I held the next generation handheld

Intel couldn’t catch a break. Layoffs. Extortions. The decline of CPUs torpedoes its reputation and makes desktop gamers flee to AMD. Apple and Qualcomm oust Intel from multiple flagship laptops. A gaming graphics card going missing. But its Panther Lake laptop chip, the first of its all-important 18A process, turned out excellent, and a laptop version could make Intel he leader in portable gaming chips.

On Monday, I spent two hours with an MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus handheld on top of Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme. I walked away thinking that the next generation handhelds have finally arrived. The real leap in performance and battery life we ​​were waiting for, but at a high price.

For example, Intel claims that its Arc G3 Extreme can deliver performance similar to half the power of AMD’s flagship chip, with the MSI Claw consuming just 17 watts to do what requires 35 watts on the Xbox Ally X with AMD Z2 Extreme:

Or it can run an average of 42 percent faster on the same 35 watts. — making games like Battlefield 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Returnand Forza Horizon 6 Playable at 1080p high and 60 fps. (That’s at 2x magnification, so we’re talking about a 960×540 rendering resolution, but that’s how I play demanding handheld games.)

Intel claims that the Arc G3 Extreme is so efficient that you can even game at 1080p and at low settings with just 12 watts of electricity, head and often shoulders above the AMD chip:

Additionally, Intel says the chip can consume as little as 4 watts of electricity in less demanding games, for nearly 12 hours of battery life on a charge.

We simply haven’t seen this kind of leap in portable gaming PCs so far.

Steam Deck set the bar in 2022 with an unbeatable combination of price and efficiency. With the $549 OLED Steam Deck from 2023, you could comfortably play modern AAA games at low settings for two hours on one charge and weaker games for up to eight. Windows competitors could run games more smoothly or at higher settings, but only by consuming far more electricity. This has been true for almost all handhelds since, regardless of whether they were powered by an AMD Z1 Extreme, Z2 Extreme, 7840U, 8840U, HX370 or, especially, the AMD “Strix Halo” AI Max Plus 395.

Limited by relatively power-hungry chips, companies found different ways to improve: the Asus ROG Ally Xbox Ally added large gamepad-style tips that make a heavy handheld more comfortable.

But the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, the one with the new Intel chip, seems to have it all: an 80-watt-hour battery, pins, power, efficiency, drift-resistant Hall-effect joysticks, and remarkably smooth gameplay on an 8-inch, 120Hz VRR display.

Intel didn’t let me play all the games I wanted, but I came prepared knowing Forza Horizon 6 would be on display. Before my demo, I played through the first hour of the virtual road trip to Japan on Xbox Ally X, Steam Deck, and SI Claw 8 AI Plus, the previous-generation Intel Lunar Lake handheld.

At a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 and medium settings, I saw around 40-45 frames per second on the Lunar Lake MSI Claw with its chip set to maximum. I got maybe 50fps from the Xbox Ally X at its lowest native screen resolution of 1080p. I’m afraid the game doesn’t even look playable on the Steam Deck at its native 800p resolution – the game frequently turned into a mess even at the lowest specs.

But the new MSI Claw with Arc G3 Extreme gave me 60-73fps in Forza Horizon 6 at 1200p resolution, without any of Intel’s “dummy” frame generations enabled. It’s just a tidbit, but it lines up perfectly with Intel’s performance claims, which removes some of my doubts.

And the new Claw did so by consuming just 43W of total system power, according to MSI’s overlay, meaning up to 1.8 hours of runtime from an 80 watt-hour battery. The Xbox Ally

Intel could offer even more fluidity and power savings if you don’t mind false frames. Battlefield 6 It looked really buttery at 110-140fps with 4X frame rate, not that I could hold my own in multiplayer without hooking up a mouse, keyboard, and a larger screen, not to mention the latency. But that was Intel’s new chip configured with a 25W TDP and a total power consumption of just 38W, suggesting you could get a full two hours of gaming out of the 80Wh battery. After my two-hour session (which included some still photography, of course), the new Claw still had 29 percent left in the tank.

The new Claw is also the most comfortable handheld device I’ve owned yet, with excellent weight balance and textured grips with incredible grip. It’s big, but it feels lighter than I’d expect and I’m no longer worried about it slipping out of sweaty hands. I’m a little less sure about the controls: the 8-way D-pad is very It clicks, the bumpers feel a little hollow, the levers and triggers still have a bit of a cheap feel like the previous Claw, but everything seems more than serviceable even in the engineering sample I tested.

If you are thinking “Does a jump in handhelds matter if you really can’t afford one?, Sean?” You’re reading my mind. Last week, I wrote that the golden age of portable gaming is already over due to price increases, and it looks like you’ll be paying a high price for this handheld: $1,699.99 at Best Buy. That’s even more than the $1,500 price point we and other journalists were told the company was seeking.

One way to look at it: It’s too much money, period. Playing shouldn’t be a luxury!

Another thought: Compared to the $1,000 Xbox Ally

But either way, it should be released on June 23rd and it looks like handhelds are finally emerging again. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next device has Intel Inside, when RAMgeddon finally ends.

Update, June 2: A Best Buy listing has revealed that the price will be $1,699.99, unless someone made a mistake.