I held the next-gen handheld

Intel couldn’t catch a break. Layoffs. Shakedowns. Crashing CPUs torpedoing its reputation, sending desktop gamers fleeing to AMD. Apple and Qualcomm pushing Intel out of multiple flagship laptops. A gaming graphics card going MIA. But its Panther Lake laptop chip, the first on its all-important 18A process, turned out excellent — and a handheld version might make Intel the leader in portable gaming chips.On Monday, I spent two hours with an MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus handheld atop Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme. I walked away thinking that next-gen handhelds have finally arrived. The true leap in performance and battery life we’ve been waiting for.1/13Gallery: Check out my photos of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus and comparisons to the previous version. Photos by Sean Hollister / The VergeFor example, Intel claims that its Arc G3 Extreme can deliver similar performance at half the wattage of AMD’s flagship chip, with the MSI Claw consuming just 17 watts to do what takes 35 watts on the Xbox Ally X with AMD Z2 Extreme:Image: IntelOr, 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, Returnal, and Forza Horizon 6 playable at 1080p high and 60fps. (That’s with 2x upscaling, mind, so we’re talking 960x540 render resolution, but that’s how I play demanding handheld games myself.)Image: IntelIntel claims the Arc G3 Extreme is so efficient, you can even game at 1080p and low settings with just 12 watts of electricity, head and often shoulders over the AMD chip there:Image: IntelAnd, Intel says the chip can sip as little as 4 watts of electricity in the least demanding games — for nearly 12 hours of battery life on a charge.Image: IntelWe simply haven’t seen this kind of a leap in handheld gaming PCs so far.The Steam Deck set the bar in 2022 with an unbeatable combination of price and efficiency. By 2023’s $549 Steam Deck OLED, you could comfortably play modern AAA games at low settings for two hours on a charge, and weaker games for up to eight. Windows competitors could run games more smoothly or at higher settings, but only by consuming far more electricity. That’s been true of almost every handheld since, regardless of whether it was powered by an 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 found different ways to improve: The Asus ROG Ally X literally doubled the Ally’s battery to 80 watt-hours, stretching to 3 hours of medium-weight gameplay or around 9 hours of the lightest play in my tests. The Xbox Ally added large, gamepad style prongs that make a heavy handheld more comfortable.But the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, the one with Intel’s new chip, seems to have it all: an 80-watt hour battery, prongs, power, efficiency, drift-resistant Hall effect joysticks, and remarkably smooth gameplay on an 8-inch 120Hz VRR screen.Check out those prongs:Photo by Sean Hollister / The VergePhoto by Sean Hollister / The VergeIntel didn’t let me play all the games I’d like to, but I came prepared knowing Forza Horizon 6 would be on display. Before my demo, I played through the first hour of the virtual road trip to Japan on the Xbox Ally X, the Steam Deck, and the SI Claw 8 AI Plus, the previous-gen Intel Lunar Lake handheld.At a native 1920 x 1200 resolution and medium settings, I saw around 40-45 frames per second on the Lunar Lake MSI Claw with its chip set to maximum. I got maybe 50fps from the Xbox Ally X at its lower native screen resolution of 1080p. The game doesn’t even feel playable on Steam Deck at its native 800p resolution, I’m afraid — the game frequently turned into a jerky mess even at lowest spec.But the new MSI Claw with Arc G3 Extreme gave me 60-73 fps in Forza Horizon 6 at 1200p resolution, without any of Intel’s “fake frames” frame generation turned on. It’s just one data point, but it lines up neatly with Intel’s performance claims, removing some of my doubt.And, the new Claw did so while consuming just 43W of total system power, according to MSI’s overlay — meaning up to 1.8 hours of runtime on an 80 watt-hour battery. The Xbox Ally X consumes closer to 50 watts of total system power in its 35W turbo mode, for more like 1.6 hours of the highest performance you can get.Intel might offer even more smoothness and power savings if you don’t mind fake frames. Battlefield 6 looked positively buttery at 110–140fps with 4X frame gen, not that I could hold my own in multiplayer without plugging in a mouse, keyboard, and larger screen, to say nothing of latency. But that was Intel’s new chip set to 25W TDP and total power draw of just 38W, suggesting I could get two full hours of gameplay on the 80Wh battery. After my two hour session (which included some still photography, mind), the new Claw still had 29 percent left in the tank.The new Claw is also the most comfortable handheld I’ve held yet, with excellent weight balance and incredibly grippy textured grips. It’s large, but it feels lighter than I would expect, and I’m no longer worried it might slip out of sweaty hands. I’m a little less sure about the controls — the 8-way D-pad is very clicky, the bumpers feel a bit hollow, the sticks and triggers still have a slightly cheap feel like the previous Claw — but everything feels more than serviceable even in the engineering sample I tried.If you’re thinking “does a leap in handhelds matter if you can’t actually afford one, Sean?” you’re reading my mind. Just last week, I wrote how the golden age of handheld gaming is already over due to price hikes, and we’re not expecting this MSI Claw, or the Acer Predator Atlas 8 or OneXPlayer 3 with the same chip, to be cheap.In fact, multiple sources have confirmed (and we can corroborate) that MSI is targeting a $1,500 price for this handheld when it launches June 23rd.One way to look at that: It’s too much money, period. Gaming shouldn’t be such a luxury!Another thought: Compared to the $1,000 Xbox Ally X, this is a 50 percent price increase for 42 percent more performance on average, which doesn’t sound great?But either way, it looks like handhelds are finally springing forward again. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next device has Intel Inside — when or if RAMageddon finally ends.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Sean Hollister