MSI Claw Is The Company’s New Handheld Games Device To Compete With Steam Deck

MSI is the latest company to join in on the emerging market of handheld gaming PCs or a new wave of handheld gaming devices. After the Steam Deck and the ASUS ROG Ally, we now have the MSI Claw, which was just officially announced at CES 2024.

The MSI Claw is a new Windows-based gaming handheld powered by Intel’s new Meteor Lake Core Ultra processor announced last month and can be fitted with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H. MSI plans to ship three models ranging from US$699 to US$799, with the base tier shipping with a Core Ultra 5 and 512GB of storage.

It comes with a 53Wh battery, which MSI claims is the largest in its class and offers two hours of battery life under full load as well as a cooling system with air vents that are a claimed 50 percent larger than its competitors. It also weighs 675g, which is a bit heavier than the original Steam Deck and measures 294mm wide by 117mm tall and 21.2mm thick. It’s equipped with tactile buttons and Hall effect triggers, as well as Hall effect joysticks.

The Claw has a seven-inch 120Hz IPS display with a resolution of 1080p and a typical brightness of 500 nits, as well as 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of PCIe M.2 storage. In addition, there’s also a microSD slot for adding more storage capacity, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a power button equipped with a fingerprint sensor. The handheld also has macro buttons that you can record various functions to, and RGB illumination around each of its thumbsticks. For software, it will run Windows 11 with MSI’s own MSI Center M software.

At the time of writing, the MSI Claw is slated to launch sometime in the first half of 2024.

Check out the official images below: