MSI Claw A1M Review: Late to the Party
Technology might seem like it's constantly moving forward on a curve, but it's often cyclical. Flip phones, instant cameras, and record players have all made a comeback. Now it's the gaming handheld's turn. While Nintendo has always had a handheld in the market, Windows-based portable gaming devices seem to have taken off in the past couple of years, with major manufacturers rushing to bring their products to market.
MSI is one of those manufacturers. The Taiwanese firm unveiled the MSI Claw A1M, its Intel-powered handheld gaming PC, in the sea of AMD-powered handheld gaming PCs at CES 2024. The device was officially launched in India in March, days after its global release, but initial availability was suspect. Now, the Claw is available in the Indian market in three variants — a base model running on Intel Core Ultra 5 processor and packing 512GB of SSD storage, a middle-tier model with Core Ultra 7 chipset and the same storage capacity and a top-end Core Ultra 7-powered model with 1TB of SSD storage.
The Core Ultra 5 model of the MSI Claw A1M launched in India at Rs. 88,990, while the Core Ultra 7 models were priced at Rs. 96,990 and Rs. 99,990 for the 512GB and 1TB storage variants, respectively. MSI has since revised the pricing for the handheld, slashing it down considerably to Rs. 59,990 for the base variant, with the two Core Ultra 7 variants coming in at Rs. 66,990 and Rs. 69,990.
But is the Meteor Lake-powered MSI Claw A1M a worthy competitor to products from Asus and Lenovo that run on the AMD Ryzen Z1 series of processors built specifically for gaming handhelds? I spent an extended period of time testing out the MSI Claw A1M, and while there are a few things the handheld does well, there's a lot that misses the mark. As a Windows-based gaming handheld, the competition with the ROG Ally and the Legion Go, but it often feels like it's going against its flaws.
The MSI Claw is much bigger and beefier than the Nintendo Switch
If you picked up the Claw and
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