro is outperforming a handheld PC in terms of Switch emulation, at the very least.
Just to put into perspective: the Odin 2 base model for $300 only consumes around 10% charge per hour playing PS2 games. That is 10 hours straight of playing any PS2 game vs 2 to 3 hours on the MSI Claw. I know the devices are different since one is an android handheld and the other is a PC one but the value proposition is just not there for the Claw.
How did you manage to make Yuzu recognize the claws built in controller? mine doesn't recognize it at all, i think is recognizing it as a mouse or something?
Where I live this thing cost €899 at this price is absolutely ridiculous, I'm sure with updates it's going to improve but we need to value not only this handheld but EVERY product the moment they release, corporations WILL continue rushing things out and releasing broken stuff if we don't care.
You shouldn't be afraid to crap on the product you bought. It makes it look like your doing PR for MSI if you only plan on giving it a positive review.
It’s hard to compare X86 to ARM devices, but for me, I’d rather play the Odin 2 for all the systems it can emulate compared to just about any X86 device right now, thanks to its smaller size and excellent battery life. At this point I’ve stopped playing PS2 or GameCube (and even Switch) on any device but the Odin 2. If something that isn’t available on Android is most important to you (like PS2 or Wii U), then it gets more complicated, but even with its architectural limitations the Odin 2 is the most satisfying emulation handheld I’ve used since starting this channel.
@@RetroGameCorps It's amazing to receive a reply from you. You were interested in a question asked by an ordinary guy of a similar age from Poland who follows and admires the way you run your channel, while at the same time you are in distant Hawaii. The Internet is fantastic :) I wish you and your family a happy Easter!
Crawling in my skin These wounds they will not heal Fear is how I fall Confusing what is real There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface Consuming, confusing This lack of self-control I fear is never ending Controlling, I can't seem... To find myself again My walls are closing in (Without a sense of confidence) (I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take) I've felt this way before (So insecure) Crawling in my skin These wounds they will not heal Fear is how I fall Confusing what is real Discomfort endlessly has pulled itself upon me Distracting, reacting Against my will I stand beside my own reflection It's haunting how I can't seem To find myself again My walls are closing in (Without a sense of confidence) (I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take) I've felt this way before So insecure Crawling in my skin These wounds they will not heal Fear is how I fall Confusing what is real Crawling in my skin These wounds they will not heal Fear is how I fall Confusing, confusing what is real Confusing what is real (This lack of self-control I fear is never ending, controlling) Confusing what is real
Yes but the ABXY buttons are some of the coolest I've ever seen. Not in this rainbow configuration but the fact that the backlight basically changes the entire color of the button is really impressive. So if you picked blue solid led, the buttons actually look blue. It sounds simple lol but this is one of the best implementations I've ever seen. The rest of the device, a solid MEH lol. EDIT: For example skip to 6:13 and pause, The buttons look red and like there is no backlight effect. But the backlight is making it red.
Someone already maintains an excellent handheld spreadsheet, here you go: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1irg60f9qsZOkhp0cwOU7Cy4rJQeyusEUzTNQzhoTYTU/edit#gid=0
Graphics drivers are NOT going to fix the poor efficiency. The Alchemist family has always scored highly in benchmarks while performing poorly in actual games.
It hasn't. He ended up reviewing it as a general public product and in this video he's doing emulation. It makes sense it does really well thanks to the fact it already runs hard emulation to do normal everyday games.
I've got one and it's a beast for emulation. And with the updates it's had pc game performance is miles better. It even outperforms the lenovo legion go with certain AAA games. And I got the ultra 7 model for £450 brand new.
I've owned Power PC, Cyrix, AMD, Intel and everything in between. I wish Intel the best we can use competition. Just can't afford to be an early adopter. How do you spell adopter?
It's too expensive to be an emulator focus machine, not to mention it running windows which will also make the battery life not as good as it can be. A no go for me :D
Even with emulation, this intel chip does not support AVX 512, which is required to almost double the performance for ps3 emulation. This has no redeeming qualities. Literally get anything else except this.
Inefficiently so. Intel is a few years down the road from AMD power/efficiency for portable. Milking fab tech to fatten exec bonuses caught up with them. MSI probably should not have bothered.
Fair critism about the product, but I feel like the big picture is promissing. More options in the hand held market = better competition = more innovation. Even if this first gen product is trash this will be good for the category in the long run!
