A 900P120 OLED panel would so much superior than a 1080p or 1200p panel. Solving performance problems with pushing more power / upscaling from subresoltions or BOTH aren't good solutions. Sub resolutions on high DPI panels look worse (because we can see the definition of upscaling artifacts) than just running native.
I'll take the power hit for 1080p resolution, as I feel that's the minimum a handheld ought to be. The difference between Steamdeck vs Ally or AYANEO 1S is night and day and I genuinely don't know how people can even tolerate sub 1080p.
@@MegaOverclocked I used to be the same way until I realized I don't keep the steam deck 2 inches from my eyeballs and I don't notice the difference. I'd rather have FPS
I agree that having 1200p is stupid, and 800p or 1600p for integer scaling should be better. But I think there is one point that you forget that somehow can help. It's that Lunar lake has a hardware XESS, and a not integer upscaling could look good, and actually highly upscaled games could look better on 1200p. Of course in games that support that and if you could test it in your review that could be really cool! Also, 2d indies should look better. Though I would still prefer OLED for all that.
@@GoblinArmyInYourWalls I hear that alot, people that "just can't see the difference". I don't know if it's an eyesight or nearsightedness thing. My mother and sister are unable to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, but it's always been painfully clear to me. I ain't asking for overkill like 1200p or 1600p, but 1080 is just perfect and people can always bring it down to lower resolution themselves to get those gains.
As I said in my other comment, unless someone actually makes that in-between panel, it's all academic and I'll stick with actually shipping 1080p over 720/800p panels. : D
One thing I learned from my Ally is to keep it at 720p and knock the settings up a notch. Looks better than 1080p at lower settings. Another thing I learned from my AOKZOE A1Pro: with a bigger battery you just keep it at a higher wattage so you can run those sweet settings at higher FPS. With my Ally I'm always compromising settings or battery time.
The new MSI Center 2 for the MSI Claw 7+/8+ can be downloaded from the MSI website and runs on the current MSI Claw It's great with the merger with the Game Bar and new interface
I disagree that 800p is enough. There are plenty of games with smaller text that's harder to read on lower resolutions but 1080p on the Ally or 1200p on my Legion Go is perfect. And performance is still great at those resolutions for most games.
Everyone says the legion go resolution is overkill but it is so nice playing lower demanding games at such a high res, not to mention the benefits of AI upscaling. Also, phones and tablets have such a high res it can be quite noticeable when you use a handheld device with lower resolution.
Couldn't agree more. The low resolution of the Steam Deck is my second reason for switching to a ROG Ally as soon as it became available, right after performance being the primary one.
Since I mostly play in bed, I have since replaced my Steam Deck with a 1600p tablet with a clasp for my bed and streaming directly to my gaming PC. In this case I agree 1600p is way better than 800p, especially with the 12 inch screen and running at native resolution ultra :) But if the point is a portable device, I don't really get the purpose of 1080p or 1200p. You can get way more battery life out of 800p, and that seems to be the whole purpose of a portable device. Do you guys who prefer the Ally (not the X, since that one has a larger battery) actually use it away from the wall?
All these companies making handhelds should unify on a good OLED 900p or 1080p panel and order in bulk together. As I understand, economy of scale is a main factor in certain panel spec available or not.
I would personally love something like 1440x900 and 1600x1000 to be the standard sizes. 16:10 is nice for this size as it gives some vertical space for controllers on either side. I'd honestly even settle for something in the 800p range in the smaller 6-7" models, something like 1280x800 at 7" would be a decent-looking and would let these iGPUs push higher refresh rates or sip power.
@@xbox360J Worth every single penny, i mean, is very confy, powerful enought, i barely play in the desktop since then XD. But i admit that some 3 o 4 games specifically are that not good in the Ally and basically everysingle handled pc in the world.
In the whole “1200p is dumb” section you contradicted yourself. 1200p has only 11% more pixels than 1080p. An 8-inch 16:10 display is 37.4% larger than a 7-inch 16:9 display. Therefore according to your analogy of the steam deck oled vs lcd displays, the Claw 8 AI+ screen is actually the better choice of the two screens as it has a barely higher resolution but a much larger display area, therefore being a more meaningful upgrade for the user.
SteamDeck LCD is 800p 7" screen. SteamDeck OLED is 800p 7.4" screen. Has *anyone* said image quality on the 7" LCD is better? We would be FAR better off having games run natively on a quality panel with a low resolution versus running games at a sub-resolution and then upscaling to 1200p
@@ThePhawxdefinitely agreed with you. Thats why i have integer scaling on my legion go and have windows on 800p as well so I never have to bother about it.
@@zeydp Please explain the windows 800 p setting and stuff. I have never understood the integer scaling.... Like I put 1280x800 in Legionspace and then what? In game I put 1600?`` It lags like a mtfkr. I thought I put the screen on 1600p and ingame 800p and then it scales itself but I dont see any difference like .... please help haha
5:00 I disagree on 1080p on the Ally being too much, I think it's a good sweet spot. Older titles who have no problem running at that res look appreciably better at 1080 compared to 800p, it's literally 2x the resolution after all. Also, with the resolution switcher built into their command center (so you don't have to go into windows display settings) it's not really that much of a hassle on the Ally to drop down the base resolution if needed. I wish there was a compromise native-res between 720/800p and 1080p, that would be great, but nobody makes a display in that range and I feel like there'd be some games struggling to support such uncommon resolutions, so personally I'd rather go for the 1080p if given the choice between that and 720/800p.
