It’s safe to say that the MSI Claw didn’t have the greatest of launches. The gaming PC handheld hailed as the very first to use one of Intel’s new Core Ultra processors was a little bit lackluster – something we found when we tested the MSI Claw. The price to performance just wasn’t there, especially falling behind the comparable ASUS ROG Ally, which you can pick up for cheaper.
Since its launch, the team at MSI has been busy making amends, and the latest update is said to provide a significant boost. This update to both the BIOS and MSI Center M should bring players up to 30% improved gaming performance, helping make significant gains against its closest rivals.
MSI brings new update to BIOS and MSI Center M
This news comes direct from the source, as a blog post from MSI goes through all the details. To download the new updates to the BIOS and MSI Center M, this is available either from the official MSI website or directly through MSI Center M itself, by heading over to the Live Update function. The latest versions are as listed below:
- BIOS: E1T41IMS.109 (referred to as 109)
- MSI Center M: 1.0.2405.1401 (referred to as 2405.1401)
With this update, MSI say that the Claw now delivers and average of 26% better performance than its biggest rival, the ROG Ally, in the top 100 most popular Steam games. They’ve demonstrated this with the graph below, detailing the settings they used to perform the benchmarks on each device. Likewise, they compared the before and after update performance with a helpful chart.
MSI Claw performance before and after BIOS update
Is it now worth buying?
With these updates, it might actually be time to start thinking about the MSI Claw again. However, we still think that the device is pretty pricey for what it is. We’ve seen the current version of the ROG Ally drop in price quite significantly, and while the MSI Claw has seen price drops in the past, they are too few and far between.
Plus, news that a refreshed model of ASUS’ handheld, the ASUS ROG Ally X, is soon on the way may prove to be another rival for the Claw to deal with. If we again get to see a price slash for MSI’s handheld, it could then be worth buying in our opinion.
