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Over at Intel’s Lunar Lake launch occasion, MSI had one thing on present that I used to be significantly excited to provide a whirl. It’s the brand new MSI Claw, the Claw 8, which is definitely the second mannequin of the hand-held gaming PC. The vital factor is that it is larger in a couple of methods, together with each battery and display screen.
I had an opportunity to provide the MSI Claw 8 a go over on the occasion. It’s a neat design in a black and silver colourway, and barely extra eye-catching than the final, which was a little bit plain to have a look at. The MSI Claw 8 has an 8-inch display screen, therefore the identify, which was fairly wonderful to play some Hi-Fi Rush on.
I’ve by no means performed Hi-Fi Rush and was understandably horrible on the sport, however I blame that on it being too loud on the occasion to match the music beat for beat. Importantly, it ran nicely on the Lunar Lake machine. MSI had no different video games we may play on the system for a real take a look at of its prowess, although Hi-Fi Rush ran easily. It most likely ought to, as it is not probably the most demanding sport round, however Lunar Lake’s new Xe2 GPU does seem to maintain up nicely.
Speaking to Damien Triolet, director of GPU technical advertising, he assures me that Xe2 scales down significantly nicely with low energy, and this could make it candidate for extra thermally delicate designs, equivalent to a handheld. I hoped for some trace at the way it scaled up in energy, admittedly, hinting at Battlemage, however no cube.
Anyways, as for the hand-held itself, it felt fairly nicely balanced in my fingers. It’s fairly huge, from the 8-inch display screen, however the buttons are straightforward to succeed in, if nothing spectacular, and there are a pair of macro paddles on the rear.
I’m instructed the design might change barely, nonetheless—MSI remains to be understanding all the small print. The rep wasn’t capable of say way more than it is utilizing an engineering pattern of a Lunar Lake chip, the brand new Core Ultra 200V-series, and the battery has been improved as much as 80 Whr. That’s an enormous enhance over the 53 Whr battery within the authentic Claw 7. That ought to put it proper up there with the ROG Ally X, which has an identical battery capability, and is all the higher for it.
MSI is aiming to get the Claw 8 out come January, and if I have been you, I’d wait round for that launch to see the way it fares in benchmarks, as a result of there aren’t sufficient causes to be dropping money on the Meteor Lake powered Claw 7 already out there. That one did not actually impress us sufficient after we had some hands-on time with it, not less than not sufficient to beat out the opposite choices out there at the moment. But possibly a little bit Lunar Lake energy effectivity and a brand new and improved GPU will assist.
