The MSI Claw will probably be one of many first handheld gaming PCs with an Intel Core Extremely processor inside — and the second with a variable refresh charge (VRR) display. Beforehand, the Asus ROG Ally was the one handheld with that dynamic gameplay smoothing show function, and it’s one among its largest benefits, and — after quite a lot of backwards and forwards — MSI has now triple-confirmed that the Claw will include a 7-inch, 1080p, 48-120Hz VRR display too.
Earlier at the moment, I revealed that it wouldn’t have a VRR display, after explicitly fact-checking that with the corporate on Friday and being informed that it will require guide setup to hit a 48Hz or 60Hz refresh charge for those who’d relatively go decrease than the total 120Hz on provide.
Nonetheless, MSI continued to insist that the display was VRR, and I initially turned satisfied that reps had been stretching the reality — as a result of VRR is not the identical as setting refresh charge manually, and since VRR shouldn’t be a Microsoft function that is dependent upon recreation help, which the corporate informed me that it was and that it did.
VRR is the generic type of applied sciences like Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync, which let a display’s refresh charge dynamically match the body charge delivered by your system’s GPU. Which means you don’t expertise uneven gameplay or display tearing simply because your graphics don’t hit, say, 60fps, as a result of the display can mechanically show 59fps or 50fps or 48fps completely wonderful.
I defined this, and gave MSI over 12 hours to answer — and didn’t hear again.
However now MSI advertising specialist Anne Lee now tells me that product managers have explicitly confirmed it’s a 48-120Hz VRR display, and I confirmed over the cellphone that which means dynamically and mechanically adjusting its refresh charge, just like the Asus ROG Ally. MSI additionally offered a screenshot of the Variable Refresh Charge setting turned on in Home windows — which, it seems, is what MSI was referring to when it referred to as VRR a Microsoft function.
Lee agrees that a part of our dialog simply acquired misplaced in translation, and we’ve made a pact to name one another on the cellphone subsequent time. I apologize personally in steering you flawed.
You may typically nonetheless manually set the refresh charge of screens with out VRR. The Steam Deck allows you to set arbitrary guide refresh charges of most any quantity the show helps, and the Lenovo Legion Go allows you to choose between 60Hz and 144Hz, for instance. However to keep away from choppiness and tearing, your system nonetheless has to constantly ship the suitable variety of frames (which may require body limiters and a little bit of tweaking).
The Asus ROG Ally’s VRR display turns out to be useful notably when your recreation is operating between 48 and 60fps, that are inside its VRR vary. A recreation operating at 48fps on the Ally will look smoother than one operating at 59fps on the Lenovo Legion Go, in my expertise. Now, it seems like the identical will probably be true of the MSI Claw.
The MSI Claw doesn’t have a confirmed launch date but, however rumors recommend it may arrive as quickly as February or March.
Correction, 11:58PM ET: The MSI Claw may have a variable refresh charge display. In an earlier model of this story, I wrote it wouldn’t. We remorse the error.