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	<title type="text">Sean Hollister | The Verge</title>
	<subtitle type="text">The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts.</subtitle>

	<updated>2026-06-13T01:35:18+00:00</updated>

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		<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Valve just imported 13 tons of VR headsets in one day]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/news/949517/valve-vr-headset-import-records-steam-frame-steam-machine-game-console" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/949517/valve-just-imported-50-tons-of-game-consoles-in-two-days</id>
			<updated>2026-06-12T21:35:18-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-12T21:32:18-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="PC Gaming" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[On June 10th, the German container ship Posen docked in Los Angeles after a two-week voyage from Shanghai. As Valve watcher Brad Lynch notes, it was almost certainly carrying the first mass production shipments of the Steam Frame, Valve’s new gaming headset. Import records show that Valve’s distribution partner Ceva offloaded nearly 32 metric tons [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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<img alt="The Verge’s Jay Peters wearing Valve’s Steam Frame VR headset, from the side." data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Everything Time Studio / The Verge" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/258049_Valve_2025_EverythingTimeStudio_0057.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
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		</figcaption>
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<p class="has-text-align-none">On June 10th, the German container ship Posen docked in Los Angeles after a two-week voyage from Shanghai. As <a href="https://x.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/2065231419043955098?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">Valve watcher Brad Lynch notes</a>, it was almost certainly carrying the first mass production shipments of <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/816118/valve-steam-frame-vr-headset-streaming-arm-steamos-hands-on">the Steam Frame</a>, Valve’s new gaming headset. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Import records show that Valve’s distribution partner Ceva offloaded nearly 32 metric tons of “Virtual Reality Devices” on Valve’s behalf — or roughly 13 tons of actual product, after you subtract the roughly 3,700 kilogram weight of five 40-foot shipping containers. </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/image-2.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;A pause in Steam Machine and Steam Deck shipments, a flurry of VR instead.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: ImportYeti" data-portal-copyright="Image: ImportYeti" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">That’s the same math we used to estimate <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/923461/valve-steam-machine-frame-deck-import-records-may-2026">that Valve imported 50 tons of game consoles in two days</a> last month — and since Valve is differentiating between “Game Consoles” and “Virtual Reality Devices” in its import records, we can be far more certain that the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/818111/valve-steam-machine-hands-on-preview-specs-announcement">Steam Machine console</a> is the device it was stockpiling before.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Speaking of the Steam Machine, Valve’s stockpile may now have grown to 141 metric tons, as that’s roughly how much “Game Consoles” product has arrived in 12,600kg containers since April 23rd.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">And it looks like Valve probably received three shipments of Steam Deck handhelds in May, two on May 18th and one on May 30th, judging by how those containers had the higher gross weight of 14,500kg. That’s generally how heavy Valve’s “Game Console” containers were before the Steam Machine was announced.</p>

<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/image-1.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;We checked: They’re 40-foot containers.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Hede Hongkong Shipping Co." data-portal-copyright="Image: Hede Hongkong Shipping Co." />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/image_2ad1c7.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;And here’s the journey they took.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Searates" data-portal-copyright="Image: Searates" /></figure>

<p class="has-text-align-none">13 tons isn’t actually a lot of VR headsets, of course, but perhaps more of them fit into a container than the Steam Machine console. They each weigh 654g (roughly 1.44lb) with a pair of wand controllers; back-of-the-napkin math suggests we’re probably talking about fewer than 20,000 units right now.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">There might not be that many Steam Machines in the US yet, either: 141 metric tons could easily be fewer than 50,000 units at their higher 2.6kg weight per console, not counting any controllers or cables. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Valve confirmed days ago that both the Steam Machine and Steam Frame <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/943657/valve-steam-machine-frame-summer-launch-verified">will launch this summer</a>, and has signaled that it had to rethink prices because <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/880812/ramageddon-ram-shortage-memory-crisis-price-2026-phones-laptops">of RAMageddon</a>. Even if they’re pricey, though, they may sell out quickly. </p>
						]]>
									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Nearly a million passports and photo IDs were left unprotected on the public internet]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/947157/passports-data-breach-cannabis-club-systems-nefos-puffpal" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=947157</id>
			<updated>2026-06-11T06:07:40-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-10T17:55:00-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Report" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Security" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Typing a few letters and numbers into my web browser, I find myself gaping at the identity documents of complete strangers. The passport of a young woman from Germany. The passport of a man from Spain with glasses resting on his head. The front and back of another man’s driver’s license, a stereotypically goofy expression [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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<figure>

