MSI confirms the Claw may have a 48-120Hz VRR display screen

The MSI Claw can be one of many first handheld gaming PCs with an Intel Core Extremely processor inside — and the second with a variable refresh price (VRR) display screen. Beforehand, the Asus ROG Ally was the one handheld with that dynamic gameplay smoothing show characteristic, and it’s one in every of its greatest benefits, and — after loads of forwards and backwards — MSI has now triple-confirmed that the Claw will include a 7-inch, 1080p, 48-120Hz VRR display screen too.

Earlier at present, I printed that it wouldn’t have a VRR display screen, after explicitly fact-checking that with the corporate on Friday and being instructed that it will require handbook setup to hit a 48Hz or 60Hz refresh price for those who’d somewhat go decrease than the total 120Hz on provide.

Nonetheless, MSI continued to insist that the display screen 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 price manually, and since VRR will not be a Microsoft characteristic that depends upon recreation help, which the corporate instructed 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 screen’s refresh price dynamically match the body price delivered by your system’s GPU. Meaning you don’t expertise uneven gameplay or display screen tearing simply because your graphics don’t hit, say, 60fps, as a result of the display screen can routinely show 59fps or 50fps or 48fps completely superb.

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 screen, and I confirmed over the telephone that meaning dynamically and routinely adjusting its refresh price, just like the Asus ROG Ally. MSI additionally offered a screenshot of the Variable Refresh Fee setting turned on in Home windows — which, it seems, is what MSI was referring to when it known as VRR a Microsoft characteristic.

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 telephone subsequent time. I apologize personally in steering you flawed.

You’ll be able to usually nonetheless manually set the refresh price of screens with out VRR. The Steam Deck enables you to set arbitrary handbook refresh charges of most any quantity the show helps, and the Lenovo Legion Go enables you to choose between 60Hz and 144Hz, for instance. However to keep away from choppiness and tearing, your system nonetheless has to persistently ship the best variety of frames (which might require body limiters and a little bit of tweaking).

The Asus ROG Ally’s VRR display screen is useful significantly 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 appears like the identical can 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 price display screen. In an earlier model of this story, I wrote it wouldn’t. We remorse the error.