I wonder what the performance would be like with overclocking the cpu and gpu with msi after burner with the cpu and gpu highest clock speeds at max tdp even though handheld and gaming laptop tdp devices are too low and running crysis remastered on max graphics sliders settings maxed out on the msi claw native resolution with no upscaling at all. I mainly play crysis remastered and I have the physical copy of crysis remastered for my nintendo switch. Crysis remastered is my benchmark and reference for 4k gaming on pc. On my 4k gaming laptop with the 3080 ti 16gb vram with crysis remastered can it run crysis mode in everything graphics settings with ray tracing always enabled with native 4k resolution with no upscaling at all, dlss always off, motion blur always off, v sync always off and ray tracing experimental boost always enabled. I'm getting around 20 fps or less. I have the 2022 razer blade 15 with 4k 144 hz display 1tb ssd, 32gb ram and 3080 ti 16gb vram with the intel core i9-12900h tdp 45 wattsis too low mobile cpu but it's desktop cpu at 125 watts is possible desktop cpu would have been way better since mobile cpu's are mediocre at best. The intel core i9-12900h is meh ok. The 2019 msi gt76 titan and the alienware area 51m back in 2019 both used the intel i9-9900k desktop cpu with 99 watt tdp while the 12900h mobile cpu has 45 tdp. I would still buy the msi gt76 titan because of the desktop cpu and overclocking all 8 cores at 5ghz with it's 4k display and 2080 gpu. None of the mobile processors can even overclock to 6ghz like the Intel i9-14900k. The mobile cpu's have finally reached up to 5.8 ghz clock speeds for overclocking. My end game pc is overclocking all performance cores at 10 ghz and all efficiency cores at 10ghz, dram at 10ghz with the tightest timings possible and lowest latency possible and gpu 10ghz while gaming in native 4k with no upscaling at all with ray tracing always enabled, no dlss, no motion blur, no v sync with can it run crysis mode in every graphics settings to demand every last bit of hardware because that's how I always game. I'm into hi res audio and 4k hi res for video games and movies. It's got to be the creme de la creme of hi resolution both for audio and video resolution since it's something that I'm already used to.
Can you make a vid about Bazzite OS on any windows handheld they have builds for Rog ally Loki Max Lenovo legion go. It would help windows users see their other options thanks Russ
FYI, Prince of Persia has a native PC build, so I dont see any reason to emulate that (outside of simply showcasing emulation for RPCS3 in the purpose of these videos).
Totally agree, and yes it’s there specifically as an emulation showcase demonstration; the game represents the “75% threshold” in that if that game runs well (especially at that specific part), then 75% of the catalog generally fares pretty well. God of War III would be the “99% threshold” on that emulator.
Rumor is intel gave these chips to msi for super cheap, so why they're charging an arm and a leg for this thing has me puzzled. Even at 500, this thing would be a tough sell imo.
Love your content thank you. To me any handheld with windows is a no go, the os just isn't optimized for handhelds, heck even large screen tablets. A handheld without great battery life sucks in my book
Thanks for the video, Russ. I have a feeling this product will flop though. Just a bad value proposition combined with a rushed launch. Glad to see another company throw its hat into the handheld pc ring though. Competition is always great for us consumers even if it’s not the best competition lol
@@DynamicPhase The new Intel chip in this device isn't currently optimized and hasn't been getting a good reputation because of that, hopefully it gets better in future because the Claw itself is an amazing design but that chip is holding back people from buying it
It was on Amazon, but for some reason they pulled it off at release, I'm not sure why exactly. I think only 3rd party sellers will sell it on Amazon (probably at a inflated price too)
I hope when you do a final review I hope steam os or a linux based OS is available to see if can be a choice for?purchase. With winOS no handeld is worth it since windows has issues of preformance since is a lot of bloatqare that drains battery and the cache of shaders for 3D graphics dx12 or any directX is terrible that makes machines to overheart since do not set resources in a smart way
Respect your position, but if you're waiting for Intel to update their software your review might take a while to come out Interesting that emulators are already optimized
@@RetroGameCorps I get the feeling Intel knew they weren't quite ready, but felt they had to jump in anyway because seeing all the issues people would find IRL was the only way they would catch up. So I think you can do a six months later review or earlier when the other Claw users start bringing up that the thing is finally worth it. And if any Intel people are reading this, good luck with catching up. We really are rooting for you
Intel has never been good at running games in my experience, and I've been running Intel tech since 2009. I'm very sceptical any kind of sofware can make a difference. This device appears to be dead in the water until MSi can half their price
Unfortunately Intel's drivers have always been not good on igpus. Somehow they git worse from Tigerlake to metor lake. But luckily intel has always had Solid Emulation performance.
Sorry for the jump scares around the 4-minute mark, my video editor was acting funky last night and I missed those!
Also I mislabeled Dragon Blaze as Dodonpachi. This channel is really going downhill!
Looked at the publish button and said "yeah man I wanna do it... wait stop!"
