The Steam Deck faces a new competitor in the portable console market that could overshadow it. What can we expect?
The Steam Deck emerged at a favorable time for portable consoles, fueled by the enormous success of the Nintendo Switch. Half portable console, half PC: The Steam Deck has quickly established itself on the market and yet the competition is fierce, especially with the Lenovo Go or the ROG Ally from Asus. But a new competitor will soon join the competition and could certainly redistribute the cards. And for all we know, it could go in the same direction as Valve’s machine. Here’s everything we currently know about him.
The Steam Deck is getting a new competitor, the MSI Claw
The new edition of the annual technology trade fair CES will take place next week. This will be the time for various manufacturers to make big announcements, including MSI. The latter began teasing further Instagram a portable console he’s been working on for some time. In fact, it had already been leaked online, with detailed information about it, such as its name “CLAW” and its design. For now, it’s best to take all of this with a grain of salt ahead of official confirmation, but we can trust what we’re told.
Based on our findings, we can make a small comparison with the other machines available. It already has an Intel Meteor Lake processor, the Core Ultra 7 155H (not AMD-based). It also has 32GB of RAM, which is quite unexpected for a portable console. That’s twice as much as the base model Steam Deck, Lenovo Go and ROG Ally. A clearly powerful machine that would flirt with the top of the basket. To give you an idea of the differences to the competition, here is the list of specifications known through leaks so far. There is still a lot of information missing, which will certainly be announced in a few days.
- Core Ultra 7 155H
- 16 cores for 22 threads
- Architect Meteor Leake
- CPU with 4.8 GHz boost frequency
- 8 Xe Cores GPU at 2.25 GHz
- Core Ultra with a TDP of 28 watts (maximum turbo performance of 115 watts)
- 32 Go to RAM
The OLED version of Valve’s machine is available
For its part, Valve recently made available the OLED version of its Steam Deck. First of all, you should know that it is not more powerful. However, there are several improvements that make the offer attractive. Starting with the 7.4-inch OLED screen – compared to 7-inch on the LCD model – HDR compatible. The Nintendo Switch OLED can’t claim that, as it maintains a resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels. But the novelties don’t stop there.
Thanks to the NVMe SSD, the storage space increased from 64 GB to 512 GB. There’s also WiFi 6E and the battery now shows a 50Wh battery compared to 40Wh. This allows you to enjoy longer gaming sessions. Because of the price, prepare to spend your credit card because it will cost you $569. The other edition offers a 1TB SSD and glass with anti-reflective coating “high quality”, count on $679. It’s a great investment.
