MSI’s Steam Deck competitor has leaked, and it’s powered by an Intel Meteor Lake chip
By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.
MSI is reportedly readying a new handheld gaming PC to rival Valve’s Steam Deck and competitors like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go. After a brief teaser yesterday, pictures of MSI’s Claw handheld have appeared on X (formerly Twitter), spotted by VideoCardz. (Yes, Claw is the actual name, so get your GIFs ready in the comments section.)
The Claw looks similar to Asus’ ROG Ally, complete with offset thumbsticks with what appears to be RGB lighting. Leaked benchmarks suggest MSI’s handheld will be powered by one of Intel’s latest Meteor Lake processors, a surprise choice given both Lenovo and Asus opted for AMD’s Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor instead.
Intel doesn’t have the strongest track record in GPU drivers, so we’ll have to see how this new Meteor Lake chip handles games once the device is officially announced. The leaked specs also suggest that the MSI Claw will have 32GB of memory, twice what’s found on the Legion Go or ROG Ally.
The leaks don’t mention the screen size, resolution, or whether MSI is using an OLED panel, though. From the leaked photo, it looks like it will be a similar size to the ROG Ally’s seven-inch screen. Either way, with MSI teasing and the leakers doing their thing, we’ll likely hear a lot more about the Claw at CES next week.
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