In the fiercely competitive arena of gaming handhelds, MSI learned the hard way that not every gamble pays off. The previous-gen Claw handheld was a misstep, garnering scathing reviews and struggling to keep up with rivals like the ROG Ally. With the recently announced Lunar Lake-equipped Claw 8 AI+ and Claw 7 AI+, however, things appear to have taken an interesting turn.
According to official slides shared by ETA Prime, the numbers look promising for MSI. The slides reveal that the Claw 8 is around 20% faster than the Ryzen Z1 Extreme-powered ROG Ally X at 17 watts with low graphics and XeSS/FSR enabled. This is to be expected, considering that the Arc 140V iGPU is indeed significantly faster than the aging Radeon 780M found in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. However, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme is widely expected to arrive at CES 2025, so MSI's victory might be short-lived after all, considering that the Claw 7 AI+ and the Claw 8 AI+ are not expected to arrive until the end of this month.
Moreover, the Claw 8 AI+ also boasts a few more notable improvements over the ROG Ally X, including a larger 8-inch 1080p screen, faster Wi-Fi 7, up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, and dual Thunderbolt 4 ports. The Core Ultra 7 258V variant is priced at $899, which is $100 more than the Ally X. Now, of course, all eyes are on Asus to see if it can rise to the occasion with an updated version of the ROG Ally X, and with CES 2025 just around the corner, we won't have to wait long to find out.
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