@@dedmin6119😂
Jet lag 🤷♂️
Hi Russ,
Is there any reason why in your emulation section & written guides (specifically handhelds that have the widescreen) you don’t talk about setting up bezels/borders for the individual console emulators that are in the 4:3 aspect ratio? Do adding these actually affect the game’s performance or is this just a case that you prefer not having these?
I always enjoy your content. 👍
@@heshermunson you're not wrong! We're still recovering from crossing the date line, our sleep schedules are all messed up right now.
@retrogamecorps the idea that the review isn't valuable because it would be mostly negative due to the product not being ready for release misses the point.
Situations like this are exactly the places where the review is the most valuable it can be.
You are providing buying advice. Removing critical perspective from the conversation doesnt help your audience and MSI shouldnt get a pass for whatever state of product they chose to put out.
There are many ways to update impressions or account for products that launch poorly but are turned around. This isnt one of them.
That's a great point, and I should have done better to articulate my intentions. My plan is to give the Claw about two more weeks for the promised software updates, and my expectation is then I'll be able to make an assessment that is indicative of what the Claw experience will be like over the long term, to make a video that is more fully matured and long-lasting. I realize this is contradictory to the typical UA-cam method and will generate fewer "clicks" for me. I don't consider my approach to be giving this company a pass, but that all of these perspectives will be addressed in my final review -- the buggy launch, slow software updates, power and performance issues, and so on. This is the same approach I take with other devices, like the Anbernic RG35XX H700 handhelds that came out a few months ago; I made in-depth impressions videos to let early adopters know what the experience will be like right now, and then waited until software caught up before making a final review and recommending the devices to others.
There's also a practical perspective, since I'm only a one-person project. To spend 40-60 hours making an "initial" review of a device to say something we already know (it's not worth it right now and it needs fixing) means that I will have to pause other reviews for the sake of making that video, and then also do another follow-up review two weeks later, requiring me to pause even more videos. Early buyers will have to wait a couple weeks for my mature and informed final opinion, but I would also wager that early buyers are the most informed already and they already know what's going on with this launch. It's a tough balance and I appreciate your perspective on when a review should be made!
@@RetroGameCorps One thing to keep in mind is the overall sentiment for Arc from Intel. They've been doing a great job of fixing problems, but they are a single soldier versus an army. True this isn't a graphics card but it is the same architecture, Which is why it has some of these issues that it has. It might offer you perspective and help further inform your opinion. I just think it was too early for them to release a handheld powered by arc in general. I do understand that they need to be in the conversation early to stay competitive tho
I'm a little confused about the title as well. Based on what I saw in this very video, emulation was absolutely awful for an $800 device. The power demands were insane
@@liupk123 I apologize if it was confusing; the title refers to the context of its PC gaming performance (which is currently terrible); by comparison, the Claw's emulation performance is not half bad when you look at the Claw's power demands to play simple PC games. Whether it's worth the $800 price point is what I will address in my review, since this is more than just an emulation device, and I like to take a whole-shebang approach in my reviews. Hope that makes more sense!
yeah tbh i don't get it. with the Anbernic RG35XX H or the MiYoo Mini 4 the reviews were negative accurately because the products were bad. When they improved later, they got revised reviews the be positive.
I don't get why the msi claw gets a pass instead of the same treatment
This is such a hard value proposition for emulation when the base Z1 ROG Ally can be had for less than half the price. Even the Z1 Extreme is often on sale at $599 with open-box units dipping into the mid-to-high-400s.
A hard value proposition is bein' awful generous
I feel like MSI (and anyone who buys the Claw) are betting on the future. Microsoft is currently working with Intel on custom drivers and software to make them a real contender in the GPU market, and it's a safe bet Xbox is making a handheld featuring Intel internals.
If both of those things come to fruition, the Claw and other Intel handhelds will be in a "rising tide lifts all ships" situation
About PPSSPP freezing for a couple of seconds during gameplay when the games are stored in the SD card.
The emulator allows you to load the whole game into the RAM before starting, you should enable that to circumvent the trouble of having to move your PSP games into internal storage.
Nice tip, thanks! I just tried it and it definitely improves things; instead of getting an average of four pauses/stutters during the beginning sequence of God of War, I only got two. So something else must be happening beyond just the SD card read/write speed. Just to be sure, I played for 20 mins with the same game but from internal storage (with the cached ISO option off), and didn't get any stutters.