@@LuisPerez-5 I can easily see the difference. It made enough of a difference to me that I bought the Ally, despite already having a Steam Deck. Totally worth it.
What a crazy, awesome time to be alive, 10 years ago we would never foresee that there will be igpu chips that can play cyberpunk. And there's still more to come :) wondering how strix halo will change the ,,landscape" ":) PS i think some quiet chill background music would make your video better.
Definitely gonna wait to see some real world numbers on this thing. Besides not having an OLED display this seems to check all the marks for me. But I'll cautious with intel drivers being hit and miss with games in the past. So hopefully this is an improvement from what we've seen in the past.
2:55 I thought unified memory systems like APUs were able to dynamically allocate however much memory is needed to the CPU and GPU and both could address the same memory?
It would've been more ideal if MSI went all the way up to 1600p if they wanted to give us a sharper display so that games run at 800p would scale perfectly by 2x. 1200p is in a no man's land.
I'm looking forward to your in-depth review. If the Claw 8 turns out to be good I'll buy one and upgrade it with a 2TB 2230 SSD (like the WD Black SN770M).
Really love what we're seeing from lunar lake and battlemage, a really strong showing from Intel. I think the issue with handheld displays is there's not a plethora of options for OEMs to choose from. But like you said, 8" 800p OLED would be ideal.
Disagree on that lower resolution on a handheld is always better... I have a deck oled, I love it and don't see the resolution as a problem, but there are some games with smaller text where more pixels would be welcome because the text just becomes a bit unclear where an fhd or the 1200p variant would definitely help. Now for most games I think you're right and you don't need fhd, but also I don't think it's nearly as big of a problem to scale up from a lower resolution than it used to be. Most games will let you do that now and with AI upscaling it looks better than it used to. Also, the pixel density is so high with 1920x1200 on 8 inches, that even with plain old scale to fit without any AI shenanigans, it's not really much of a problem. And many games that do support lowering the rendering resolution will still look better on higher resolution because they might render the game on 800p but then draw the user interface over it on native res. So it's a trade-off. Sometimes the lower resolution screen can have the edge, sometimes the higher resolution one can. It's not like you're stating always better to have the lower resolution one.
Indeed!! It looks promising! I have 2 Ally's the Z1 and the X and if this one carryout more hp than X the most powerfull at the moment, then this MSi Claw is a must have Period!!
It seems a GREAT device and far better than 7” very small screens. I’ll wait for the Legion Go 2 which will be on the new chipset, bigger battery and optimized
Looking like a much more promising showing from Msi and Intel this time around. Fitting that this is at the same time that Intel cements itself as a viable 3rd Dgpu player with their now acclaimed Battlemage in the B580. Really wish the price on this was a bit less ($700 for the 7', and $800 for the 8', would have been fire), but atleast it ups the bar by providing great amounts of (Fast) Ram, SSD space, and the big 80wh battery. 1200p and 120hz VRR is probably the ideal numbers for an 8' handheld (not the 800p that The Phawx is pushing for. There are still ancient devices like Steam Deck for that resolution), only thing that could be better would be an Oled display (admittedly one of the only real strengths of the Steam Deck Oled is the screen).
The 7 would make more sense to anyone wanting to use it as a (don't laugh) desktop replacement. Always connected to the mains and to an external VDU. Of course the smaller SSD is a factor.
@@samgoff5289 yeah, "in modern games", but that's not all everyone is playing. If a 800p display is all you have, then EVERY game runs in low-res, even older and less demanding titles that could easily run at 1080p.
I think the 7 is a buy, smaller screen, hopefully smaller formfactor (1080p instead of 1200p) and what I am hoping for is kind of an ROG ALLY situation where no one buys the smaller one and it gets discounted a bunch😅.
Almost every graphical card driver update is in reality a collection of workarounds for video games. How many will be released for the Intel graphic card vs. Radeon graphic card?
When choosing a handheld then fan noise is an important factor for me. That's the reason I sold my Steam deck for an Ally. How does the fan noise sound on the Claw 8 AI+?
One thing I dont agree in, is 800P being enough and 1080P being too much, I have Ally and Deck OLED, I use both regularly with Ally as windows and Deck OLED as a SteamOS device. I prefer Ally display over Deck OLED anyday, intially I expected OLED to look sharp enough where difference will be slightly noticeable, but to me Ally by far more sharper hence making games as if higher quality settings to me, its as if I have DLSS performance in Deck while Ally is DLAA thats the difference I notice. I like OLED + HDR but sharpness is not enough.
Hi, I wanted to ask you two things that you didn’t mention in your review, especially about the vibration, which no RUclipsr at the event seemed to talk about either. Does the vibration feel strange or inconsistent, not activating 100% of the times it should, like in the original model, or did it feel improved? How did you find the weight and ergonomics of the console in your hands compared to the competition?
