Taiwanese tech powerhouse MSI (Micro-Star International) has a new handheld gaming device called the Claw that uses an Intel Core Ultra 5 or 7 chip and Intel Arc graphics, making it among the most powerful portable PC gaming devices on the market. The device breaks from tradition, as competing mobile game units like the Steam Deck, the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go all use AMD chipsets. The MSI system — demonstrated at CES 2024 in Las Vegas — is expected to be priced between $699 to $799 in a trio of configurations when it hits the market in February or March.

“On paper and in its design, MSI’s Claw shares a lot with the ROG Ally. It has a 7-inch full HD LCD screen with 500 nits of brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate,” writes Engadget, noting that it is “more comfortable to hold.”

As shown at CES 2024, the Claw had a 1,920 x 1,080-pixel display, 120Hz IPS display; 16GB of RAM and 512GB or 1TB of storage. In addition to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, the Claw also boasts a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port and a microSD card slot. It’s power button features a fingerprint reader.

Overall, Engadget assesses MSI’s “big departure amongst the sea of AMD-based alternatives” as something of a gamble, “because in addition to a new chip, developers will be relying on Intel’s integrated Arc graphics and a library of drivers that simply aren’t as deep or as well tested as AMD’s,” pondering “how much the NPU inside Intel’s latest chip will help with things like XeSS super sampling, which is sure to play a big part in the Claw’s capabilities.”

But Engadget concedes that “even on the pre-production models with unfinished software (including beta drivers),” the test drive was “surprisingly smooth.” An MSI spokesperson told Engadget that “in internal testing the Claw delivered 20 to 25 percent higher frame rates than an equivalent AMD-based handheld in 14 out of 15 popular titles.”

As with other Windows 11-based handhelds, “MSI has built its own software, MSI Center M for the Claw to serve as a game library and launcher,” which allows users to access “launchers like Steam and Epic Games, and jump into settings,” writes Tom’s Hardware.

MSI has also built-in an App Player, “expanding gaming options to include both Windows and Android mobile games,” MSI says in a press release that promises 2-hours of battery life “under full workload conditions.”