Yesterday, MSI showed off the teaser for its first entry into the Steam Deck competitor space. Now today we’re getting a first look at what to expect from the new MSI handheld, which has been deemed the Claw.
The new MSI Claw is just the latest reveal in the world of portable gaming PCs. These handhelds were first shoved into the mainstream spotlight by Valve and its now-beloved Steam Deck, and since then tons of other companies have entered the space. MSI is just the latest of these, with its Claw handheld very much following the formula laid out by the other models that came first.
Even though we only have one image to share thanks to wxnod over on Twitter (X) who spotted the graphic first, this is very much in-line with other models we’ve seen. MSI doesn’t seem to be doing anything groundbreaking from the design perspective, releasing a build which looks suspiciously like the ASUS ROG Ally that hit store shelves last year. It shares the same offset joystick layout with what looks to be a hearty dose of RGB.
But we know that the build isn’t everything, and like with the ROG Ally, the performance is what really makes or breaks one of these gaming handhelds. ASUS stumbled a bit out of the gate with some performance issues on its entry into the market, thankfully resolving it not too far into its lifespan.
The MSI Claw on the other hand still has yet to have any official benchmarks release – so we don’t exactly know what to expect in terms of performance. The company is breaking the mold by seemingly going with Intel’s latest Meteor Lake processors, a much different path than ASUS and other players in the space who have opted to use AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip instead. But one thing we do know is that it will have 32GB of memory, which is double the RAM as you’ll find on those AMD-powered devices.
At this point, there’s also nothing to report on exact pricing yet. We’ll be getting the full reveal next week when CES 2024 actually kicks off. But until then, we at least know what to expect from the design of the MSI Claw, its silly name and all.
Image source: wxnod on Twitter (X)
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