Here's a surprise: while we were expecting ASUS, it's MSI that's going to strike first in Europe.
Officially, the MSI Claw A8 handheld console is already available in China, and it's quite a surprise. Firstly, because this release marks MSI's turnaround. When it launched its first handheld console, the brand decided to take a different path from all its competitors: it opted for an Intel Meteor Lake chip rather than an AMD component. Performance wasn't bad, but it wasn't up to par with other consoles, so MSI decided to change suppliers. But the other surprise was that, in changing supplier, MSI also managed to convince AMD to trust it "before anyone else".
VideoCardz
While ASUS was one of the first partners for the release of the Z1 Extreme chip, MSI will be the pioneer for the launch of the replacement chip, the Z2 Extreme. MSI's Claw A8 is the first machine equipped in this way to go on sale, even if it has to be said - and this is the third surprise - that availability is very limited for the moment. MSI opted for a much earlier launch in China, where it has been officially available since the beginning of July, but this hasn't exactly gone down well with Chinese consumers, since there aren't many models on the shelves of Beijing or Shanghai stores. The situation is set to improve rapidly, however, as other markets will soon be affected.
We don't yet have an exact date for France, but VideoCardz has spotted MSI Germany spilling the beans for our neighbors on the other side of the Rhine. Over there, they're talking about a "week 32" launch, a term rarely used for the general public, and which puts us between August 4 and 10. What's more, MSI Germany has also revealed the console's price, which, as we suspected, will be rather high: we're talking about 999 euros for the top-of-the-range model with an AMD Z2 Extreme processor, 24 GB of LPDDR5X-8000 memory, a 1 TB M.2 2280 SSD and an 80 Wh battery.