<img alt="A photo of a person holding a US passport and an envelope." data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25514575/passport_2040.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
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<p class="has-text-align-none">Typing a few<strong> </strong>letters and numbers into my web browser, I  find myself gaping at the identity documents of complete strangers. The passport of a young woman from Germany. The passport of a man from Spain with glasses resting on his head. The front and back of another man’s driver’s license, a stereotypically goofy expression on his face.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">They were all sitting unprotected at public URLs, with no password or access control of any sort. If I sent you a link, you could have looked at someone’s passport.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“We have to do something about it as fast as possible, because people will find this and resell it. It will do damage,” Sammy Azdoufal told me in May.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Azdoufal is the security researcher who used Claude Code to help discover that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/879088/dji-romo-hack-vulnerability-remote-control-camera-access-mqtt">every DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaner</a> and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/926487/meari-technology-hack-baby-monitor-security-camera">a million baby monitors and security cameras</a> were embarrassingly easy to hack. This time, he says he discovered over 985,000 photo IDs sitting on the public internet for any half-decent hacker to steal.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">If you’ve visited a cannabis club in Spain, Azdoufal says, chances are your photo ID was among them — and possibly your phone number, address, your favorite strains of cannabis, and how much you consumed each month while there. Azdoufal says celebrities are in the database, too, and visitors from all over the world, including 30,000 from the United States. “They have famous people,” says Azdoufal. “People who don’t want everyone to know they smoke weed.”</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Here’s a rough summary of the user base that Azdoufal’s automated tool was able to see and the names of some of the clubs:</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/ccs-puffpal-dataset.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="The image shows that Spain, Italy, France, South Africa, and Britain are the top five nationalities represented, and names various clubs, primarily in Barcelona." title="The image shows that Spain, Italy, France, South Africa, and Britain are the top five nationalities represented, and names various clubs, primarily in Barcelona." data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Sammy Azdoufal" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">It’s not the clubs that didn’t  protect these identity documents. An Irish company called Cannabis Club Systems (CCS), formally Nefos Solutions, develops and provides the software these clubs use for sales, accounting, and admissions, including a verification system where receptionists upload your IDs and selfies to Nefos’ cloud.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Traditionally, you’d need to provide a photo ID every time you wanted to get into a club. But with the verification system, the receptionist can pull up your stored identity documents and check if your face matches. There’s also an optional app called PuffPal that lets clubs scan a QR code for faster entry. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But when Azdoufal decompiled that PuffPal app, <a href="https://github.com/xn0tsa/because-i-got-high">he explains in his report</a>, he discovered that Nefos had no meaningful level of security. He discovered a secret key for the Stripe payments platform sitting inside the app in plain text. He discovered he could pull up any member’s profile just by changing one number. If those profiles included their phone number, home address, passport, and weed preferences, he now had access to them too.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">And then, he discovered that those passports, drivers licenses, and photo IDs were stored at public URLs as simple as this: https://ccsnubev2.com/v8/images/_{club}/ID/{user_id}-front.jpg</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Those clubs were uploading 5,000 new photo IDs with these insecure URLs every day, Azdoufal tells me. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">He also found an admin portal accessible via the public internet — and that the cannabis clubs had a trivial level of security on their own accounts, using passwords that could theoretically be cracked in minutes with a modern GPU. Private chat messages between clubs and members through the PuffPal app were also vulnerable.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The good news: Roughly a month after we reached out to Nefos, the company seems to finally be taking meaningful action. The company says it’s shutting down its entire PuffPal system and vulnerable APIs until they can be fixed — in Azdoufal’s latest tests on June 10th, passport images and personal data seem to be secure. Nefos has also informed local authorities and says it will take responsibility to make fixes, pay fines, and tell users what happened.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">In a phone interview, Nefos cofounder Andreas Nilsen tells <em>The Verge</em> that he’s in touch with Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) about the data breach — a fact that DPC spokesperson Evan O’Leary confirmed to us by email. “We have to communicate to everyone that was potentially exposed,” Nilsen tells me, saying he hopes the DPC can show his company how to do that properly. Nilsen claims there’s currently no evidence that any outsider accessed the data other than Azdoufal.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But it took far too long for Nefos to take the threat seriously. It took five days and the threat of a story before the company replied to us, long after Azdoufal reached out. Then, Nefos began by papering over the holes instead of risking business. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">I was prepared to write this story at the beginning of June, after Azdoufal told me Nefos had finally locked down the passport images. But on June 4th, I surprised Azdoufal by showing him that his very own passport was online once again, without any protection. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">That’s because Nefos had not yet stopped cannabis clubs from using the PuffPal app, and clubs were complaining the locked-down images weren’t showing up the way they used to — so Nefos simply unlocked the images again. While Nilsen claims the images were locked down “70 percent of the time” since Azdoufal and I got in touch, it’s pretty clear that Nefos made a decision to prioritize its customers instead of the threat.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">On June 9th, Azdoufal discovered that even though Nefos had locked down the passport images and photo IDs with tokens, <em>everything else</em> in the user profiles was still easily accessible: passport numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, everything. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">All a hacker had to do was type “curl -X POST https://ccsnubev2.com/v8/api/userProfile.php -d &#8220;user_id=[NUMBER]&amp;[CLUB NAME]=test&amp;language=en” into a command line, and the servers would freely give up a ream of personal information. After we brought this to Nefos’ attention, that hole, too, has been closed.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But how could the company be so careless? “I don’t want to put the blame on others because at the end of the day it resides with us,” Nilsen says. But he does point the finger <a href="https://www.9series.com/">at 9Series</a>, an outsourcing firm he claims was responsible for developing the PuffPal app and creating all the vulnerable APIs it used to pull unprotected data from Nefos’ user database. (9Series did not have a response by publish time.)</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Now that PuffPal is down, Nefos is emailing every club to let them know their members won’t be able to use those QR codes for entry — but they can still pull up IDs from Nefos’ servers after scanning a member’s RFID card or typing in their phone number, among other examples. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Nilsen claims his company will not simply relaunch unsecured PuffPal if the clubs ask. “We’re going to tell them we can’t,” he says. “We will make sure, after this debacle, that this is verified by an independent security researcher and guarantee that this is 100 percent secure.” He says Nefos is parting ways with 9Series and hopes to have a new app within a few months.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Nilsen says he’s aware that <a href="https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/">under EU law</a>, his company legally had to disclose the breach within 72 hours or pay significant fines, something the company didn’t do<em>.</em> “I’m sure we’ll get whatever kind of penalty there is,” Nilsen says. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Just last month, a website called the UK Visa Portal <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/27/uk-visa-portal-spilled-thousands-of-applicants-passports-and-selfies-online-and-hasnt-fixed-the-leak/">similarly exposed at least 100,000 passports</a> to anyone who could guess a URL. Let’s hope this is a wakeup call.</p>
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									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Nvidia is already planning N2X and N3X chips — the goal is the Star Trek computer]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/942588/nvidia-rtx-spark-n2x-n3x-r2-d2-star-trek-star-wars-plan" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=942588</id>
			<updated>2026-06-04T07:37:04-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-03T16:03:50-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Microsoft" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Nvidia" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Windows" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Just in case you were wondering, Nvidia’s RTX Spark isn’t supposed to be a one-off. The company is not just flirting with becoming the fifth high-profile vendor of consumer laptop chips to see if people bite. At Computex 2026 in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at least two additional generations of RTX Spark are [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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<figure>

<img alt="" data-caption="Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. | Bloomberg via Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Bloomberg via Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/gettyimages-2278662353.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
	<figcaption>
	Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. | Bloomberg via Getty Images	</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">Just in case you were wondering, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940589/nvidia-rtx-spark-n1-n1x-laptop-desktop-pc-cpu-gpu-ai-release-date">Nvidia’s RTX Spark</a> isn’t supposed to be a one-off. The company is not just flirting with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/941215/windows-laptops-nvidia-rtx-spark-apple-m1-arm-price-ram">becoming the fifth high-profile vendor of consumer laptop chips</a> to see if people bite. At Computex 2026 in Taipei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at least two additional generations of RTX Spark are already planned. The eventual goal, he said, is to build <em>Star Trek</em>-like computers and and <em>Star Wars</em>-like droids you can order around with your voice.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“I want to talk to my laptop! I want R2-D2!” he <a href="https://video.ibm.com/recorded/134842643">told analysts and investors</a> at Computex, revealing that he started working with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella “about three years ago” to build toward that goal.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“Satya and I, we&#8217;re going to walk up to our Windows PC and go ‘hello, do something.’ It&#8217;s like Scotty talking to that mouse. You know what I&#8217;m talking about? <em>Star Trek</em>. No?” he said. He’s referring to <a href="https://youtu.be/LkqiDu1BQXY?si=sM-7VXrTGgSbIniD&amp;t=64">the famous <em>Star Trek IV</em> scene</a> where the Enterprise’s chief engineer, having time-traveled to the past, expects a computer to be intelligent and mistakes the mouse for a microphone:</p>
<div class="youtube-embed"><iframe title="Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home (7/10) Movie CLIP - The Miracle Worker (1986) HD" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LkqiDu1BQXY?rel=0&#038;start=64" allowfullscreen allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div>
<p class="has-text-align-none">“In the future this computer&#8217;s going to be an AI. Everything&#8217;s going to be an AI. Your vacuum cleaner, you&#8217;ll talk to it, <em>go mop that up</em>,” Huang adds.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But Huang also imagines that “R2-D2” won’t necessarily need to be within reach. Not unlike when Artoo saves Luke and friends from the Death Star’s garbage compactor, he thinks you’ll be able to phone your computer remotely:</p>

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="has-text-align-none">If I want to talk with my laptop today, I gotta wait until I get back to my room. In the future, if I need my laptop to do something, I just text it with WhatsApp. I say &#8220;R2-D2, there&#8217;s this thing with the PowerPoint slide, slide number 17, that image is scaled or titled wrong. It should not say CX9, it should say CX10. R2-D2 opens up PowerPoint, modifies it, puts it in PDF, sends it to me. Can you imagine that? Easy.</p>
</blockquote>