The rumble feels muted. Not great. Weight I had no problem with whatsoever. But I also am okay with larger devices. I feel like ALLY X feels a tiny bit lighter
I would like to see you review a OneXfly f1 Pro. It has a 144 hz 7" OLED and AMD AI 370. I would be interested to see benchmarks between that and the Claw.
It's an interesting time in the handheld market for sure. Too much turbulence for me to buy right now. MSI have a habit of cutting back where it counts in favour of numbers (screen quality usually) are the viewing angles nice? Decent blacks, brightness and HDR? Resolution should be a 1080p target minimum, smartphones have exceeded this for years.
id hold off until youtubers get review units. I feel like their benchmarks are pretty unfair. They handpicked games only that the claw beats it on AND i bet you they optimized the claw and not the x.
P.S. Ill keep my 1600p display on my LeGo. I can run 800p with integer scaling on AAA games. I can run 1600p on everything else. And for those that want 1080 or 1200, well, with 1600 on a 8.8" screen even non-integer scaling looks good.
Funny when i had the go i couldn't get any aaa modern titles to run st the native res of the display. The go only has this beat in screen size and the joycon stuff
I think 1200p is perfect. 800p can be blurry especially when using fsr or something. More often then not im shooting for 1200 p on the legion go or 1600p when streaming my main pc or playing hades 2, yes i play hades 2 at 1600p 144hz and its glorious. 1080p or 1200p should be our new norm
It sucks when modern games default to native resolution but 800p is lacking, most people hold a portable screen close to their face and it's not hard to play games at 40 degrees filed of view on a mobile device (giving the same pixels per-degree as a normal desktop monitor). All of the games from the 90's were designed to be able to run at 1600x1200 so in fact 1920x1200 kind of is the ideal resolution for a handheld PC.
Biggest takeaway for me is intel doesn't have much optimization features like RIS, AFMF, RSR etc. They only have XeSS which is comparable to RSR/FSR. And these features help a power starved device to squeeze out more quality and battery life.
@tomd7724 these latency issues only matter if you're playing fast paced multiplayer games. And majority of games are not that. A 36ms latency for example is irrelevant if I'm playing cyberpunk 2077.
Intel should have integrated Thunderbolt 5 with Lunar Lake. Thunderbolt is a far better protocol than Oculink since it provides multiple protocols natively as well as power delivery. That way, they could have paired the B580 Battlemage dGPU in a Thunderbolt 5 eGPU Dock with the MSI Claw 8. I agree the screen needs to be 1080p Max and definitely OLED. +1 for the 99Whr battery. I've heard that Intel has given up on Memory on Package for Panther Lake. What a shame.
Until OLED supports VRR on these portables, LCD VRR is king! I have tried Steam Deck OLED vs Ally X LCD VRR, and VRR is king! MSI made the correct choice here. If you have never used a VRR panel before...... you are missing out!
Im impressed with how much the legion bro has added. Performance seems better than a few months back. Driver updates right in legion space, gyro controls from the app and the frame counter finally works properly. Just a much better overall product then 6 months ago, and it's cheaper now. Anyway, this new msi is impressive, the form of the legion go with the tablet style fits my use best so I'll stick with that one
u seem to hate intel and keep saying cherry pick when amd cherry pick and u didnt say about it and its ok if amd did that i use both msi claw first gen vs rog ally and most of my game i play on msi claw has better fps than rog ally
I'v tested Immortal Fenyx rising at 17W low graphic with FSR enabled performance on my legion go ( same apu Rog X) 1080P external screen . It's very strange because i 'don't have 40 FPS but I've 55 at 61 Fps. I find it hard to believe these tables provided by MSI. I will wait for real tests in a real situation.
Highly unlikely knowing that they're already struggling to catch up to the steam deck's price at this point. Maybe soon when Valve stops producing a new Deck and it's all up to the 3rd parties to make the hardware.
I disagree about the screen. 800 or 720p Looks noticeably worse than 1080 or 1200p especially on an 8 inch plus screen.Looks less sharp. You can get way with those resolutions on the 7 inch and below screen though.
This is so cool! Well done to MSI for following up with their 1st handheld. Sadly the achilles heal there is the Intel APU. Intel as a company are struggling at the moment and are way behind AMD & Nvidia. Intel drivers will be few and far between as it manages its failing business.
