I caught the next generation

Intel couldn’t catch a break. Dismissal. Shakedowns. Crashing CPUs make their mark, sending desktop gamers fleeing to AMD. Apple and Qualcomm are pushing Intel in many high-end laptops. A gaming graphics card that goes MIA. But its Panther Lake laptop, the first in its all-important 18A process, came out on top — and the handheld version could do Intel. i a leader in mobile gaming chips.

On Monday, I spent two hours with the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus handheld on top of Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme. I left thinking that the next-gen handheld had finally arrived. The real leap in performance and battery life we’ve been waiting for, but at a higher price.

For example, Intel says its Arc G3 Extreme can deliver similar performance part flow for AMD’s flagship chip, with the MSI Claw consuming just 17 watts to do what takes 35 watts from the Xbox Ally X with AMD Z2 Extreme:

Or, it can run an average of 42 percent faster at the same 35 watts – making games like Battlefield 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Returningagain Forza Horizon 6 playable at 1080p up and 60fps. (That’s with 2x upscaling, mind, so we’re talking 960×540 resolution, but that’s how I play demanding handheld games myself.)

Intel claims that the Arc G3 Extreme performs very well, you can even play at 1080p and low settings with 12 watts of power, head and shoulders above the AMD chip there:

Also, Intel says the chip can draw up to 4 watts of power in the most demanding games – about 12 hours of battery life per charge.

We haven’t seen this kind of leap in portable gaming PCs until now.

The Steam Deck set the bar in 2022 with an unbeatable combination of price and performance. With the 2023’s $549 Steam Deck OLED, you can comfortably play modern AAA games at low settings for two hours on a charge, as well as weaker games for up to eight. Windows competitors can run games smoothly or at high settings, but only with consumption away more electricity. That’s been true of almost every laptop since, whether it’s powered by the 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 have found different ways to improve: Asus ROG Ally X doubled Ally’s battery to 80 watt hours, reaching 3 hours of medium weight gaming or about 9 hours of very light gaming in my tests. Xbox Ally has added large, gamepad-style prongs that make the heavy grip 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, prongs, power, efficiency, Hallo gaming sticks that don’t drag, and amazingly smooth gameplay on the 8-inch 120Hz VRR screen.

Intel didn’t let me play all the games I’d like to play, but I’m ready to know Forza Horizon 6 will be displayed. Before my demo, I played the first hour of Road Trip to Japan on the Xbox Ally X, the Steam Deck, and the SI Claw 8 AI Plus, an Intel Lunar Lake handheld.

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

But the new MSI Claw with Arc G3 Extreme gave it to me 60-73 fps in the middle Forza Horizon 6 at 1200p resolution, without Intel’s “fake frame” architecture enabled. Just one data point, but it fits well with Intel’s performance claims, removing some of my doubts.

And, the new Claw did that while consuming only 43W of total system power, according to MSI’s overlay – which means up to 1.8 hours of runtime on an 80-hour battery. The Xbox Ally X consumes about 50 watts of total system power in its 35W turbo mode, which is more like 1.6 hours of peak performance you can get.

Intel may offer more smoothness and power savings if you don’t mind fake frames. Battlefield 6 I looked buttery at 110–140fps with 4X frame gen, not that I could handle multiplayer without connecting a mouse, keyboard, and big screen, to say nothing of lag. But that was Intel’s new chip that was set to 25W TDP and 38W total power, suggesting I could get a full two hours of gameplay from the 80Wh battery. After my two-hour session (which included photography, mind), the new Claw still had 29 percent left in the tank.

The new Claw is also the most comfortable hand I’ve ever held, with excellent weight balance and an incredibly firm grip. It’s big, but it feels lighter than I would have expected, and I don’t mind it coming out of sweaty hands. I’m a little unsure about the controls – it’s an 8-way D-pad a lot in compression, the bumpers feel hollow, the sticks and triggers still feel cheap like the previous Claw – but everything feels more than usable even on the engineering sample I tried.

If you think “does jumping into mobile stats matter if you can afford it, Sean?” you read my mind. Just last week, I wrote about how the era of portable gaming is over because of price hikes, and it looks like you’ll be paying a lot for this handheld: $1,699.99 at Best Buy. That’s more than the $1,500 price we and other reporters were told the company was targeting.

Another way to look at it: It’s a lot of money, time. Gaming shouldn’t be such a luxury!

Another thought: Compared to the $1,000 Xbox Ally X, that’s a 70 percent price increase for 42 percent more performance on average, which doesn’t sound good.

But either way, it should launch on June 23, and it looks like mobile is finally moving forward again. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next device has Intel Inside – when or if RAMageddon finally ends.

Update, June 2nd: The Best Buy listing revealed that the price would be $1,699.99, unless someone took a bath.