For an $800 price tag, I'm still of the opinion this device was rushed to the market. Personally, I'm tired of device manufacturers and game studios rushing half-baked products to the market and expecting us consumers to be patient while they fix their mess. Moving forward, I'm no longer pre-ordering anything without watching countless reviews first. I have no doubt the Claw will be optimized but I have already lost interest. I was ready to buy the Legion Go as I'm not a fan of the propriety eGPU port on the Ally, but Orange Pi announced their upcoming device with Manjaro Linux OS, no diss to Windows but let's face it, Windows on handhelds is cumbersome. I will wait a while for reviews of the Orange Pi before making a final decision, until then I still have my Vita and Switch to keep me company while in transit. Great review by the way.
"From now on" this has become a meme. I'm sure you won't preorder, but there will always be enough ignoramuses to keep this shit business practice alive. The cycle of hype>preorder>didsappointment has been a constant for a decade and a half.
This seems more like an issue from Intel rather than MSI. The Claw itself is fine and if it had the Z1 Extreme it would be a great handheld. However Intel and drivers have always been an issue
@@crestofhonor2349 I respectfully disagree, MSI decided to use an Intel chip in their device fully aware of Intel's chip's driver issues, from my perspective this is both Intel's and MSI's problem. They need to work together to better optimize the device.
For most casual users Manjaro linux would be cumbersome as well, heck even Steam deck can be cumbersome if you use games outside of Steam. There's a possibility that Microsoft is looking into handheld gaming, will be interesting to see if they release a portable Xbox.
@@RantKid Indeed, it is sad but true
Damn you dropped this and I ain’t got no snacks around
The price is the most disappointing thing about this handheld. Selling an inferior product for a higher price is just stupid and destined to fail.
I picked up a ultra 7 for 269 it’s a steal at that price and it’s better than the steam deck
@@casualgamer177Where??
I've got to say I think you may be being overly kind to MSI. Don't forget, as far as I'm aware, no-one got an early review unit of the product. All the reviews came out after the handheld was on sale to the public. Never a good sign. Personally I could "Imagine" a world where MSI gets a call from Intel. "Hi MSI I hear you want to make a handheld. Everyone else is going AMD and we feel left out. Please make one with our parts. Pleeeaaase." No-one doubts that Intel chips can kick out the performance, it's just they often need to have the power to get there and power is at a premium with handhelds. What I'm saying is I'm not sure there will ever be super performance boosts, fixes and minor ones yes, but getting close to the Ally in general or the Deck for battery life I just can't see it.
This handheld doesn't have a single redeeming feature and has zero reason to exist. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever, unless you just like collecting these things, to throw money down the drain on it.
Just because its not for me or you doesnt mean other ppl won’t like it
@@AkaHoodiebut lets be real here , who gonna buy it lol. The claw would be the last handheld pc to consider among the variety of handheld pc
@@Bruh-cj8pt ayye man theres intel fanboys and they have a whole subreddit for it so somebody’s buying it
@@AkaHoodieYeah someone that's dumb enough to spend over 1k to buy MSI Claw and get worse battery life, and even at 25w this enough struggles to run old AA games at 60fps, where as Steam Deck can run AA games especially if it's older on 60fps at 15w consistently and. Manage to get great battery life, performance and screen especially the OLED model.
This thing is trash even Rog Ally is a better deal especially now since the price has dropped for. Base ally from 600 to 400 some are even 300 bucks on ebay and craiglist.
You'd have to be foolish enough to buy msi claw out of sheer fanboy nothing else this device is gonna flop harder than PlayStation portal!
It's called business my friend, if you create a product that is successful and overall just works.... expect copy cats and expect competition, some can compete some can't, MSI cant compete apparently....
Time to watch videos of handhelds I can’t afford! I always enjoy watching these things though. It is so cool watching handhelds approve overtime.
Is ok. You don’t want this anyways. Money and wallet safe lol
Thank you so much for sharing my videos, Russ! 🤗🤗
But is the D-pad hadoukenable and shoryukenable is the $800 question
🤣🤣🤣 this mf 👏👏👏
That question shouldn't cost that much. At that price the only answer better be yes.
Originally I was looking at what kind of handheld I want. Recently, just saw MSI claw has promotion and also updated driver. So I had them and it worked really good🎉
It's amazing how chipzilla (Intel) is still miles behind the competition in an APU.
Because it wasn't until recently that they are even trying to get into the gpu for gaming space.
Their iGPUs have always been basically just to have the ability to display stuff and do some hardware encoding/decoding.
@@Fernando-ek8jpi agree with this but i'm still shocked about this after seeing intel xe being a good step in the right direction.
@@stevemclovin1566 Yes, it's a good step, and it'll take them a bit more to catch up.
Heck, look at AMD in the cpu space, over a decade of experience and they still almost went under
LOLOL its not putting too much power into the CPU. The CPU REQUIRES that more power to barely work.
