MSI's upcoming gaming handheld is Intel powered, pictures and benchmarks leak early

Reports suggest MSI's new handheld gaming PC, the Claw, will challenge the predominantly AMD APU-powered market, potentially offering an Intel counterpart to the Asus ROG Ally. Leaked images and performance results of the Claw were disclosed on Twitter shortly before MSI's planned announcement at CES. The images suggest the Claw resembles the ROG Ally, although some features differ. Separate benchmarks on Geekbench verify the Claw's Meteor Lake internals, containing a 3.8GHz 16 core Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with 32GB of RAM. Although these metrics show impressive integrated graphics performance, the Claw's CPU performance could still leave gamers unhappy. Metaphorical projections of the Claw's gaming characteristics will likely remain unclear until MSI unveils it officially at CES. Also unknown are the critical aspects like screen resolution, refresh rate, energy usage, and battery size. However, being Meteor Lake powered means the Claw will be able to utilize Intel's XeSS machine learning upscaling technology, potentially granting it superior performance and visual quality compared to AMD-powered systems. Intel has previously shown positive results from upscaling on Intel Core Ultra integrated graphics. In terms of competition, companies such as Emdoor, Ayaneo, and GDP are also planning Meteor Lake handhelds but these are currently lacking confirmed release dates. They are also due to upgrade their handhelds to Ryzen 8840U, though it's uncertain how this will impact gaming performance. It's suggested that these upgraded devices may acquire similar AI capabilities to those of the Claw, thanks to AMD's XDNA1 AI processor.