A gaming handheld for under £380, with delivery before Christmas? This is a deal you’re not going to want to miss, as the price of this MSI Claw A1M handheld gaming PC has been slashed, giving you a powerful and portable gaming machine for a price that rivals the original Steam Deck – and these specs are better.
You’re paying just £379.99 for this MSI Claw handheld, which is less than half the price of its original RRP of £799.99, while only slightly more expensive than the entry-level 256GB Steam Deck LCD. The MSI Claw A1M is available in a few different variations, but this is the upper-tier A1M-016 model, featuring an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 7-inch LCD display.
This MSI handheld, on paper, has a pretty decent spec sheet. That Intel processor features 16 cores, six of which are Performance cores, which are great for gaming. Overall performance on this particular CPU wasn’t as competitive when it launched, but MSI has issued several BIOS and Intel driver updates since to help close the cap and make it a more competitive Steam Deck rival.
One area in which this Meteor Lake chip scored well, at least in our benchmark testing in an Asus laptop, was for its GPU performance. This isn’t a completely like-for-like comparison as these machines feature totally different specs, but it does show that the Intel Arc chip, which has eight Xe cores, managed playable frame rates at 720p, and in some cases at 1080p, using medium graphics presets. That’s supported by the use of XeSS frame generation, Intel’s DLSS competitor, which is able to use AI to boost frame rates in-game, at least in games that support it.
The MSI Claw A1M-016 comes with 1TB of SSD storage, which is a formidable amount at this price point, along with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The 7-inch screen uses an IPS panel with a 120Hz variable refresh rate and a 500nits refresh rate, and can manage resolutions up to 1,920 x 1,080. As we’ve mentioned, however, 1080p might be a struggle for this GPU in some instances, and you may find yourself switching down to 720p for improved performance.
Wi-Fi 7 support, along with Bluetooth 5.4, ensures a decent set of connectivity for this handheld to networks and wireless peripherals. It uses Windows 11, and while there’s no support for installing SteamOS (at least at the moment), the MSI Claw does support Microsoft’s new full-screen Xbox mode for these handhelds to make them easier to use. You can expect between one and two hours of battery life as you game with this device, although you can keep playing while you're hooked up to a charger using USB-C.
Time has proved kinder to this MSI Claw handheld than many may have anticipated, and MSI and Intel have both worked hard to improve gaming performance on this device. That, plus a price drop to £379.99, makes it an absolute steal compared to the competition. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly handheld for delivery before Christmas, you won’t find a better-priced model than this MSI Claw A1M right now.
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