<p class="has-text-align-none">If we’re talking remote control anyway, why would we want to buy a pricey laptop instead of talking to AI in the cloud? He says it’s partly economic:</p>

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="has-text-align-none">You don&#8217;t want to necessarily run everything in the cloud, because if you can run it locally, it&#8217;s free. Why rent a television? You&#8217;re going to use that every day. Why rent a washer dryer, you&#8217;re going to use that hopefully once a week? Why rent a refrigerator? You&#8217;re going to use it every day. Why rent an assistant computer?  You&#8217;re going to use it every day.</p>
</blockquote>

<p class="has-text-align-none">And partly because your machine is where your private data and tools already exist. Here’s Huang admonishing his friend Dylan Patel (you might remember him from <a href="https://www.theverge.com/podcast/849551/ram-explainer-holiday-spectacular-vergecast">our Vergecast RAM Holiday Spec-tacular</a>):</p>

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p class="has-text-align-none">What, am I going to call Claude to control my laptop? Are you insane? It doesn&#8217;t make any sense! I want to talk to my laptop! I want R2-D2! I want you to do a few things for me when I&#8217;m gone. I&#8217;m here giving a keynote, and there&#8217;s some code I want finished&#8230; hey I&#8217;ve got an idea, I&#8217;m going to call R2-D2, all the files are here in my laptop, all the tools are here, get that done. You can&#8217;t do that with Claude Code in the cloud.</p>
</blockquote>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Again, Nvidia has so far <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940589/nvidia-rtx-spark-n1-n1x-laptop-desktop-pc-cpu-gpu-ai-release-date">shown almost nothing</a> to prove that the first generation of RTX Spark laptops will deliver anything close to a <em>Star Trek</em> computing experience. That’s up to Microsoft and software partners; what Nvidia is selling is a small but potent pocket of local AI compute. The Spark has up to 128GB of RAM, which Nvidia says is enough to hold 120-billion-parameter AI agents. Is that enough for R2-D2 to figure out how to do what you want? </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Either way, they will <em>cost</em>. When Patel posed a question beginning with “These laptops are $3,000 or something on that order of magnitude, the power user is the one who has to buy the first generation of it,&#8221; Nvidia’s CEO nodded along while repeatedly saying “yep.”</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Still, as we’ve reported, the RTX Spark will scale down from the first “superchip” with 128GB of RAM down to as little as 16GB of RAM, and Nvidia is looking to produce an entire family of them across multiple generations.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“N2X and N3X are already planned, and N1X is called N1X because it has a smaller version called N1. We&#8217;re going to expand our family. We&#8217;re going to extend this architecture for a very long time,” Huang told journalists, <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/i-spoke-to-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-about-rtx-spark-he-is-willing-to-work-on-an-rtx-gaming-handheld-n2x-and-n3x-are-already-planned-and-the-chip-is-more-like-r2d2-than-a-laptop-cpu">according to <em>Tom’s Guide</em></a>.</p>
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									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[I held the next-gen handheld]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/games/941360/intel-arc-g3-extreme-msi-claw-next-gen-handheld-preview" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=941360</id>
			<updated>2026-06-03T12:24:23-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-02T15:56:02-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Hands-on" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Microsoft" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="PC Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Reviews" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Windows" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Intel couldn’t catch a break. Layoffs. Shakedowns. Crashing CPUs torpedoing its reputation, sending desktop gamers fleeing to AMD. Apple and Qualcomm pushing Intel out of multiple flagship laptops. A gaming graphics card going MIA. But its Panther Lake laptop chip, the first on its all-important 18A process, turned out excellent — and a handheld version [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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<figure>

<img alt="" data-caption="The new MSI Claw with Intel Arc G3 Extreme. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-1.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
	<figcaption>
	The new MSI Claw with Intel Arc G3 Extreme. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge	</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">Intel couldn’t catch a break. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/713388/intel-q2-2025-leave-germany-poland-costa-rica">Layoffs</a>. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/764480/intel-donald-trump-lip-bu-tan-deal">Shakedowns</a>. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/24216305/intel-13th-14th-gen-raptor-lake-cpu-crash-news-updates-patches-fixes-motherboards">Crashing CPUs</a> torpedoing its reputation, sending desktop gamers fleeing to AMD. Apple and Qualcomm pushing Intel out of multiple flagship laptops. A gaming graphics card <a href="https://www.tweaktown.com/news/110018/intel-arc-b770-aka-big-battlemage-has-reportedly-been-canceled-due-to-ai/index.html">going MIA</a>. But its Panther Lake laptop chip, the first on its all-important 18A process, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/867214/intel-core-ultra-x9-panther-lake-388h-laptop-cpu-review">turned out excellent</a> — and a handheld version might make Intel <em>the</em> leader in portable gaming chips.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">On Monday, I spent two hours with an <a href="https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/939758/msi-claw-8-ex-ai-plus-gaming-handheld-reveal-computex-2026">MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus</a> handheld atop <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/938692/intel-arc-g3-extreme-handheld-gaming">Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme</a>. I walked away thinking that next-gen handhelds have finally arrived. The true leap in performance and battery life we’ve been waiting for, but at a high price.</p>

<div class="image-slider">
	<div class="image-slider">
		
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-2.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;Gallery: Check out my photos of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus and comparisons to the previous version.&lt;/em&gt; | Photos by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Photos by Sean Hollister / The Verge" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-5.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-6.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-9.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-7.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-8.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-10.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-14.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=14.814453125,0,70.37109375,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-12.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-11.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-13.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-3.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6227937468482,100,88.754412506304" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-4_baeea6.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />
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<p class="has-text-align-none">For example, Intel claims that its Arc G3 Extreme can deliver similar performance at <em>half</em> the wattage of AMD’s flagship chip, with the MSI Claw consuming just 17 watts to do what takes 35 watts on the Xbox Ally X with AMD Z2 Extreme:</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/chrome_SQuwQysEbp.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Intel" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Or, it can run an average of 42 percent faster at the same 35 watts<em> — </em>making games like <em>Battlefield 6</em>, <em>Baldur’s Gate 3</em>, <em>Cyberpunk 2077</em>, <em>Red Dead Redemption 2</em>, <em>Returnal</em>, and <em>Forza Horizon 6</em> playable at 1080p high and 60fps. (That’s with 2x upscaling, mind, so we’re talking 960&#215;540 render resolution, but that’s how I play demanding handheld games myself.)</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/chrome_N1UQS3OX3z.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Intel" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Intel claims the Arc G3 Extreme is so efficient, you can even game at 1080p and low settings with<em> </em>just 12 watts of electricity, head and often shoulders over the AMD chip there:  </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/chrome_v4oUxJG1d0.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Intel" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">And, Intel says the chip can sip as little as 4 watts of electricity in the least demanding games — for nearly 12 hours of battery life on a charge. </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/chrome_EhwjzxB962.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Intel" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">We simply haven’t seen this kind of a leap in handheld gaming PCs so far. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none"><a href="https://www.theverge.com/22950371/valve-steam-deck-review">The Steam Deck</a> set the bar in 2022 with an unbeatable combination of price and efficiency. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23951655/steam-deck-oled-review">By 2023’s $549 Steam Deck OLED</a>, you could comfortably play modern AAA games at low settings for two hours on a charge, and weaker games for up to eight. Windows competitors could run games more smoothly or at higher settings, but only by consuming <em>far</em> more electricity. That’s been true of almost every handheld since, regardless of whether it was powered by an AMD Z1 Extreme, Z2 Extreme, 7840U, 8840U, HX370, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/791460/gpd-win-5-corded-handhelds">or especially</a> the AMD “Strix Halo” AI Max Plus 395.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Limited by relatively power-hungry chips, companies found different ways to improve: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/24204770/asus-rog-ally-x-review-handheld-gaming-pc">The Asus ROG Ally X</a> literally doubled the Ally’s battery to 80 watt-hours, stretching to 3 hours of medium-weight gameplay or around 9 hours of the lightest play in my tests. The Xbox Ally added <a href="https://www.theverge.com/hands-on/776797/xbox-ally-x-prongs-comfort-editorial">large, gamepad style prongs</a> that make a heavy handheld more comfortable.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-4.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;The Xbox Ally X (top) has a smaller 7-inch screen than the new Claw (bottom), but both have prongs.&lt;/em&gt; | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">But the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, the one with Intel’s new chip, seems to have it all: an 80-watt hour battery, prongs, power, efficiency, drift-resistant Hall effect joysticks, and remarkably smooth gameplay on an 8-inch 120Hz VRR screen. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Check out those prongs:</p>

