MSI's new Claw gaming handheld goes on sale in the US on March 8

MSI's new Claw gaming handheld will hit the United States on March 8, launching with a starting price of $649 and powered by Intel's new Meteor Lake CPUs.

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The new MSI Claw gaming handheld has been available for pre-order in Germany, Spain, and the UK recently, but now the US is next, and pricing is out. Inside, the MSI Claw has three variants: with either the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H or Core Ultra 5 135H "Meteor Lake" processors, with varying SSD storage.

MSI starts things off with the Claw at $699, where you get the Intel Core Ultra 5 135H with 512GB, or for $749, you've got the upgraded Core Ultra 7 155H with the same 512GB, while 1TB of SSD storage is inside the Claw for $799. MSI is launching the $749 variant with the Core Ultra 7 155H + 512GB SSD storage on March 8, the other two variants will launch one week later.

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This is the first entry of an Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" CPU inside of a gaming handheld, with the Core Ultra 7 155H featuring 16 CPU cores and Intel Arc graphics with 8 x Xe-Cores. The lower-end variant with the Core Ultra 5 135H processor has 14 CPU cores and 7 x Xe-Cores on the GPU side.

• MSI Claw: Core Ultra 7 155H + 1TB SSD: $799
• MSI Claw: Core Ultra 7 155H + 512GB SSD: $749
• MSI Claw: Core Ultra 5 135H + 512GB SSD: $799

MSI includes a Claw accessories package with the gaming handheld, featuring a docking station, travel case, screen protector, and MSI Claw keychain. These accessories will also be sold separately, if you wanted to pick some of them up.

Right now, the gaming handheld winner would be the ASUS ROG Ally with the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor inside, as it's the fastest of the bunch so far. Even in leaked benchmarks, the ROG Ally Z1 Extreme handheld beats the fastest MSI Claw.