In the tough world of gaming handhelds, MSI discovered that some risks don't pay off. Their last handheld, the Claw, received harsh criticism and struggled to compete against devices like the ROG Ally. However, with the new Lunar Lake-powered Claw 8 AI+ and Claw 7 AI+, things seem to be looking up for the company.
Promising Performance
As per the official slides from ETA Prime, the outlook for MSI is bright. The Claw 8 reportedly outperforms the ROG Ally X, which runs on the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, by about 20% at 17 watts with lower graphics settings and XeSS/FSR activated. This result is no surprise since the Arc 140V integrated GPU is indeed much quicker than the old Radeon 780M in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Nevertheless, with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme expected to debut at CES 2025, MSI's edge might be temporary, especially since the Claw 7 AI+ and Claw 8 AI+ won't hit the market until the end of this month.
Upgraded Features
The Claw 8 AI+ comes with several impressive upgrades compared to the ROG Ally X, such as a bigger 8-inch 1080p display, faster Wi-Fi 7, and up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, plus dual Thunderbolt 4 ports. The price for the Core Ultra 7 258V model stands at $899, which is $100 higher than the Ally X. Now, everyone's waiting to see if Asus will step up with a refreshed version of the ROG Ally X, and with CES 2025 just around the corner, the answer will be revealed soon.
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