Really random question, but what hair product do you use? Seems good and I can't find one strong enough to tame my mane
Here you go, been using it for years! amzn.to/4cEAYAe
I never thought I would end up buying something after seen an MSI Claw video, but here I am, waiting for that pomade to arrive 😂
@@RetroGameCorps Thank you so much! Very kind of you! Keep up the great work!
Its mindboggling to me that products are released in an incomplete state
That's what you're for. The conspiracy people wanna know when we gave away our data. I just wanna know when the fuck we all signed up to be bug testers.
That's what you're for. The conspiracy people wanna know when we gave away our data. I just wanna know when we all signed up to be bug testers.
We need more reviewers that don't exclusively talk about positives. People need to hear when a product is half-baked. I bought a Steam Deck totally unaware of the pains that come with Linux/SteamOS because, for whatever reason, every review I saw was nothing but glowing praise. The same is especially true of the Windows trio of the Go, Ally and Claw.
yeah, the number 1 reviewer in my country did that, they only pinpoint the positives, and if there's no positives, they did not release the review hoping that the company fix their shit while people still buy that crap because that reviewer refuse to acknowledge that the product is shit
But thats not happening… instead of ONLY talking about the positives he chose to talk about nothing….
Reviewing it now demonstrates what you get now… not what is owed to you in some unknown point in the future. If msi are going to improve it then they should launch it then… not launch trash and correct it at my cost
@@KurosuKirie that means it turns out that the reality of general youtuber nowadays afraid of the backlash of the company that pays them
most of the early STEAM DECK reviews were about the obvious software issues that were much worse when it first launched... even LTT did one like that
it's your own fault for not doing proper research
Elephant in the room.. I see what you did there! 😂
actually a great review! hopefully the driver update could make it a lot better
Battery life performance is what I care about most, it seems does great job and has a good software to control settings. like the display too, looks good enough for my indoor playing. I will wait a little bit to look intel and MSI update their performace, want to see more MSI Claw reviews.
Anything improvements since this video got released?
_"I'm not doing a full review yet because it's current software is not performing near to it's capability"_ man, what an upstanding creator! 💚
I was interested to see Intel finally entering the handheld market. Will be good to see them with further updates to improve the performance, maybe now that XeSS 1.3 has been released
Thank you very much for the video.
This gives me hope that the new Intel chips only need some more driver updates. :-)
Is hope still nice? She was when I met her but she wasn't cheap.
Did you try with new drivers?
Wow I forgot how expensive this was for such poor performance compared to its cheaper counterparts.
Grabbing my favorite snack and drink RIGHT NOW.
...?
Anyone who is familiar with computer hardware is not currently buying a laptop or a handheld with an Intel CPU/APU (it is impossible to say exactly what will happen in the future).
Quick question is this at least a debloated windows? Because that may also make a huge difference as well
Steam Deck Oled 👑 🏆
Msi claw cannot run batocera, How to solve it？😢
I accept the MSI Claw should improve with updated drivers, but for me, its biggest negative is the lack of 6-axis gyro support. So. if I am going to purchase a Windows gaming handheld in addition to the LCD and OLED Steam Decks I already own, it will be ASUS ROG Ally, which is especially tempting at the moment due to the discounted pricing for the Z1 Extreme model.
Fear the Claw! - Lobster Johnston.
Good analysis! I'll still stick with my Steam Deck as I'm more than happy with what it can do.
Also, Russ has really good taste in games! 😅
It looks like the Retro Pocket 4 out emulates this device with 1/4th the size and 1/4th the price. Lol
I wonder how Chimera OS running linux would fair on thee MSI Claw
I enjoy my Steam Deck so much, I forgot my iPhone SE 2022 a few days ago at home and I need it for work. I’ve never been so attached to a gaming device since maybe my PSP or PS1? Steam Deck has literally been my DAILY driver that I use it even more than my daily driver smartphone at times.
Now what if I finally beat FF7 Remake? Would I play the Steam Deck as frequently again? Maybe not. Maybe I’m only using it so much now because I finally got to play Shenmue III and FF7 Remake that I never got a chance to play them on my PS4 nearly a half decade ago. But I believe I will continue to game on the Deck long after I beat FF7R. And if I’m bored with gaming, it can still be used for UA-cam and Netflix. It can still act like a laptop.
I use my Deck so much, my brand new Switch Lite which I got two weeks prior to my Deck has been collecting dust. I might play the occasional Mario Kart 8 Deluxe race but that’s it. Same with my modded Vita, modded PSP, and all my Android smartphones. I recently charged all my Android smartphones because all their batteries had died thanks to only being on standby mode while never being used.
