At this year’s Computex trade show, MSI officially revealed its updated Claw PC gaming handheld. One of the major changes with this new model is that it sports an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor under the hood, which should be able to handle several graphically intense games on its eight-inch FHD display.
Other hardware specs for the Claw A8 BZ2EM model include an AMD Radeon 890M GPU, a 120Hz refresh rate for the screen, a 1TB M2 SSD, and it’s equipped with “up to 24GB” of LPDDR5-800 memory. This will be available in two different colors–white and lime green–and the company says that it has also aimed to make it ergonomically appealing. These efforts have resulted in contours that are meant to feel more natural in your hand, and the joysticks, bumpers, D-pad, and Hall-Effect triggers have also been redesigned.
Pricing or a release date have yet to be revealed, but for reference, the currently available MSI Claw 8+ with Intel hardware currently costs $1,000.
MSI’s first turn at producing a Steam Deck competitor wasn’t well-received when it first launched in early 2024. While it was praised for being comfortable to hold and its sound was top-notch in comparison to its competitors, the MSI Claw also had notoriously poor performance and a terrible battery life.
Like the Asus ROG Ally, it also runs on Windows 11, which isn’t exactly the best operating system to navigate on a small screen, even if it does allow the user more flexibility when it comes to playing games compared to the Steam Deck, which utilizes SteamOS.
