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SteamOS, once the purview of the Steam Deck alone, eventually opened itself to other handhelds. Officially that extends only to the the Legion Go S, but beta versions of the operating system have since supported the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and "Other AMD powered handhelds."
The key term there being 'AMD', because until very recently, SteamOS had only supported handhelds running an AMD processor. Now, though, a new SteamOS beta seems to have added support for Intel and one YouTuber has got it up and running on an MSI Claw (via VideoCardz).
The 3.8.7 beta lists "Improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms" and, more conspicuously, controller support for MSI Claw devices and "SD card readability improvements" for the same. Excluding a recent deviation, the MSI Claw is of course an Intel-based handheld.
This, on its own, doesn't imply that Intel-based handhelds will actually run SteamOS well and have games playable on the platform. But thankfully ETA Prime on YouTube has actually tested it out using a Claw 8 AI+ with a Lunar Lake CPU, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V.
They struggle to bring up the menu with the left-side button, meaning they have to go into desktop/mouse mode to do so, and they also note an inability to adjust TDP, meaning a third-party plugin is required to do so.
Apart from this, everything seems to work just fine, although games will need some optimisation, as ETA PRIME says Cyberpunk, for instance, does run better on Windows on the handheld.
We should remember this is only a beta, but it's a promising look at what's to come. I doubt Valve would be working on it if it didn't plan on getting the release out there officially for Intel handhelds.
It's certainly a good time for Valve to be working on adding Intel support to SteamOS, not least because of MSI's upcoming Panther Lake-powered Claw 8 EX AI+. That handheld certainly impressed our Dave when he tried it, and in the beta notes Valve does mention new "initial firmware for upcoming Intel handhelds", so it's exciting news on that front, too.
Well, assuming anyone will be able to afford the new Claw in the first place, that is—pricing isn't looking pretty.
1. Best overall:
Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS
2. Best budget:
Steam Deck
3. Best Windows:
Asus ROG Xbox Ally X
4. Best big screen:
Lenovo Legion Go
5. Best compact:
Ayaneo Flip DS