<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-8_35321a.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-7_599001.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,5.6248916623332,100,88.750216675334" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" /></figure>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Intel didn’t let me play all the games I’d like to, but I came prepared knowing <em>Forza Horizon 6 </em>would be on display. Before my demo, I played through the first hour of <a href="https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/929816/forza-horizon-6-review-xbox-pc">the virtual road trip to Japan</a> on the Xbox Ally X, the Steam Deck, and the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/pc-gaming/769609/msi-claw-8-ai-plus-intel-review">SI Claw 8 AI Plus</a>, the previous-gen Intel Lunar Lake handheld.</p>

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-tiktok wp-block-embed-tiktok"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@verge/video/7647200236481318157" data-video-id="7647200236481318157" data-embed-from="oembed"> <section> <a target="_blank" title="@verge" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@verge?refer=embed">@verge</a> <p>Next-gen handheld? This is the MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus, one of the first with Intel&#8217;s new Arc G3 Extreme handheld chip. It&#8217;s also got an 80Wh battery, 120Hz VRR screen, drift-resistant joysticks and more &#8212; but the story here is a leap forward in efficiency like we haven&#8217;t really seen in the handheld space. Unfortunately, it seems like it&#8217;ll cost a lot. Best Buy listed it early for $1,699.99 ahead of a June 23rd launch. Link in bio to enter the TITW giveaway. <a title="todayimtoyingwith" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/todayimtoyingwith?refer=embed">#todayimtoyingwith</a> <a title="tech" target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tech?refer=embed">#tech</a></p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - The Verge" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7647200365584091918?refer=embed">♬ original sound &#8211; The Verge</a> </section> </blockquote> 
</div></figure>

<p class="has-text-align-none">At a native 1920 x 1200 resolution and medium settings, I saw around 40-45 frames per second on the Lunar Lake MSI Claw with its chip set to maximum. I got maybe 50fps from the Xbox Ally X at its lower native screen resolution of 1080p. The game doesn’t even feel playable on Steam Deck at its native 800p resolution, I’m afraid — the game frequently turned into a jerky mess even at lowest spec.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But the new MSI Claw with Arc G3 Extreme gave me <strong>60-74 fps</strong> in <em>Forza Horizon 6 </em>at 1200p resolution, without any of Intel’s “fake frames” frame generation turned on. It’s just one data point, but it lines up neatly with Intel’s performance claims, removing some of my doubt.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">And, the new Claw did so while consuming just 43W of total system power, according to MSI’s overlay — meaning up to 1.8 hours of runtime on an 80 watt-hour battery. The Xbox Ally X consumes closer to 50 watts of total system power in its 35W turbo mode, for more like 1.6 hours of the highest performance you can get. </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-14.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;I found it way comfier to hold than the previous MSI Claw with Lunar Lake, and it can kind of stand up on its own!&lt;/em&gt; | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Intel might offer even more smoothness and power savings if you don’t mind fake frames. <em>Battlefield 6</em> looked positively buttery at 110–140fps with 4X frame gen, not that I could hold my own in multiplayer without plugging in a mouse, keyboard, and larger screen, to say nothing of latency. But that was Intel’s new chip set to 25W TDP and total power draw of just 38W, suggesting I could get two full hours of gameplay on the 80Wh battery. After my two hour session (which included some still photography, mind), the new Claw still had 29 percent left in the tank.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The new Claw is also the most comfortable handheld I’ve held yet, with excellent weight balance and incredibly grippy textured grips. It’s large, but it feels lighter than I would expect, and I’m no longer worried it might slip out of sweaty hands. I’m a little less sure about the controls — the 8-way D-pad is <em>very</em> clicky, the bumpers feel a bit hollow, the sticks and triggers still have a slightly cheap feel like the previous Claw — but everything feels more than serviceable even in the engineering sample I tried. </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/msi-claw-g3-extreme-9.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;The click-click-click of the new D-pad will be polarizing, assuming that’s how it’s meant to feel.&lt;/em&gt; | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">If you’re thinking “<em>does a leap in handhelds matter if you can’t actually afford one, Sean</em>?” you’re reading my mind. Just last week, I wrote how <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/938451/steam-deck-price-hike-end-of-handheld-gaming-era">the golden age of handheld gaming is already over</a> due to price hikes, and it appears you’ll pay dearly for this handheld: <a href="https://www.bestbuy.com/product/claw-8-ex-ai-cg3em-8-120hz-fhd-1200p-gaming-handheld-intel-arc-g3-extreme-intel-arc-32gb-1tbssd-console/J3P7TXTKW3">$1,699.99 at Best Buy</a>. That’s even more than the $1,500 price we and other journalists were told the company was targeting.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">One way to look at that: It’s too much money, period. Gaming shouldn’t be such a luxury!</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Another thought: Compared to the $1,000 Xbox Ally X, this is a 70 percent price increase for 42 percent more performance on average, which sounds not great.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But either way, it should launch June 23rd, and it looks like handhelds are finally springing forward again. I wouldn’t be surprised if my next device has Intel Inside — when or if <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/880812/ramageddon-ram-shortage-memory-crisis-price-2026-phones-laptops">RAMageddon</a> finally ends.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none"><em><strong>Update, June 2nd: </strong>A Best Buy listing has revealed the price will be $1,699.99, unless someone there goofed.</em></p>
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			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Asus just announced the OLED Xbox Ally X of my dreams]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/games/940722/asus-xbox-ally-x20-special-edition-oled-screen" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=940722</id>
			<updated>2026-06-01T06:05:38-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-01T06:00:00-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="AMD" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Computex" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="PC Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[If you asked me what I’d change about the Xbox Ally X handheld — aside from fixing Windows, I mean — I’d tell you two key things. First, give me a bigger, better screen. Even a little bit bigger, so games feel less claustrophobic and with less ugly bezel. Second, get rid of the “Library” [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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<figure>

