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Forget the Nintendo Switch 2 – the MSI Claw is a powerful handheld PC with a big price cut for Black Friday

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Handheld gaming PCs have – somewhat surprisingly – been a focal point of early Black Friday sales across multiple online retailers, especially at Amazon. Now, the latest portable gaming device to receive a hefty discount is the MSI Claw – it’s now available on Amazon for just $471.18 (was $749) in the US and £498 (was £699) on Amazon in the UK.

The US deal is for the model that utilizes the Intel Core Ultra 155H processor with 16 cores and 22 threads, while the UK deal is the slightly less powerful model that uses Intel’s 135H processor with 14 cores and 18 threads. Both processors have 8 Xe GPU cores – which are more important for fast performance in-game – and overall, both models are perfectly capable of playing the latest games, though you might need to tweak your settings a bit for the best performance on the 135H model.

While there’s a lot of work to be done on Intel’s part with XeSS upscaling for games compared to Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR, you’ll still be able to utilize this in multiple games (though without frame generation). However, you’ll likely find for many games that FSR 3 is a better option, and it’s perfectly viable here as AMD made it open-source for all to use regardless of hardware.

Not in the US or UK? Scroll down to see the best MSI Claw deals in your region!

Today’s best MSI Claw 155H deal in the US

Today’s best MSI Claw 135H deal in the UK

As I mentioned earlier, this discount comes in the wake of multiple sales on handheld PCs this Black Friday – with hefty discounts on the Lenovo Legion Go and a ridiculously good Asus ROG Ally deal also cropping up this week.

Outside of competing PC handhelds, the MSI Claw easily defeats any gaming phone and the Nintendo Switch in terms of raw processing power and could do the same to the Nintendo Switch 2 (if the rumored specs hold any truth). At the current $471.18 / £498 price, it’s certainly ready to compete with any upcoming handheld gaming devices when it comes to bang for your buck.

When compared to the Asus ROG Ally X, the Claw maintains some advantages – for example, if you’re using a Wi-Fi 7 router, you’ll reap the benefits of the device’s Wi-Fi 7 compatibility, especially when downloading larger AAA games (spoiler alert, there’s plenty of those). However, it’s worth noting that in terms of pure gaming performance, the Claw doesn’t quite measure up to Asus’s handheld.

Despite Intel’s processors having more cores and threads, the Ally X’s Z1 Extreme has 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores, compared to the 155H’s 8 Xe GPU cores. When looking at raw performance in games, the Ally X stands in the lead – it also has 24GB of RAM over the Claw’s 16GB, contributing to better performance in games where system requirements and demands for RAM are more than the 16GB standard.

But with this sort of discount, it’s really difficult to quibble over performance differences; the ROG Ally X retails at $799 / £799 / AU$1,599, making it quite a bit more expensive than the MSI Claw’s sale price. The 155H Claw model’s $749 / £799 / AU$1,599 MSRP price was undoubtedly a point of contention for potential customers – this price drop now makes it an affordable option alongside the ROG Ally and Valve’s Steam Deck, especially when it still does a great job at providing steady frame rates at 1080p.

More of today’s Black Friday sales in the US

More of today’s Black Friday sales in the UK

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