I do wonder what the next Steam Deck will be? Valve makes a Deck to serve as a baseline for all PC handhelds. The next Deck doesn’t need to be super powerful. With indies being more fun and being released more frequently than AAA titles, what’s the point having all that power? I wouldn’t be surprised if the Deck 2 is only on par to the base PS5. Even slightly lower teraflops than the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme.
Powerful performance is great to have but not if it means sacrificing power efficiency. No point owning a handheld that only offers an hour of battery life. And AAA titles seems to be dying out. Too risky to spend all that money while taking 4-5 years to make it. I look at current indies like 16-bit/32-bit gen games but with more modern graphics. Fun and highly replayable. More playing, less watching.
Steam Deck changed the game. It wasn’t the first PC handheld. We had many PC handhelds during the mid 2010s. But Steam Deck is responsible for making PC handhelds becoming more mainstream thanks to the far more affordable price and Valve’s already established ecosystem and fanbase that supports other users. It’s like what iPhone and Android did for smartphones. Changed the industry forever.
Prior to the Deck, you were paying $1200+ for a PC handheld. There’s no ROG Ally and Legion Go without the Steam Deck. And Valve seems to love their fans unlike a company based in Kyoto, Japan.
The MSI Claw team definitely has some polishing to do in terms of performance. Overall, it's really quite disappointing to see an android handheld like the AYN Odin 2 Pro is outperforming a handheld PC in terms of Switch emulation, at the very least.
Just to put into perspective: the Odin 2 base model for $300 only consumes around 10% charge per hour playing PS2 games. That is 10 hours straight of playing any PS2 game vs 2 to 3 hours on the MSI Claw. I know the devices are different since one is an android handheld and the other is a PC one but the value proposition is just not there for the Claw.
How did you manage to make Yuzu recognize the claws built in controller? mine doesn't recognize it at all, i think is recognizing it as a mouse or something?
Where I live this thing cost €899 at this price is absolutely ridiculous, I'm sure with updates it's going to improve but we need to value not only this handheld but EVERY product the moment they release, corporations WILL continue rushing things out and releasing broken stuff if we don't care.
Any plans on doing that threatened Surface Duo 2 video? I am fascinated by that thing. Thanks for all your excellent work!
Yes, it's in my "projects" list, but I have lots of projects going on right now :)
Thanks very much@@RetroGameCorps ! I appreciate it a great deal.
@@RetroGameCorps Did you ever manage to overcome the audio lag problems with the Duo 2?
At 299 someone might consider this device, at 699 its DOA
18:12 elephant in the room, elephant on screen, got it
You shouldn't be afraid to crap on the product you bought. It makes it look like your doing PR for MSI if you only plan on giving it a positive review.
If it's not an aberration, how do you see the current state of the MSI device compared to today's performance in Odin2 emulation?
It’s hard to compare X86 to ARM devices, but for me, I’d rather play the Odin 2 for all the systems it can emulate compared to just about any X86 device right now, thanks to its smaller size and excellent battery life. At this point I’ve stopped playing PS2 or GameCube (and even Switch) on any device but the Odin 2. If something that isn’t available on Android is most important to you (like PS2 or Wii U), then it gets more complicated, but even with its architectural limitations the Odin 2 is the most satisfying emulation handheld I’ve used since starting this channel.
@@RetroGameCorps
It's amazing to receive a reply from you. You were interested in a question asked by an ordinary guy of a similar age from Poland who follows and admires the way you run your channel, while at the same time you are in distant Hawaii.
The Internet is fantastic :)
I wish you and your family a happy Easter!
I'm confused, you said you use the Odin for ps2, then said ps2 not available @@RetroGameCorps
Shows how impressive a steam deck is
Crawling in my skin
These wounds they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real
There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
Consuming, confusing
This lack of self-control I fear is never ending
Controlling, I can't seem...
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
(Without a sense of confidence)
(I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take)
I've felt this way before
(So insecure)
Crawling in my skin
These wounds they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real
Discomfort endlessly has pulled itself upon me
Distracting, reacting
Against my will I stand beside my own reflection
It's haunting how I can't seem
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
(Without a sense of confidence)
(I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take)
I've felt this way before
So insecure
Crawling in my skin
These wounds they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real
Crawling in my skin
These wounds they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing, confusing what is real
Confusing what is real
(This lack of self-control I fear is never ending, controlling)
Confusing what is real
the RGB on this looks so unneccessary.
The D pad also seems kinda weird.
Yes but the ABXY buttons are some of the coolest I've ever seen. Not in this rainbow configuration but the fact that the backlight basically changes the entire color of the button is really impressive. So if you picked blue solid led, the buttons actually look blue. It sounds simple lol but this is one of the best implementations I've ever seen. The rest of the device, a solid MEH lol. EDIT: For example skip to 6:13 and pause, The buttons look red and like there is no backlight effect. But the backlight is making it red.