<img alt="" data-caption="The Xbox Ally X20, and the glasses you’ll have to buy with it. | Image: Asus" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/xbox-ally-x20-2.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
	<figcaption>
	The Xbox Ally X20, and the glasses you’ll have to buy with it. | Image: Asus	</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">If you asked me what I’d change about the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/799698/xbox-ally-x-review-asus-microsoft-full-screen-experience">Xbox Ally X handheld</a> — aside from <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/897834/microsoft-windows-11-quality-performance-commitments-changes">fixing Windows</a>, I mean — I’d tell you two key things. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">First, give me a bigger, better screen. Even a little bit bigger, so games feel less claustrophobic and with less ugly bezel. Second, get rid of the “Library” button. I am <em>so</em> tired of an accidental press booting me out of my game and into the Xbox library without a simple way to get back.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">With the just-announced ROG Xbox Ally X20, Asus did both — and then some. It’s now a slick translucent handheld with drift-resistant GuliKit TMR joysticks, a transforming D-pad that goes from 8-way to 4-way by dropping its corners when you rotate it, button tweaks, haptic feedback tweaks, fan tweaks… and what could now be the best screen on a handheld yet.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/xbox-ally-x20.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Not only does the Xbox Ally X20 upgrade from an 7-inch IPS display to a 7.4-inch 120Hz OLED at the same performance-friendly 1080p resolution, the screen sounds fantastic. It’s a 600-nit panel in SDR with HDR peaks of 1400 nits, even higher than <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/769776/legion-go-2-official-lenovo-new-flagship-handheld-cost">the Lenovo Legion Go 2</a>, though both are certified VESA DisplayHDR TrueBlack 1000. And, it supports Dolby Vision.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/xbox-ally-x20-4.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Like the Legion Go 2, it’s also got an improved variable refresh rate (VRR) that goes down to 30Hz instead of the 48Hz on the original Ally, which could make games feel smoother when the AMD Z2 Extreme chip can’t quite make a game hit 48fps to begin with. It&#8217;s the same chips here as in the original Xbox Ally X, by the way: AMD Z2 Extreme, with 24GB of 8000MT/sec RAM and 1TB of storage.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The handheld is slightly bigger to help accommodate the changes: 9mm wider, half a millimeter thicker, and 41 grams heavier.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Not only is that “Library” button gone, it’s been replaced with a new “Action” button that sounds genuinely useful: It’ll take a screenshot with a single press or a recording with a long press, like today’s console controllers typically do.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/transforming-dpad-asus.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;The corners drop when you rotate the D-pad.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Asus" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">The ABXY buttons now sit flush against the casing when you press them down, the bumper switches are relocated and have a longer, quieter throw for better feedback, and the fans have been slightly redesigned to channel more fresh air through the chassis for lower touchscreen temps, Asus spokesperson Anthony Spence tells me. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Plus, the Xbox button now lights up green, which just sounds cool — and it has a far faster microSD Express card slot, like the Nintendo Switch 2. </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/xbox-ally-x20-1.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">What’s not so cool, and frankly doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, is that Asus won’t let you buy it alone. This holiday, it’ll exclusively come as part of a bundle with a pair of <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/931149/asus-and-xreals-ar-gaming-glasses-are-up-for-preorder">Asus and Xreal’s pricey R1 glasses</a>, which (at $849) cost almost as much as a $1,000 Xbox Ally X all by themselves. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Asus isn’t pricing the bundle yet, but I suspect the bundle is more to help cushion the high price of the handheld — at a time <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/938451/steam-deck-price-hike-end-of-handheld-gaming-era">every other handheld is getting pricier</a> — rather than to help sell glasses at a discount.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/ROG-XBOX-Ally-X20_-1.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" /><img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/ROG-XBOX-Ally-X20_-3.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" /><img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/ROG-XBOX-Ally-X20_-2.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Asus" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">I actually think a set of Xreal glasses are a good way to improve on smaller, more claustrophobic handheld screens, but if I’m buying a new Ally to get a better screen, do I really need the glasses too?  </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">I guess I’ll dream on. For what it’s worth, Spence says he still hasn’t heard of any plans to increase the price of the original Xbox Ally X. It’s still at $1,000 for now. I’ve asked whether Asus will offer a way to remap the original handheld’s Library button, too. </p>
						]]>
									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[This is the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra with Nvidia RTX Spark]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940584/microsoft-surface-laptop-ultra-nvidia-rtx-spark-pictures" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=940584</id>
			<updated>2026-06-01T11:04:39-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-01T00:36:41-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Computex" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gadgets" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Laptops" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Microsoft" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Nvidia" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Windows" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Once upon a time, Microsoft had to write off $900 million betting an Arm-based Nvidia chip could power its first flagship Windows portable, the original Microsoft Surface. But today, it’s trying again. Microsoft and Nvidia have just announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, a computer with a new Arm-based Nvidia chip at its core. There’s a [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
							<content type="html">
											<![CDATA[

						
<figure>

<img alt="A shadowy image of a Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra against a gradient gray background." data-caption="﻿This shadowy render is the best glimpse Microsoft is giving us so far. | Image: Microsoft" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Surface-Laptop-Ultra-Image-3-crop.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
	<figcaption>
	﻿This shadowy render is the best glimpse Microsoft is giving us so far. | Image: Microsoft	</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">Once upon a time, Microsoft <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/18/4535976/microsoft-lost-900-million-on-surface-rt">had to write off $900 million</a> betting an Arm-based Nvidia chip could power its first flagship Windows portable, the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3540550/microsoft-surface-review">original Microsoft Surface</a>. But today, it’s trying again. Microsoft and Nvidia have just announced the Surface Laptop Ultra, a computer with a new Arm-based Nvidia chip at its core. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">There’s a lot we don’t know about the 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra, such as its final specs or the foggiest idea of what it might cost. But Microsoft is promising it’s the most powerful Surface, period: “This is the most powerful thing we’ve ever made,” Microsoft Surface boss Andrew Hill replies, when we ask how it stacks up. </p>
<div class="youtube-embed"><iframe title="Introducing Surface Laptop Ultra" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s1Oj792qc80?rel=0" allowfullscreen allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div>
<p class="has-text-align-none">It features <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940589/nvidia-rtx-spark-n1-n1x-laptop-desktop-pc-cpu-gpu-ai-release-date">Nvidia’s new RTX Spark “superchip,”</a> which is roughly the same processor the company already sold in its <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/798775/nvidia-spark-personal-ai-supercomputer">DGX Spark mini-PC for AI developers</a>, but is now optimized to work with Windows 11 instead. That chip has up to 20 CPU cores, 6,144 GPU cores, and 128GB of unified memory, though some versions will be sold with as few as 16GB — Nvidia told journalists in briefings that the RTX Spark family will eventually expand to reach a range of prices.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Surface-Laptop-Ultra-Image-1-cropped.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;Not a bad selection of ports for something “Ultra.”&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Microsoft" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">In addition to that chip, which should offer the typical “all-day battery life,” roughly RTX 5070 laptop level graphics, and up to 1 petaflop of AI compute, the Surface Laptop will have a 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen at 262 pixels per inch. Microsoft says it’s “the brightest display we’ve ever shipped” with 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness and that it has the largest haptic trackpad that Microsoft has ever shipped on a Surface.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">It’ll come in dark gray and silver and should weigh under 4.5 pounds.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/IMG_3747.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Ports include USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, and a full-size SD card slot and headphone jack, though Microsoft isn’t saying what speeds or versions we’re getting from any of them yet. (It looks like we’re getting three USB-C ports?) Instead of those concrete details, <a href="https://blogs.windows.com/devices/?p=263834">its blog post</a> is amusingly filled with statements like these:</p>

