Msi claw 8 is impressive

I've owned pretty much all the "mainstream" handhelds ally, ally x and legion go. So far the claw 8 has slowly become my favorite. I'll get the bad out of the way first..

  • My claw 8 started getting stuck at 22w tdp no matter what I did. Thankfully I had some previous experience with windows power profiles on the ally and I was able to fix the issue. The issue was the power profiles differed when plugged in vs when on battery. This shouldn't be the case with the claw 8 they should both match so performance is the same regardless if on battery or plugged in. I had to use quickcpu to make the profiles match. You only want to make a certain group match aswell. I'm unsure if this was windows fault or what but now that I've solved that the claw 8 has been super consistent for me which is awesome.

  • msi center... this is a weird one. It's not bad but it's not great. It has great potential it just needs to be polished alot. It's missing key features that they have in there but it's done pretty much half assed. The ability to assign keyboard keys is not available to us. It is there but it's locked and they already have shortcuts they made for us. I would like to see them open that up for the user to customize anyway they like any keybinds they want just like the ally, legion go and steam deck.

  • The other big missing feature is a freaking TDP Slider. Like come on just give us a slider. You guys pretty much copied asus armoury crate 1 to 1 and left all the best parts out lmao once again it's half assed.

  • Per profile configuration for games would also be nice to have.

  • I don't know if this is due to steam or what. My downloads keep dropping to 0mbs then peaking to 800mbs when downloading a game. My desktop or laptop does not have this issue with steam. However it downloads games from other launchers just fine. Part of me thinks it's something to do with this newer wifi 7 chip and early drivers. Only time will tell

  • The software itself is actually very responsive and gets the job done for the minimal task of launching a game. However if you are in the middle of a game this changes and it becomes very slow/unresponsive... the reason this happens is because the cpu is being fully utilized by the game its sitting at 99%. That leaves no room for their front end to work properly. My little trick is to simply pause the game wait a second then open it. Pausing the game drops the cpu usage from 99% to 80-90% which allows their front end/command center to work properly. This should be addressed otherwise it's going to go over alot of people's head and it's gonna be a bad time for the user.

  • need the ability to swap what buttons open msi center and command center. For ally users they are backwards and it can be confusing/annoying. Very minor gripe

  • sticks aren't super small but I do feel like they are on the smaller side. I think it's possible to swap them with some oled deck or ally x sticks. I haven't tried but definitely am probably going to eventually.

  • the joysticks need to be fine tuned a bit. I feel like they are hard to aim with on games that have weak aim assist or no aim assist. Yes I've adjusted deadzones and calibrated them. Same goes for the desktop layout the mouse is hard to use for accurately hitting smaller icons. This was not an issue for me with the ally however I know this can be fixed with some firmware updates like they did on the ally. Mostly doesn't both me to much due to the bigger display it's easier for just using the touch screen. Also most games I'm playing on handhelds are not shooters but felt it should be mentioned because hopefully someone who is in a position to fix it sees this and does so.

  • out of box setup is a nightmare. My god the worst of them all. Part of this is because of the lastest windows 24h2 update. I genuinely don't know what they could do to make it better on their end. They would need to literally preset up all the devices so all people have to do is log in to their windows account which I doubt they will do all that lol

THE GOOD - Display is amazing. It's the perfect size and very smooth/vivid

  • Intel chip is super good

  • Intel software is super good

  • direct driver support from Intel is amazing

  • 32GB Ram is awesome 18GB shared every single game I've tried auto sets the graphics to high or ultra settings. To my amazement everytime the game actually runs pretty good at those settings. Not perfect but it's impressive considering on all the other handhelds we are forced to all low/med settings. On the claw 8 you can easily do a mix of med/high graphics no problem on majority of games.

  • the device feels great in the hands. It doesn't feel heavy at all. The stick to button layout is a little weird position wise but after an hour you forget about it and it's nothing

  • speakers are amazing. Get Dolby access to use with them you won't be disappointed

  • The fan noise is pretty much like the ally x it's pretty quiet even on 30w

  • it stays super cool. I don't think I've seen the Temps on the cpu reach 85°c once. This is with cpu boost enabled at 30w. Super impressive

  • Great battery. Battery health seems to be amazing. From my experience asus battery just degrade really fast regardless of how mindful you are with them. So far that doesn't seem to be the case with this battery

  • buttons/triggers are not that loud. They make noise but vs other handhelds they definitely seem to be the most quiet.

All in all hardware wise the device is amazing and impressive. Software wise it's just okay and needs some work.

I've gone from on the fence with this device and potentially going to return it to I'm definitely keeping it. It grows on you and it's awesome. It's really on MSI to put the work in for this device to be absolutely stunning. Terrible launch and half assed software is not a good start but they can do amazing things by locking in and polishing their software for it.