The msi claw is just better and having a high resolution is better the steamdeck has no saying in this the simplest handheld out there is better than the steamdeck deck that went outdated two months after it got released
Now it's down to the Claw 8 AI+ or the Zotac zone....last place is the Legion Go S....Never will buy= ANYTHING Asus or the steam deck...the deck is great, but not enough in 2025 and beyond
Yeah, a better lower resolution display...VA+mini LED or OLED both with VRR and high end at 720p 0r no more than 1080p makes so much more sense! I like that this uses Intel drivers, although I don't know that I totally trust Intel drivers. Hall sensors sounds great, from what I keep hearing! I don't even know what my router is...5? It's fine, I just care that it's supposedly getting security updates. Love that the speakers sound good? That matters to me! Oh that's cool if MSI's settings plug in to Game Bar! I don't care about the battery, I only use devices like this plugged in, so I'd care more about weight and noise and what the screen looks like
both, some msi only things come from msi, other things come from intel and some intel then modified by msi to be offered to the poor customers buying these pos things meaning, all the time you will have outdated drivers because msi always abandon things, specially when it is not selling and intel stops paying to push these things into the market
i remember the early days with everything ai related, even videos with comments and the ai thumbnails, fortunately we only have these products with the ai in the name, because voluntarily no one will touch that crap in the os
the future is ai, future spying technologies, future ai npcs running locally babbled crap because it os faster than download cloud ai babble any other useless ai ideas they must shove into our daily lives
A 900P120 OLED panel would so much superior than a 1080p or 1200p panel. Solving performance problems with pushing more power / upscaling from subresoltions or BOTH aren't good solutions.
Sub resolutions on high DPI panels look worse (because we can see the definition of upscaling artifacts) than just running native.
I'll take the power hit for 1080p resolution, as I feel that's the minimum a handheld ought to be. The difference between Steamdeck vs Ally or AYANEO 1S is night and day and I genuinely don't know how people can even tolerate sub 1080p.
@@MegaOverclocked I used to be the same way until I realized I don't keep the steam deck 2 inches from my eyeballs and I don't notice the difference. I'd rather have FPS
I agree that having 1200p is stupid, and 800p or 1600p for integer scaling should be better. But I think there is one point that you forget that somehow can help. It's that Lunar lake has a hardware XESS, and a not integer upscaling could look good, and actually highly upscaled games could look better on 1200p. Of course in games that support that and if you could test it in your review that could be really cool! Also, 2d indies should look better. Though I would still prefer OLED for all that.
@@GoblinArmyInYourWalls I hear that alot, people that "just can't see the difference". I don't know if it's an eyesight or nearsightedness thing. My mother and sister are unable to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, but it's always been painfully clear to me. I ain't asking for overkill like 1200p or 1600p, but 1080 is just perfect and people can always bring it down to lower resolution themselves to get those gains.
As I said in my other comment, unless someone actually makes that in-between panel, it's all academic and I'll stick with actually shipping 1080p over 720/800p panels. : D
I had no idea I could be so impressed with a thumbnail transition...
I actually took a double take and rewound the video 😂 it was pretty cool
Same here
Classic Phawx thumbnail transition. The best ones on youtube.
Ikr
Yeah that was sick. I’m subbing is he does this every vid lol
Woah the thumbnail transition is sick. Subbed just for that reason.
Thanks!
Haha same
It was great seeing you there! It was nice catching up. Hope to see you at the next one!
Until the next one!
@ThePhawx definitely man!
Smoooooooth transition from thumbnail to video! Looked great!
One thing I learned from my Ally is to keep it at 720p and knock the settings up a notch. Looks better than 1080p at lower settings. Another thing I learned from my AOKZOE A1Pro: with a bigger battery you just keep it at a higher wattage so you can run those sweet settings at higher FPS. With my Ally I'm always compromising settings or battery time.
You have the Aokzoe A1pro too? Adrenalin worth install and running? I had a few problems with it, my machine kept turning off.
@@adpbobcat Yeah, I always use the latest drivers. For AOKZOE this is safe to do since it doesn't use any special chip/driver, just regular 7840U.
Agreed! 😊
These AI based hardware names are getting ridiculous 🙄
😂
But it has electrolytes, i mean, AI!
The new MSI Center 2 for the MSI Claw 7+/8+ can be downloaded from the MSI website and runs on the current MSI Claw
It's great with the merger with the Game Bar and new interface
THUMBNAIL TO INTRO IS GLORIOUS you’re a genius that was dope as F*** immediate sub
I disagree that 800p is enough. There are plenty of games with smaller text that's harder to read on lower resolutions but 1080p on the Ally or 1200p on my Legion Go is perfect. And performance is still great at those resolutions for most games.
Everyone says the legion go resolution is overkill but it is so nice playing lower demanding games at such a high res, not to mention the benefits of AI upscaling.
Also, phones and tablets have such a high res it can be quite noticeable when you use a handheld device with lower resolution.
Couldn't agree more. The low resolution of the Steam Deck is my second reason for switching to a ROG Ally as soon as it became available, right after performance being the primary one.
Since I mostly play in bed, I have since replaced my Steam Deck with a 1600p tablet with a clasp for my bed and streaming directly to my gaming PC. In this case I agree 1600p is way better than 800p, especially with the 12 inch screen and running at native resolution ultra :) But if the point is a portable device, I don't really get the purpose of 1080p or 1200p. You can get way more battery life out of 800p, and that seems to be the whole purpose of a portable device. Do you guys who prefer the Ally (not the X, since that one has a larger battery) actually use it away from the wall?
@@seeibe Never. lol
Agreed. I run my LeGo at 1200p and get solid frame rates, especially with FSR 2.2. BG3 on medium settings runs perfectly.
All these companies making handhelds should unify on a good OLED 900p or 1080p panel and order in bulk together.