<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>“No walls. No compromises.” </li>



<li>“Every micron matters and every choice is deliberate.” </li>



<li>“This is Surface craft at its most considered.”</li>



<li>“A machine like this should not sit still. It should be pushed. Taken to the edge.”</li>



<li>“It belongs in the hands of world makers.”</li>
</ul>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Surface-Laptop-Ultra-Image-2-crop.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;The internals of the Surface Laptop Ultra, with the Nvidia RTX Spark chip at its core.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Microsoft" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">The Surface Laptop Ultra won’t be the only machine coming this fall with Nvidia’s new chips, but Microsoft is intimately involved in the success of the other RTX Spark laptops and mini-PCs as well. Microsoft and Nvidia say they’ve been working together for years to get Windows ready for Arm devices like these and for the RTX Spark specifically.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">You can hear more about that in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940589/nvidia-rtx-spark-n1-n1x-laptop-desktop-pc-cpu-gpu-ai-release-date">our full RTX Spark story</a> and <a href="https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/?p=180355">in Microsoft’s blog post</a>, where it talks about some of the specific tweaks it’s made to take advantage of the RTX Spark and the developers who’ve been convinced to support Windows on Arm.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none"></p>
						]]>
									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Nvidia announces RTX Spark as ‘the most efficient PC chip ever built’]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940589/nvidia-rtx-spark-n1-n1x-laptop-desktop-pc-cpu-gpu-ai-release-date" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/940589/this-is-the-microsoft-surface-laptop-ultra-with-nvidia-rtx-spark</id>
			<updated>2026-06-01T11:09:03-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-06-01T00:28:53-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Computex" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Desktops" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gadgets" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Laptops" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Microsoft" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Nvidia" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Windows" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[This fall, Nvidia will officially become a consumer PC chipmaker like Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm, putting a complete computing chip — not just graphics — into the very heart of laptops and mini-PCs. After many months of leaks, it’s finally announcing the RTX Spark, the first in a family of chips that will meet [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
							<content type="html">
											<![CDATA[

