During its CES 2024 showcase, MSI officially revealed the Claw, its first handheld gaming PC. Powered by Intel Core Ultra, the MSI Claw looks to take a slightly different approach to performance compared to its rivals, and it has a battery bigger than anything Valve, Lenovo, or Asus can provide.
The MSI Claw, on paper, stacks up well when compared to the Leigon Go and ROG Ally, but a basic HD screen sees it fall short of the Steam Deck OLED, which has proven incredibly popular since its surprise launch last year. We certainly see the MSI Claw as a potential contender for the best handheld gaming PC, but what makes it stand out from its competitors?
One area where the MSI Claw is innovating is with its Intel Meteor Lake chipset. All of its major competitors use an AMD APU, but MSI has opted to adopt Intel’s newest mobile chip technology to power the Claw. It will have an Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H chip and Arc Graphics with 8 Xe-cores. In performance terms, this is double the power of the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme that resides in the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go.
Backing up this hardware will be the Intel XeSS, AI-enhanced upscaling tech designed to help games perform and look better, without needing access to Nvidia hardware for its proprietary DLSS solution.
Looking past the headline hardware and software inclusions, we can see that the MSI Claw is packing a 53Whr battery, bigger than anything offered up by its main competitors. In real terms, MSI expects this to translate into two hours of use under a full workload.
Only time will tell where the MSI Claw sits within the best handheld gaming PC hierarchy, but early signs suggest it has both the power and the battery to be a real contender. Can it overcome a basic 7-inch HD display to dethrone the Steam Deck OLED?
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