As I understand, economy of scale is a main factor in certain panel spec available or not.
I would personally love something like 1440x900 and 1600x1000 to be the standard sizes. 16:10 is nice for this size as it gives some vertical space for controllers on either side.
I'd honestly even settle for something in the 800p range in the smaller 6-7" models, something like 1280x800 at 7" would be a decent-looking and would let these iGPUs push higher refresh rates or sip power.
DUDE AMAZING THUMBNAIL TRANSITION! Subbed because of that. We expect more revolutionary content like that :D
I recently bought an Ally X, im just will wait for Ally 2X or 3 in the future cheers!
How has your experienced been so far ? Considering buying one ASAP LMAO
@@xbox360J Worth every single penny, i mean, is very confy, powerful enought, i barely play in the desktop since then XD. But i admit that some 3 o 4 games specifically are that not good in the Ally and basically everysingle handled pc in the world.
@@camilodiaz178 nice and oh so those 3 or 4 games are also not that good on the other devices hahaha gotcha
@ how is the VRR on the Ally X and how is the 1080p screen ?
And those 3 to 4 games I can play them on my 4090 LMAOOOO
Thank you for your video, have a great day ❤
Fire transition from the thumbnail to the actual video🔥🔥🔥
In the whole “1200p is dumb” section you contradicted yourself. 1200p has only 11% more pixels than 1080p. An 8-inch 16:10 display is 37.4% larger than a 7-inch 16:9 display. Therefore according to your analogy of the steam deck oled vs lcd displays, the Claw 8 AI+ screen is actually the better choice of the two screens as it has a barely higher resolution but a much larger display area, therefore being a more meaningful upgrade for the user.
SteamDeck LCD is 800p 7" screen.
SteamDeck OLED is 800p 7.4" screen.
Has *anyone* said image quality on the 7" LCD is better?
We would be FAR better off having games run natively on a quality panel with a low resolution versus running games at a sub-resolution and then upscaling to 1200p
@@ThePhawxdefinitely agreed with you. Thats why i have integer scaling on my legion go and have windows on 800p as well so I never have to bother about it.
@@ThePhawx 720p SHOULD look better upscaled to 1080p than native rendering on a 720p screen. 1080p is good for this next generation of handhelds.
@@molsen7549I fully agree
@@zeydp Please explain the windows 800 p setting and stuff. I have never understood the integer scaling.... Like I put 1280x800 in Legionspace and then what? In game I put 1600?`` It lags like a mtfkr. I thought I put the screen on 1600p and ingame 800p and then it scales itself but I dont see any difference like .... please help haha
5:00 I disagree on 1080p on the Ally being too much, I think it's a good sweet spot. Older titles who have no problem running at that res look appreciably better at 1080 compared to 800p, it's literally 2x the resolution after all. Also, with the resolution switcher built into their command center (so you don't have to go into windows display settings) it's not really that much of a hassle on the Ally to drop down the base resolution if needed. I wish there was a compromise native-res between 720/800p and 1080p, that would be great, but nobody makes a display in that range and I feel like there'd be some games struggling to support such uncommon resolutions, so personally I'd rather go for the 1080p if given the choice between that and 720/800p.
On a small screen it doesn't make much of a difference
@@LuisPerez-5 I can easily see the difference. It made enough of a difference to me that I bought the Ally, despite already having a Steam Deck. Totally worth it.
Was a console guy for many many years went to ally z1x then Ally x can’t wait for next gen definitely Ally x will hold me over
Lets gooo. This is the hardcore chat we needed.
Can't wait til we get our review units in. Looking forward to everyone's thoughts
@@ThePhawx Same! I loved the anecdote on the speakers too. 😆
Thumbnail and info got me. Subbed
For me, 16:10 1200p 8" is the goldylocks zone for handhelds.
However id want oled, absolutly.
Same! I love my AokZoe A1pro for that reason. The 80 w battery is making me want to abandon my AokZoe
@@adpbobcat yeah the 80wh is now the minimum standard for handheld battery imo!
Im waiting a few weeks to see what lenovo announces, the rumor is 8.8 inch oled. If they give us an 80 wh or greater battery I'd be going that way.
What a crazy, awesome time to be alive, 10 years ago we would never foresee that there will be igpu chips that can play cyberpunk. And there's still more to come :) wondering how strix halo will change the ,,landscape" ":)
PS i think some quiet chill background music would make your video better.
I love the transition from thumbnail 😮
Definitely gonna wait to see some real world numbers on this thing. Besides not having an OLED display this seems to check all the marks for me. But I'll cautious with intel drivers being hit and miss with games in the past. So hopefully this is an improvement from what we've seen in the past.
2:55 I thought unified memory systems like APUs were able to dynamically allocate however much memory is needed to the CPU and GPU and both could address the same memory?
This thing looks like some sort of device you'd see in a shop in 2010 called an "archos game player 7" or something lol
It would've been more ideal if MSI went all the way up to 1600p if they wanted to give us a sharper display so that games run at 800p would scale perfectly by 2x. 1200p is in a no man's land.
I'm looking forward to your in-depth review. If the Claw 8 turns out to be good I'll buy one and upgrade it with a 2TB 2230 SSD (like the WD Black SN770M).