						
<figure>

<img alt="" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/spark.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=13.2,5.6371712237898,86.8,94.36282877621" />
	<figcaption>
		</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">This fall, Nvidia will officially become a consumer PC chipmaker like Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm, putting a complete computing chip — not just graphics — into the very heart of laptops and mini-PCs. After <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/867056/leak-nvidia-n1-n1x-laptops-lenovo-dell">many months of leaks</a>, it’s finally announcing the RTX Spark, the first in a family of chips that will meet or beat the most powerful thin-and-light Windows machines ever, it claims.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“This is the most efficient PC chip ever built,” says Nvidia senior director of product management Mark Aevermann — without sharing so much as a single statistic or chart to back that up. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The RTX Spark is effectively the same GB10 chip that’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/798775/nvidia-spark-personal-ai-supercomputer">in the DGX Spark</a>, the tiny “personal AI supercomputer” that Nvidia released last year, only now it’s a family of chips instead of just one. The flagship version appears to be spec-to-spec identical with 20 CPU cores, 6,144 GPU cores, and 128GB of LPDDR5X memory.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Screenshot_20260531_212701.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds up two RTX Spark laptops at Computex 2026" title="Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang holds up two RTX Spark laptops at Computex 2026" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;Nvidia’s CEO holds up two RTX Spark laptops at Computex.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Nvidia" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">But Nvidia says there’ll be lesser versions later, targeting lower prices, and with as little as 16GB of RAM.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Like Apple and Qualcomm’s chips, this Nvidia chip is Arm-based silicon, meaning legacy Windows software made for Intel and AMD’s x86 processors needs to run through an emulation layer to work. That can mean lower performance. But Microsoft has now spent years getting Windows and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/824783/windows-on-arm-snapdragon-control-panel-gaming-driver-compatibility-improvements">its Prism emulator</a> ready for Qualcomm and now Nvidia chips, and Nvidia claims its own graphics and AI chops will take the idea further than ever before.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/nvidia-rtx-spark007.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;If these specs sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theverge.com/news/798775/nvidia-spark-personal-ai-supercomputer&quot;&gt;the DGX Spark AI mini-PC.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Nvidia" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">With the power of the RTX Spark, Nvidia boasts, you can render a 90GB 3D scene, edit 12K resolution video, or play the graphically intensive <em>Indiana Jones and the Great Circle</em> at a smooth 100fps at 1440p resolution — all in a 14mm thick laptop without a power cord plugged in.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/nvidia-rtx-spark004.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;Nvidia says RTX Spark laptops should have these features&lt;/em&gt;. | Image: Nvidia" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">And with up to 128GB of unified memory, tied with AMD’s previous gen <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/855463/amd-strix-halo-ai-max-plus-388-392-handheld-gaming">Strix Halo parts</a>, an RTX Spark laptop or desktop can also host 120-billion-parameter AI agents, something that Microsoft is seemingly excited about for Windows. At Microsoft’s Build conference this week, it’ll be showing off “new Windows security and containment primitives” that, along with Nvidia’s OpenShell runtime, “allows personal agents to run safely and under full user control.” </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Nvidia claims this adds up to “a new personal computing paradigm where AI is the UX” and “users no longer need to master complicated app UIs” because you’ll just talk to your PC instead of needing to use a mouse and keyboard.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/image-3.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;“Personal AI” for Windows&lt;/em&gt;. | Image: Nvidia" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Nvidia suggested that, for example, a esports streamer could get their PC to automatically turn off their lights, mute their microphone, and change their broadcasting mode when they want to step away and grab dinner. A designer could use Adobe to automatically turn a sketch into a full image, render a 3D model of it, then create a AI video just by asking. A software developer can automatically monitor their GitHub project and autonomously fix QA issues, with the AI agent taking over the laptop’s keyboard and mouse cursor to do “repetitive and boring” tasks. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Nvidia says that with the RTX Spark’s local AI chops, your data stays private and you won’t be burning through tokens to do AI things. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">I’m not convinced Nvidia has pieced together the <em>Star Trek</em> computer just yet, but it does seem like the company has a <em>lot</em> of partners on board. Almost every major laptop vendor is accounted for, with eight specific laptops already confirmed for this fall: </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/rtx-spark-laptops-first-confirmed-hp-lenovo-msi-microsoft-dell-asus_61d8c9.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;Asus ProArt P14 and P16, Dell XPS 16, HP OmniBook X14 and Ultra 16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9N, Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, and MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Nvidia" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">One of those is from Microsoft, which is putting the Nvidia RTX Spark in a new laptop that Surface boss Andrew Hill tells us is “the most powerful thing we’ve ever made.” <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940584/microsoft-surface-laptop-ultra-nvidia-rtx-spark-pictures">It’s called the Surface Laptop Ultra</a>:</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/surface-laptop-ultra.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Microsoft" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Those machines are apparently just the start. Aevermann says Nvidia’s partners are already working on over 30 laptops and over 10 desktops, with Acer, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, and Lenovo all on board.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“RTX Spark is going to be a family of products that are going to attack a lot of different price points,” Aevermann promises. “The overall market opportunity that we see is quite large.”</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/nvidia-rtx-spark005.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">And between Microsoft and Nvidia’s wrangling efforts, lots of Windows developers are also on board with Arm. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The company points out that “Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Maxon Cinema4D, Maxon Redshift, Topaz Photo, CapCut, Cubase, Bitwig Studio, Affinity by Canva and more all run natively on Arm today, as do the audio, video, MIDI, and control peripherals they require.“</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Adobe is on board, with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/940588/adobe-premiere-and-photoshop-are-optimized-for-nvidia-spark-laptops">special optimizations for Premiere and Photoshop</a> that take advantage of Nvidia’s new chip.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Even games with anti-cheat that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284644/apex-legends-loses-linux-steam-deck-support-anti-cheat">thumbed their nose at Linux and the Steam Deck</a> are now supporting Windows on Arm, too. Microsoft writes that Riot Games is now bringing both <em>League of Legends</em> and <em>Valorant</em> to Windows on Arm. Krafton is bringing <em>PUBG</em>, and Nvidia tells us it’s working with more developers who use Easy Anti-Cheat, BattlEye, and Denuvo. (Epic’s <em>Fortnite</em> already came to Windows on Arm last November <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/629119/fortnite-epic-games-windows-arm-qualcomm-snapdragon">after an announcement last March</a>.)</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Aevermann says “all the top games will run on RTX Spark and provide a great experience.” That’s a pretty high bar to meet!</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Here are some more developers Nvidia says it’s working with:</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/nvidia-rtx-spark008.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Nvidia" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">There are still many open questions, of course. Neither Nvidia nor Microsoft gave us a clear idea of how much these computers might cost, save that the first batch this fall is “targeting the more premium price points in the market.” </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">On “all-day battery life,” Aevermann would only say that we should “expect it to be much better than anything you’ve seen before on RTX laptops” and that “you won’t need a charger” if you’re not pushing heavy workloads. The chip scales down to “low, low single-digit” wattage and goes as high as 80 watts, he says. The latter means they could theoretically drain bigger laptop batteries in around an hour at full bore.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">On performance, Nvidia didn’t have a single statistic or chart to share, and Aevermann wouldn’t answer questions about how the RTX Spark family stacks up to chips from Intel, AMD, Apple, and Qualcomm, saying Nvidia will have more to share closer to launch. But he does say that depending on the application, it has roughly the graphical power of an RTX 5070 mobile GPU, and that we should expect the CPU portion to be “competitive with anything else out there in the Windows space.” </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Nvidia also wouldn’t say whether these chips, made on the TSMC 3 process in partnership with MediaTek, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/648086/nvidia-blackwell-ai-tsmc-arizona-plant">are being manufactured in the US</a> or abroad. That got a no comment. </p>
<div class="youtube-embed"><iframe title="NVIDIA RTX Spark Reinvents Windows PCs for the Age of Personal AI" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H4nJo-oqAro?rel=0" allowfullscreen allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture *; web-share *;"></iframe></div>
<p class="has-text-align-none">Nvidia also wouldn’t comment on whether it plans to offer Linux driver support for the RTX Spark, as it’s currently focused on Windows. It wouldn’t comment on putting the Spark in gaming handhelds, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/791460/gpd-win-5-corded-handhelds">like AMD did with its powerful Strix Halo</a>. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But it did answer a question that no, the RTX Spark won’t be paired with additional discrete GPUs — which may limit its potential in desktops beyond the miniature ones, the same way <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/902050/mac-pro-discontinued">Apple’s Mac Pro became limited</a> when its Arm-based chips broke compatibility with discrete  GPUs. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Maybe it doesn’t matter that Nvidia isn’t sharing proof to back up its claims. Back in 2020, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/23/21296365/apple-mac-arm-processor-silicon-chips-performance-power-speed-wwdc-2020">Apple didn’t share any proof</a> when it announced Apple Silicon. But when the M1 arrived, it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21574057/apple-m1-chips-laptop-performance-intel-qualcomm-competition">upended our concept of laptop performance overnight</a>. </p>
						]]>
									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[AMD’s new pitch: our old tech is so good you should just keep using it]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/940524/amd-computex-am5-promise-2029-rx9070gre-7700x3d-5800x3d" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=940524</id>
			<updated>2026-06-01T05:56:57-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-05-31T20:00:00-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Computex" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Desktops" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="PC Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Computex 2026 is underway in Taiwan, and we’re expecting all manner of flashy computers with jaw-dropping prices (or no prices at all) as the entire industry navigates RAMageddon. But for desktop PC gamers, AMD has a different pitch. It’s relaunching three old components alongside a big new promise: You won’t need to buy a new [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
							<content type="html">
											<![CDATA[