What snack should I have with my Coffee?
Pickles.
In its current state and current price at best I'd pay 289. Just another piece of hardware shoved out the door with poor pc performance
Any chance for a retro handheld spreadsheet like the one for mini PCs?
Someone already maintains an excellent handheld spreadsheet, here you go: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1irg60f9qsZOkhp0cwOU7Cy4rJQeyusEUzTNQzhoTYTU/edit#gid=0
Graphics drivers are NOT going to fix the poor efficiency. The Alchemist family has always scored highly in benchmarks while performing poorly in actual games.
Currently the price is €350. Seems like a good option for retro emulation, PC gaming maybe not as good as Ally or LeGo but not terrible.
can u do tutorial about ryujinx who to use controll buttons caus when i press the button it close the windows on mine msi claw
Why stop testing skate 3?
An $800 price tag and unfinished? Gaming has become a joke. Review the product as it was released to the general public, not on potential.
It hasn't. He ended up reviewing it as a general public product and in this video he's doing emulation. It makes sense it does really well thanks to the fact it already runs hard emulation to do normal everyday games.
I've got one and it's a beast for emulation. And with the updates it's had pc game performance is miles better. It even outperforms the lenovo legion go with certain AAA games. And I got the ultra 7 model for £450 brand new.
Will The MSI Claw Play PS2 And Nintendo GameCube Will It Play On The TV If It Does How?
I've owned Power PC, Cyrix, AMD, Intel and everything in between. I wish Intel the best we can use competition. Just can't afford to be an early adopter. How do you spell adopter?
Does The Claw Has
PS2
Wii/GameCube
Original Xbox
Gameboy Advance
Emulators
what performance monitor are you using?
its 850-950eur where i live... the ally is 600eur, and the deck 350-550eur. Its a really easy pick, even if performance was the same
There's simply no getting around it.
Why get this Intel over any other AMD handheld?
Because you hate yourself , that's why
It's too expensive to be an emulator focus machine, not to mention it running windows which will also make the battery life not as good as it can be. A no go for me :D
Even with emulation, this intel chip does not support AVX 512, which is required to almost double the performance for ps3 emulation.
This has no redeeming qualities. Literally get anything else except this.
It doesn't have avx 512? The 1165 had it, why would they leave it out?
@@stevemclovin1566 something to do with the P cores being capable but the E cores aren't. So intel disabled them altogether.
Inefficiently so. Intel is a few years down the road from AMD power/efficiency for portable. Milking fab tech to fatten exec bonuses caught up with them. MSI probably should not have bothered.
most likely MSI got Intel's incentive. Otherwise why would MSI do this heh
Fair critism about the product, but I feel like the big picture is promissing. More options in the hand held market = better competition = more innovation. Even if this first gen product is trash this will be good for the category in the long run!
I wonder what the performance would be like with overclocking the cpu and gpu with msi after burner with the cpu and gpu highest clock speeds at max tdp even though handheld and gaming laptop tdp devices are too low and running crysis remastered on max graphics sliders settings maxed out on the msi claw native resolution with no upscaling at all. I mainly play crysis remastered and I have the physical copy of crysis remastered for my nintendo switch. Crysis remastered is my benchmark and reference for 4k gaming on pc. On my 4k gaming laptop with the 3080 ti 16gb vram with crysis remastered can it run crysis mode in everything graphics settings with ray tracing always enabled with native 4k resolution with no upscaling at all, dlss always off, motion blur always off, v sync always off and ray tracing experimental boost always enabled. I'm getting around 20 fps or less. I have the 2022 razer blade 15 with 4k 144 hz display 1tb ssd, 32gb ram and 3080 ti 16gb vram with the intel core i9-12900h tdp 45 wattsis too low mobile cpu but it's desktop cpu at 125 watts is possible desktop cpu would have been way better since mobile cpu's are mediocre at best. The intel core i9-12900h is meh ok. The 2019 msi gt76 titan and the alienware area 51m back in 2019 both used the intel i9-9900k desktop cpu with 99 watt tdp while the 12900h mobile cpu has 45 tdp. I would still buy the msi gt76 titan because of the desktop cpu and overclocking all 8 cores at 5ghz with it's 4k display and 2080 gpu. None of the mobile processors can even overclock to 6ghz like the Intel i9-14900k. The mobile cpu's have finally reached up to 5.8 ghz clock speeds for overclocking. My end game pc is overclocking all performance cores at 10 ghz and all efficiency cores at 10ghz, dram at 10ghz with the tightest timings possible and lowest latency possible and gpu 10ghz while gaming in native 4k with no upscaling at all with ray tracing always enabled, no dlss, no motion blur, no v sync with can it run crysis mode in every graphics settings to demand every last bit of hardware because that's how I always game. I'm into hi res audio and 4k hi res for video games and movies. It's got to be the creme de la creme of hi resolution both for audio and video resolution since it's something that I'm already used to.
