MSI could develop a Ryzen Z2-powered Claw to handle gaming handhelds
- Rumor has it that we might get an MSI Claw Ryzen Z2 announcement
- MSI Claw 8 AI+ will ship to customers this month
- It’s unclear whether this 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 that MSI could join the party, possibly announcing a new Claw handheld gaming PC powered by AMD’s Ryzen Z2 APU.
This comes from CodeCommand (a reliable source for AMD and MSI leaks) on X, which claims that a new MSI Claw combined with Intel’s Lunar Lake and the new AMD Ryzen Z2 processor will be announced. However, there is no information on whether this reveal would take place during CES 2025 (which is now coming to an end) or later.
The MSI Claw 8 AI+ was announced last December and is expected to ship to customers this month. Based on these new rumors, there’s a slim chance we’ll 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 have been no suggestions that MSI’s rival Asus could launch a ROG Ally
Again, I must emphasize that this is still a rumor, but if MSI is indeed planning to announce a new MSI Claw so soon after the launch of the Claw 8 AI+, I would imagine it would use the Z2 Extreme instead of the Z2 chip, if only to keep up with the competition.
In that case, it could rival the likes of the Legion Go 2 and other Z2 Extreme-based handhelds in terms of top-to-bottom performance. That’s not to say the current Lunar Lake processors in the MSI Claw 7 and 8 aren’t powerful enough, but AMD’s chip could run better with the benefit of the FSR upscaling method that has been developed longer than Intel’s newer XeSS, which it does a similar job.
Either way, we’re probably still a long way from another major addition to MSI’s handheld gaming PC range, at least for now. But as more of MSI’s competitors release increasingly powerful portable gaming PCs, it won’t want to wait much longer before it also releases a new, more powerful version of the Claw.