MSI Launches Claw A1M Handheld Gaming Device With Core Ultra 7 CPU, Starts At $699

Following various leaks / rumors / teases in recent days, MSI today formally unveiled the Claw A1M as their first handheld gaming device and the first handheld gaming console in recent time to use an Intel SoC.

The MSI Claw A1M is a portable handheld gaming device akin to Valve's Steam Deck and the ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go devices. But compared to being AMD Ryzen powered, the Claw A1M makes use of an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H "Meteor Lake" SoC that launched last month and found in various laptop designs to date.

The MSI Claw A1M ships with Microsoft Windows 11 Home by default with no option for Linux. It will be interesting to see just how well the MSI Claw A1M works under Linux and if there is any hardware support quirks or other issues.

This Intel Core Ultra 7 powered gaming handheld has a 7-inch 1080p display, 16GB of LPDDR5 system memory, up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage, 53 Whr battery capacity, "revolutionary" cooling, Thunderbolt 4 support, and otherwise looks quite similar to the other recent gaming handheld devices.

The MSI Claw A1M is said to have a $699 USD starting price when it begins hitting retail channels in the near future. More details on MSI.com. For those curious yesterday I ran some rough benchmarks of the Core Ultra 7 155H versus AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme performance.