Nice review, thanks The Phawx, you are the best
Thank you!❤
Really love what we're seeing from lunar lake and battlemage, a really strong showing from Intel.
I think the issue with handheld displays is there's not a plethora of options for OEMs to choose from.
But like you said, 8" 800p OLED would be ideal.
17:51 Not putting the 80Wh battery on the 7" was dumb. Specially at the same price as the Ally X.
Not quite too much though, as there are weight restrictions on devices when traveling on aircrafts.
Big batteries also not allowed afaik.
Disagree on that lower resolution on a handheld is always better... I have a deck oled, I love it and don't see the resolution as a problem, but there are some games with smaller text where more pixels would be welcome because the text just becomes a bit unclear where an fhd or the 1200p variant would definitely help.
Now for most games I think you're right and you don't need fhd, but also I don't think it's nearly as big of a problem to scale up from a lower resolution than it used to be. Most games will let you do that now and with AI upscaling it looks better than it used to. Also, the pixel density is so high with 1920x1200 on 8 inches, that even with plain old scale to fit without any AI shenanigans, it's not really much of a problem. And many games that do support lowering the rendering resolution will still look better on higher resolution because they might render the game on 800p but then draw the user interface over it on native res.
So it's a trade-off. Sometimes the lower resolution screen can have the edge, sometimes the higher resolution one can. It's not like you're stating always better to have the lower resolution one.
I have a Steam Deck and an ROG Ally and the difference in resolution it’s pretty noticeable.
The MSI Claw 8 AI+ offers impressive performance and sleek design .
Indeed!! It looks promising! I have 2 Ally's the Z1 and the X and if this one carryout more hp than X the most powerfull at the moment, then this MSi Claw is a must have Period!!
@@elizandrolopez6295most powerful handheld isn't the Ally X....OneXFly
I got the OG Z1E Ally for $450 & I love it. Its a pretty great deal at that price.
For me it looks like MSI is back 😳😳
this comment so much sponsored by msi, it is painful to see
@betag24cn lol
@@oOoZilverwarrioroOo how much did they paid to you?
@@betag24cn do you really not think this is an improvement over the original claw?
@oOoZilverwarrioroOo it still has intel cpu and gpu, so no.
It seems a GREAT device and far better than 7” very small screens. I’ll wait for the Legion Go 2 which will be on the new chipset, bigger battery and optimized
Looking like a much more promising showing from Msi and Intel this time around. Fitting that this is at the same time that Intel cements itself as a viable 3rd Dgpu player with their now acclaimed Battlemage in the B580. Really wish the price on this was a bit less ($700 for the 7', and $800 for the 8', would have been fire), but atleast it ups the bar by providing great amounts of (Fast) Ram, SSD space, and the big 80wh battery. 1200p and 120hz VRR is probably the ideal numbers for an 8' handheld (not the 800p that The Phawx is pushing for. There are still ancient devices like Steam Deck for that resolution), only thing that could be better would be an Oled display (admittedly one of the only real strengths of the Steam Deck Oled is the screen).
The 7 would make more sense to anyone wanting to use it as a (don't laugh) desktop replacement. Always connected to the mains and to an external VDU. Of course the smaller SSD is a factor.
*edit*
I tangented hard. I'd be better off just making a video about it.
Fantastic video Phawx, as always.
Good video, I'm going to wait for Z2E to release, even though this seems to be a step forward I'm still not sold on this Intel chip
That someone playing dirt rally was cyberdopamine, he deserves a shoutout
It's about time a handheld *actually* uses the Xbox Game Bar, a feature that's been part of Windows for 5 years.
um, it's been in Windows 10, so maybe 9 years?
I am excited for this. How are the sticks??? Loose?
Hey Phawx, good to meet you at the airport man
I disagree about resolution! I can tell the difference between 800p and 1080p. FullHD for me please!
800p is a crutch for the Steam Deck's aging hardware, not something to aspire to.
Im with you 100% . I don't like 900p or 800p as i see the difference straight away
@nikolaikai940sorry but all handheld need low resolution for a crutch in modern games even if it is just to save power and battery life
@@samgoff5289 yeah, "in modern games", but that's not all everyone is playing. If a 800p display is all you have, then EVERY game runs in low-res, even older and less demanding titles that could easily run at 1080p.
I think the 7 is a buy, smaller screen, hopefully smaller formfactor (1080p instead of 1200p) and what I am hoping for is kind of an ROG ALLY situation where no one buys the smaller one and it gets discounted a bunch😅.
Couldn't agree more about the display. Companies care more about the marketing than the actual product.
Your thumbnail is the best
Almost every graphical card driver update is in reality a collection of workarounds for video games. How many will be released for the Intel graphic card vs. Radeon graphic card?
When choosing a handheld then fan noise is an important factor for me. That's the reason I sold my Steam deck for an Ally. How does the fan noise sound on the Claw 8 AI+?
One thing I dont agree in, is 800P being enough and 1080P being too much, I have Ally and Deck OLED, I use both regularly with Ally as windows and Deck OLED as a SteamOS device.
