- Rumor suggests we could be getting an MSI Claw Ryzen Z2 announcement
- MSI Claw 8 AI + ships to customers this month
- It's unclear whether it could be with a Ryzen Z2 Extreme or Z2 processor
CES 2025 has seen plenty of announcements for desktop, laptop, and handheld PC hardware, and a new rumor suggests MSI could be joining the party, potentially announcing a new Claw handheld gaming PC, powered by AMD's Ryzen Z2 APU.
This comes from CodeCommando (a reliable source for AMD and MSI leaks) on X, who claims that new MSI Claw models offering a choice between Intel's Lunar Lake and the new AMD Ryzen Z2 processor will be announced. However, there's no information on whether this reveal will be done during CES 2025 (which is now drawing to a close) or later down the line.
The MSI Claw 8 AI+ was announced last December and is expected to be shipped to customers this month. Based on these new rumors, there's a small chance we could see an announcement or teaser for a Ryzen Z2 version later this year.
How would a Ryzen Z2 version of the MSI Claw fare against competitors?
While there haven’t been any suggestions that MSI’s rival Asus could launch a ROG Ally X successor, Lenovo has already announced the Legion Go S and Legion Go 2 (which is still a prototype) with the latter using the Ryzen Z2 Extreme.
Again, I must stress that this is still a rumor, but if MSI is indeed planning to announce a new MSI Claw so shortly after the launch of the Claw 8 AI+, I would imagine that it would use the Z2 Extreme rather than the Z2 chip, if only to keep up with the competition.
In that case, it would be able to go toe-to-toe performance-wise with the likes of the Legion Go 2, and other Z2 Extreme-based handhelds. That's not to say that the current Lunar Lake processors found in the MSI Claw 7 and 8 aren't powerful enough, but AMD's chip could run better with the advantage of the FSR upscaling method that has been developed longer than Intel's newer XeSS, which does a similar job.
Regardless, we're likely still a long way away from seeing any new major entry to MSI's handheld gaming PC lineup, at least for now. But, as more of MSI’s competitors bring out increasingly powerful handheld gaming PCs, it won’t want to wait too long before it also releases a new, more powerful, version of the Claw.
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