MSI didn’t fight with ASUS they let Intel fight with AMD
“Pretty good “ on a device with this price tag is a damn shame
How odd that Russ would recommend a 40min review.
It should be. Any modern x86 chip is good enough to run emulation.
Can you make a vid about Bazzite OS on any windows handheld they have builds for Rog ally Loki Max Lenovo legion go. It would help windows users see their other options thanks Russ
That's great 😁
FYI, Prince of Persia has a native PC build, so I dont see any reason to emulate that (outside of simply showcasing emulation for RPCS3 in the purpose of these videos).
Totally agree, and yes it’s there specifically as an emulation showcase demonstration; the game represents the “75% threshold” in that if that game runs well (especially at that specific part), then 75% of the catalog generally fares pretty well. God of War III would be the “99% threshold” on that emulator.
If you only want to play emulated games, just get an Odin 2 instead of this.. much better and a lot cheaper.
i love msi products, but missing cpu temp check is big no no, i have seen other reviews, the mentioned over 100C temps
Rumor is intel gave these chips to msi for super cheap, so why they're charging an arm and a leg for this thing has me puzzled. Even at 500, this thing would be a tough sell imo.
Love your content thank you. To me any handheld with windows is a no go, the os just isn't optimized for handhelds, heck even large screen tablets.
A handheld without great battery life sucks in my book
It looks like my old Tiger Lake U has better performance per watt for emulation than this new Meteor Lake chip. Weird.
Thanks for the video, Russ. I have a feeling this product will flop though. Just a bad value proposition combined with a rushed launch. Glad to see another company throw its hat into the handheld pc ring though. Competition is always great for us consumers even if it’s not the best competition lol
russ jumpscare
great video!
Can you review bsp d8 please
should of just stuck to a steamdeck
Emulation has been good since gpd win 1. Nothing to see here.
The state of Xbox emulation is so sad
An $800 handheld plays decades old videos OK? No way. Software isnt going to do anything about how inefficient their architecture is.
Can you try battlefield on it please
Would buy the Legion Go instead. Much more Value for your Money^^
Wish this device came with a Ryzen chip option it's would have dethroned the Rog Ally from best windows handheld
Wouldnt it be basically the same?
@@DynamicPhase The new Intel chip in this device isn't currently optimized and hasn't been getting a good reputation because of that, hopefully it gets better in future because the Claw itself is an amazing design but that chip is holding back people from buying it
Managed to get one for £360 brand new. I'm hoping its at least worth that price 😂
I Hope It's On Amazon
It was on Amazon, but for some reason they pulled it off at release, I'm not sure why exactly. I think only 3rd party sellers will sell it on Amazon (probably at a inflated price too)
I hope when you do a final review I hope steam os or a linux based OS is available to see if can be a choice for?purchase. With winOS no handeld is worth it since windows has issues of preformance since is a lot of bloatqare that drains battery and the cache of shaders for 3D graphics dx12 or any directX is terrible that makes machines to overheart since do not set resources in a smart way
Sell the claw around $400 and I'll buy one. 😊
Respect your position, but if you're waiting for Intel to update their software your review might take a while to come out
Interesting that emulators are already optimized
Thanks, yeah I’m giving them two weeks and then making the review rain or shine. I don’t want to wait forever!
@@RetroGameCorps I get the feeling Intel knew they weren't quite ready, but felt they had to jump in anyway because seeing all the issues people would find IRL was the only way they would catch up. So I think you can do a six months later review or earlier when the other Claw users start bringing up that the thing is finally worth it.
And if any Intel people are reading this, good luck with catching up. We really are rooting for you
even if software updates can fix performance and battery, Steam Deck is still better when it comes to cost and performance.
Its nice to give MSI a chance but the reality is the product is already out - folks buying a claw will be at best hoping software saves the product
What is it with tech companies nowadays? They are releasing physical products and giving them the DLC treatment of modern games!
Intel has never been good at running games in my experience, and I've been running Intel tech since 2009. I'm very sceptical any kind of sofware can make a difference. This device appears to be dead in the water until MSi can half their price
Unfortunately Intel's drivers have always been not good on igpus. Somehow they git worse from Tigerlake to metor lake.
But luckily intel has always had Solid Emulation performance.