I prefer Ally display over Deck OLED anyday, intially I expected OLED to look sharp enough where difference will be slightly noticeable, but to me Ally by far more sharper hence making games as if higher quality settings to me, its as if I have DLSS performance in Deck while Ally is DLAA thats the difference I notice.
I like OLED + HDR but sharpness is not enough.
Hi, I wanted to ask you two things that you didn’t mention in your review, especially about the vibration, which no RUclipsr at the event seemed to talk about either. Does the vibration feel strange or inconsistent, not activating 100% of the times it should, like in the original model, or did it feel improved? How did you find the weight and ergonomics of the console in your hands compared to the competition?
The rumble feels muted. Not great. Weight I had no problem with whatsoever. But I also am okay with larger devices.
I feel like ALLY X feels a tiny bit lighter
5:02 isn't the Legion Go 1600p?
I would like to see you review a OneXfly f1 Pro. It has a 144 hz 7" OLED and AMD AI 370. I would be interested to see benchmarks between that and the Claw.
Text can look pretty bad at 720/800p. I don't mind using 1200p to get nice text with 600p being the internal render resolution.
It's an interesting time in the handheld market for sure. Too much turbulence for me to buy right now. MSI have a habit of cutting back where it counts in favour of numbers (screen quality usually) are the viewing angles nice? Decent blacks, brightness and HDR? Resolution should be a 1080p target minimum, smartphones have exceeded this for years.
so would you recommend a claw 8 or rog ally x ?
id hold off until youtubers get review units. I feel like their benchmarks are pretty unfair. They handpicked games only that the claw beats it on AND i bet you they optimized the claw and not the x.
CMON PPL LET'S GET PHAWX TO 100K !!!
P.S. Ill keep my 1600p display on my LeGo. I can run 800p with integer scaling on AAA games. I can run 1600p on everything else. And for those that want 1080 or 1200, well, with 1600 on a 8.8" screen even non-integer scaling looks good.
Funny when i had the go i couldn't get any aaa modern titles to run st the native res of the display. The go only has this beat in screen size and the joycon stuff
Great speakers are almost enough to sell it to me. I initially didn't want it because of lack of OLED but the speakers may sway my opinion
Does the device has an in-built battery protection mode as the Ally X and the new OneX Fly Pro?
I think 1200p is perfect. 800p can be blurry especially when using fsr or something. More often then not im shooting for 1200 p on the legion go or 1600p when streaming my main pc or playing hades 2, yes i play hades 2 at 1600p 144hz and its glorious. 1080p or 1200p should be our new norm
It sucks when modern games default to native resolution but 800p is lacking, most people hold a portable screen close to their face and it's not hard to play games at 40 degrees filed of view on a mobile device (giving the same pixels per-degree as a normal desktop monitor).
All of the games from the 90's were designed to be able to run at 1600x1200 so in fact 1920x1200 kind of is the ideal resolution for a handheld PC.
What I wouldn't give for a 1600x1200 120hz OLED Steamdeck.
Was it just me, or did it seem like this chip doesn't scale well to higher TDPS?
Biggest takeaway for me is intel doesn't have much optimization features like RIS, AFMF, RSR etc.
They only have XeSS which is comparable to RSR/FSR.
And these features help a power starved device to squeeze out more quality and battery life.
there is LossLessScaling, best than AMMF. but frame gen implies latency and artifacts
@tomd7724 these latency issues only matter if you're playing fast paced multiplayer games. And majority of games are not that.
A 36ms latency for example is irrelevant if I'm playing cyberpunk 2077.
Not quite true on the Z1. You can side load the standard AMD drivers onto the Z1 machines. It is annoying, but not a show stopper.
I would like to know if the panel it is not oled what magic used to look very well?
When is the final review ?
What’s your go 2 handheld right now?
well to me atleast the 800p display seems pixelated so nah at minimum I'd like to get 1080p
Do you think thunderbolt 5 will replace oculink as the preferred egpu connection in the next couple years?
There’s a connection that’s called mcio should able to handle pcie 5 and potentially pcie 6 signals it’s currently in server and on hedt boards
higher is not better for frequency response. balance and extension is what you need to look out for.
Rubbish. Dynamics and layering are what look out for.
Intel should have integrated Thunderbolt 5 with Lunar Lake. Thunderbolt is a far better protocol than Oculink since it provides multiple protocols natively as well as power delivery.
That way, they could have paired the B580 Battlemage dGPU in a Thunderbolt 5 eGPU Dock with the MSI Claw 8.
I agree the screen needs to be 1080p Max and definitely OLED.
+1 for the 99Whr battery.
I've heard that Intel has given up on Memory on Package for Panther Lake. What a shame.
And the 8Ai+ is still using m.2 2230 instead of 2280. That is a deal breaker for 4/8TB.
Until OLED supports VRR on these portables, LCD VRR is king! I have tried Steam Deck OLED vs Ally X LCD VRR, and VRR is king! MSI made the correct choice here. If you have never used a VRR panel before...... you are missing out!
