I grabbed the next generation handheld device

Intel couldn’t catch a break. Layoffs. Extortions. CPU crashes. It torpedoed its reputation, causing desktop gamers to flee to AMD. Apple and Qualcomm are knocking Intel out of many of their flagship laptops. Gaming graphics card Going MIA. But the Panther Lake laptop chip, the first in the all-important 18A process, Turned out excellent – The portable version may be made by Intel the Pioneer in mobile gaming chips.

On Monday, I spent two hours with… MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus His hand is up New Intel Arc G3 Extreme. I walked away thinking that next-gen mobile devices had finally arrived. The real jump in performance and battery life we’ve been waiting for, but at a high price.

For example, Intel claims that the Arc G3 Extreme can deliver similar performance in… half The wattage of the flagship AMD chip, with the MSI Claw drawing just 17 watts to do what requires 35 watts on the Xbox Ally X with AMD Z2 Extreme:

Or it can run 42 percent faster at the same 35 watts of power — Making games like Battlefield 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Returningand Forza Horizon 6 It can be played at 1080p and 60fps. (This is with 2x upscaling, so we’re talking 960 x 540, but that’s how I play demanding mobile games myself.)

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

Intel says the chip can consume up to 4 watts of electricity in less demanding games — for roughly 12 hours of battery life on a charge.

We simply haven’t seen this kind of leap in gaming laptops yet.

Steam surface Set the standard in 2022 with an unbeatable combination of price and efficiency. By 2023, the Steam Deck OLED will cost $549You can comfortably play modern AAA games at low settings for two hours on a charge, and weaker games for up to eight hours. Windows competitors can run games more smoothly or at higher settings, but only through consumption far More electricity. This has been true for almost every laptop since then, regardless of whether it was powered by AMD Z1 Extreme, Z2 Extreme, 7840U, 8840U, HX370, or Or in particular AMD “Strix Halo” AI Max Plus 395.

Limited by the relatively power-hungry chips, companies have found various ways to improve: Asus ROG Ally The Ally’s battery actually doubled to 80 watt-hours, extending it to 3 hours of medium-weight play or about 9 hours of lighter play in my tests. Xbox Ally added Large gamepad style prongs Which makes the heavy mobile device more comfortable.

But the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, which has Intel’s new chip, seems to have it all: an 80Wh battery, spikes, power, efficiency, a drift-resistant Hall effect joystick, and remarkably smooth gameplay on the 8-inch, 120Hz VRR display.

Intel didn’t let me play all the games I wanted to, but I came prepared and I knew that Forza Horizon 6 It will be on display. Before the demo, I played through the first hour of the game Virtual road trip to Japan On Xbox Ally C-Claw 8 AI Plusprevious generation Intel Lunar Lake.

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

But the new MSI Claw with Arc G3 Extreme gave me 60-73 fps in Forza Horizon 6 At 1200p, without any of Intel’s “fake frames” running around. It’s just one data point, but it aligns precisely with Intel’s performance claims, eliminating some of my doubts.

And the new Claw did this while consuming just 43 watts of total system power, according to MSI’s compilation — meaning up to 1.8 hours of runtime on an 80 watt-hour battery. Xbox Ally

Intel may offer more smoothness and power savings if you don’t mind frameshifts. Battlefield 6 It looked positively buttery at 110-140fps with 4X frame gen, not that I could sustain multiplayer games without plugging in a mouse and keyboard and a larger display, not to mention the latency. But this was the new Intel chip set to a 25W TDP and a total power consumption of just 38W, suggesting I could get a full two hours of gameplay out of the 80Wh battery. After my two-hour session (which included some still photographs and mental images), the new claw still had 29 percent left in the tank.

The new Claw is also the most comfortable laptop I’ve carried yet, with excellent weight balance and incredibly textured handles. It’s large, but it feels lighter than I expected, and I no longer worry that it might slip out of sweaty hands. I’m less confident about the controls – the 8-way D-pad very Clicky, the bumpers feel a bit hollow, and the sticks and triggers still have a slightly cheap feel like the previous Claw – but it all feels more than serviceable even in the engineering sample I tried.

If you’re thinking”Is the jump into mobile devices important if you can’t afford one already, Sean“You read my mind. Just last week, I wrote how The golden age of mobile gaming is truly over Due to the high prices, it seems that you will pay dearly for this portable device: $1,699.99 at Best Buy. That’s more than the $1,500 price we and other journalists were told the company was targeting.

It should be released on June 23.

One way to look at it: It’s a lot of money, period. Gaming doesn’t have to be a luxury!

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

But either way, it seems like mobile is finally moving forward again. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next device has Intel Inside – when or if Ramageddon It finally ends.

June 2 update: The Best Buy listing revealed that the price will be $1,699.99, unless someone makes a mistake there.