Hopefully the original Msi claws drop down exponentially so I can buy one for 4 dollars
that would be 4 dollars more than i would pay for it
🤣
Im impressed with how much the legion bro has added. Performance seems better than a few months back. Driver updates right in legion space, gyro controls from the app and the frame counter finally works properly. Just a much better overall product then 6 months ago, and it's cheaper now. Anyway, this new msi is impressive, the form of the legion go with the tablet style fits my use best so I'll stick with that one
u seem to hate intel and keep saying cherry pick when amd cherry pick and u didnt say about it and its ok if amd did that i use both msi claw first gen vs rog ally and most of my game i play on msi claw has better fps than rog ally
watching intel succeed is a hard pill to swallow for some. intel B580 also ruffled some feathers in dGPU market for AMD/NVIDIA fanbois
I have an 8 inch 1200p Aokzoe A1pro and i set it at 800p as default. I would do the same for the claw
I'v tested Immortal Fenyx rising at 17W low graphic with FSR enabled performance on my legion go ( same apu Rog X) 1080P external screen . It's very strange because i 'don't have 40 FPS but I've 55 at 61 Fps. I find it hard to believe these tables provided by MSI. I will wait for real tests in a real situation.
Really hoping one of the major manufacturers puts an OLED screen in one of their handhelds this upcoming year.
Highly unlikely knowing that they're already struggling to catch up to the steam deck's price at this point.
Maybe soon when Valve stops producing a new Deck and it's all up to the 3rd parties to make the hardware.
I disagree about the screen. 800 or 720p Looks noticeably worse than 1080 or 1200p especially on an 8 inch plus screen.Looks less sharp. You can get way with those resolutions on the 7 inch and below screen though.
This is so cool! Well done to MSI for following up with their 1st handheld. Sadly the achilles heal there is the Intel APU. Intel as a company are struggling at the moment and are way behind AMD & Nvidia. Intel drivers will be few and far between as it manages its failing business.
Goddamn why is there no pre order date for some countries in Europe?
6:43 yeah the price will become standard too
Thanks
What do you think about Zotac Zone?
I don't think it was released in the states, but it's price tag and smaller battery make it a joke compared to the ally x.
The msi claw is just better and having a high resolution is better the steamdeck has no saying in this the simplest handheld out there is better than the steamdeck deck that went outdated two months after it got released
Now it's down to the Claw 8 AI+ or the Zotac zone....last place is the Legion Go S....Never will buy= ANYTHING Asus or the steam deck...the deck is great, but not enough in 2025 and beyond
Why are they still only putting 2 back buttons on there? It can't cost too much more to put on 4.
It cost 2.50 per button so I would like them to save that cost for the customer.
why stop at 4?
it coupd be 8 buttons i wouldnt press, because, i use like 4 fingers and 2 of them are on the analogs and the other 2 on the trigers
Finally a handheld with 32gb of ram what took them so long 🤦♂️ that should of been the norm.
My GPD Win Mini 8840U & Win 4 8840U have 32GB of RAM. My AOKZOE A1 Pro had 64GB of RAM.
@RolandDobbins you can't get those at Best buy though I prefer buying my devices in person. In case I don't like it I can return it with no issues.
@fuentesjuanjose90- yes, but GPD haven’t let me down, so far.
Yeah. 1080p is the most I wish they'd use.
Yeah, a better lower resolution display...VA+mini LED or OLED both with VRR and high end at 720p 0r no more than 1080p makes so much more sense! I like that this uses Intel drivers, although I don't know that I totally trust Intel drivers.
Hall sensors sounds great, from what I keep hearing!
I don't even know what my router is...5? It's fine, I just care that it's supposedly getting security updates.
Love that the speakers sound good? That matters to me!
Oh that's cool if MSI's settings plug in to Game Bar!
I don't care about the battery, I only use devices like this plugged in, so I'd care more about weight and noise and what the screen looks like
I can't wait to see GTA VI on this
Without phawx approval its no buy for me
I think 900P should be default for handhelds
900p is a great compromise! I'd rather a quality OLED 900p than a super high resolution that we will be forced to run sub resolutions and upscaling
Forgive my ignorance, who’s responsible for rolling out the driver updates - MSI or Intel?
Intel
Msi
both, some msi only things come from msi, other things come from intel and some intel then modified by msi to be offered to the poor customers buying these pos things
meaning, all the time you will have outdated drivers because msi always abandon things, specially when it is not selling and intel stops paying to push these things into the market
@@betag24cn you have been hating hard in the comments bro. are you ok. the product just dropped lmao. let them at least review it properly.
ARC graphics are updated through intel's new graphics center software just like their dGPUs
Must have fell asleep, what happened to the Claw 2-7…
I just can’t bring myself to buy something with ai in the name of the product
i remember the early days with everything ai related, even videos with comments and the ai thumbnails, fortunately we only have these products with the ai in the name, because voluntarily no one will touch that crap in the os
Why do I need AI on a gaming handheld? Does microsoft or intel require it from everyone using their "AI chips?"
its just a marketing gimmick, AI here refers to how it manages power consumption
the future is ai, future spying technologies, future ai npcs running locally babbled crap because it os faster than download cloud ai babble
any other useless ai ideas they must shove into our daily lives