						
<figure>

<img alt="" data-caption="AMD CEO Lisa Su holds a Ryzen chip. | Image: AMD" data-portal-copyright="Image: AMD" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/1505974-dr-lisa-su-ryzen.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
	<figcaption>
	AMD CEO Lisa Su holds a Ryzen chip. | Image: AMD	</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">Computex 2026 is underway in Taiwan, and we’re expecting all manner of flashy computers with jaw-dropping prices (or no prices at all) <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/839353/pc-ram-shortage-pricing-spike-news">as the entire industry navigates RAMageddon</a>. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But for desktop PC gamers, AMD has a different pitch. It’s relaunching three <em>old</em> components alongside a big new promise: You won’t need to buy a new motherboard until 2030.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Screenshot_20260531_124408.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: AMD" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Today, <a href="https://www.amd.com/en/blogs/2026/amd-computex-2026-10-years-of-am4-am5-support-through.html">AMD is promising</a> it will keep supporting its AM5 desktop motherboard socket with new Ryzen processors through 2029, which likely means you can keep upgrading to newer CPUs till the end of the decade without changing your board.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Even if you’re still on the older AM4 socket, you may have one last upgrade left: It’s relaunching a “10th Anniversary” edition of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D to celebrate the 10th anniversary of that AM4 platform. That’ll be $349 on June 25th.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Screenshot_20260531_131105.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: AMD" /><img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Screenshot_20260531_131248.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: AMD" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">And if you decide now’s the time to switch to AMD or the AM5 socket, the company’s got a <em>new old chip</em> for that too: a $330 Ryzen 7 7700X3D, likely a binned version of the existing 7800X3D. The beefier chip costs $380 to $450, though it can occasionally be found at $320. On paper, the 7700X3D looks only slightly slower:</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Screenshot_20260531_132243.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: AMD" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Again, this is old tech: The 7800X3D came out in 2023; <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/6/24288948/amd-ryzen-7-9800x3d-review-cpu-processor-benchmark-test">its 9000-series successor</a> came out in late 2024. But the old chip was plenty powerful, as you can see in my colleague Tom Warren’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/reviews/626820/amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d-review-cpu-processor-benchmark-test">comparison review with the 9950X3D, 9800X3D, and 7800X3D</a> from 2025. (Check out how much less power the 7800X3D used in his chart, too.)</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Meanwhile, in the GPU realm, AMD is finally bringing its formerly China-exclusive Radeon RX 9070 GRE to other countries, including the US, starting June 1st for $549.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Screenshot_20260531_132629.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: AMD" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">That’s not quite as friendly for PC gamers to hear, as $549 was supposed to be the starting price for the notably more powerful RX 9070, not the cut-down GRE version, which <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/reviews-show-amds-rx-9070-gre-trails-the-rtx-5070-in-raster-ray-tracing-is-on-par-and-its-usd50-cheaper">trails the RTX 5070</a>.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">But the RX 9070 was never broadly available at $549, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/625502/amd-rx-9070-xt-launch-pricing-msrp-possible-bait-switch">despite what AMD claimed to us at the time</a> — it launched amidst <a href="https://www.theverge.com/report/656783/gpu-prices-are-out-of-control-again">a GPU shortage</a>, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/795635/hey-look-an-amd-9070-finally-hit-its-promised-549">hit $549 once</a>, but the price settled closer to $599 or $620 once that shortage ended. So this would be a bit cheaper.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">AMD’s making an interesting pitch at a time that everything, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/938451/steam-deck-price-hike-end-of-handheld-gaming-era">especially gaming</a>, is beginning to feel too expensive. Does it convince you?</p>
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									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Qualcomm promises $300 Windows laptops with new Snapdragon C]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/938665/qualcomm-promises-300-windows-laptops-with-new-snapdragon-c" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=938665</id>
			<updated>2026-06-04T09:14:08-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-05-28T09:00:00-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Computex" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gadgets" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Laptops" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Microsoft" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Windows" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[They started at $1,000. Then $700. Then $600 budget machines. Now, Qualcomm says the price of its Arm-based Windows laptops will hit $300 this year. Even though RAMageddon has yet to subside and PC prices keep climbing, the company says it’s built a new budget laptop platform called Snapdragon C — “C” as in “Compute” [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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											<![CDATA[

						
<figure>

<img alt="Light grey Snapdragon C chip." data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Qualcomm" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/SNAPDRAGON.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" />
	<figcaption>
		</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">They started at $1,000. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/31/24210783/qualcomm-promises-snapdragon-x-pcs-will-cost-as-little-as-700-next-year">Then $700</a>. Then <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/6/24334870/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-laptops-mini-pcs-ces-2025">$600 budget machines</a>. Now, Qualcomm says the price of its Arm-based Windows laptops will hit $300 this year.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Even though <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/880812/ramageddon-ram-shortage-memory-crisis-price-2026-phones-laptops">RAMageddon</a> has yet to subside and PC prices keep climbing, the company says it’s built a new budget laptop platform <a href="https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2026/05/introducing-snapdragon-c--designed-to-revolutionize-entry-tier-l">called Snapdragon C</a> — “C” as in “Compute” — to keep entry-level laptops affordable.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">“With Snapdragon C, we are raising the bar for what budget-conscious laptop buyers should expect,” Qualcomm senior director of product management Mandar Deshpande told journalists on a conference call. “You get the benefits of a responsive system, lag-free performance, browsing, video calls, streaming, multitasking, everything.” Up until now, getting <em>everything</em> has been <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/908328/macbook-neo-windows-laptop-competitors-asus-lenovo-acer-review-comparison">a tall order even at $600</a>. Would these laptops really undercut <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/891741/apple-macbook-neo-a18-pro-review">the MacBook Neo</a> by up to half?</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The new laptops should also have “all-day battery life,” “not a lot of fan noise,” and be “a laptop that just works,” added Deshpande.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Qualcomm and partners are assuredly cutting some corners to get to $300. The new platform doesn’t use Qualcomm’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryon">Oryon CPU cores</a> that underpin all its latest Windows laptop and smartphone chips, for instance, but are instead based on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryo">older Kryo cores</a> found in older phones and Chromebooks. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">And while “even the slowest tier” will now have an NPU for local AI compute, they won’t meet Microsoft’s Copilot Plus PC requirements for its full suite of AI tools, the company admits.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Acer-Aspire-Go-15-Qualcomm-AG15-Q31P-01.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;The Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-Q31P, the first confirmed machine with Snapdragon C.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Acer" data-portal-copyright="Image: Acer" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Acer, HP, and Lenovo are the first partners. Acer is lightly announcing its system today: the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-Q31P. It’s a 15.6-inch 1080p laptop with “up to” 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, with two “full-function” USB-C ports, a USB-A port, an HDMI 1.4 port, Wi-Fi 6E, a 1080p webcam, and a 53Wh battery.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Acer isn’t sharing more detailed specs, a release date, or price yet, and neither HP nor Lenovo had models to share today. But they should ship this year.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">Qualcomm isn’t sharing more about the Snapdragon C platform itself yet either, though Deshpande says the company will be ready to do so in a couple months. He says multiple laptops are in development. Currently, the company is only announcing Snapdragon C for Windows laptops, saying it’s not ready to talk <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/928479/google-googlebook-laptops-android-tease-aluminium-chromebook">about Googlebooks</a> today.</p>
						]]>
									</content>
			
					</entry>
			<entry>
			
			<author>
				<name>Sean Hollister</name>
			</author>
			
			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Intel’s first handheld gaming chip is the Arc G3, and this Acer is using it]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/938692/intel-arc-g3-extreme-handheld-gaming" />
			<id>https://www.theverge.com/?p=938692</id>
			<updated>2026-05-31T22:49:21-04:00</updated>
			<published>2026-05-28T09:00:00-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Computex" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Microsoft" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="News" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="PC Gaming" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Tech" /><category scheme="https://www.theverge.com" term="Windows" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[Intel is barely in the handheld gaming PC space — but that might be about to change. After the embarrassment that was the first MSI Claw and the excellent MSI Claw 8 AI Plus that followed it, Intel said it would create custom handheld gaming chips. Today, it’s formally announcing them as the Arc G3 [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
							<content type="html">
											<![CDATA[

						
<figure>

<img alt="" data-caption="There’s a brand-new Intel chip underneath this render. | Image: Acer" data-portal-copyright="Image: Acer" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_1.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=5.6,0,94.4,100" />
	<figcaption>
	There’s a brand-new Intel chip underneath this render. | Image: Acer	</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="has-text-align-none">Intel is barely in the handheld gaming PC space — but that might be about to change. After the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/24105991/msi-claw-review" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.theverge.com/24105991/msi-claw-review">embarrassment that was the first MSI Claw</a> and the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/pc-gaming/769609/msi-claw-8-ai-plus-intel-review">excellent MSI Claw 8 AI Plus</a> that followed it, Intel said it would create <a href="https://www.theverge.com/tech/857252/intel-handheld-gaming-pc-panther-lake-custom-cpu">custom handheld gaming chips</a>. Today, it’s <a href="https://newsroom.intel.com/client-computing/intel-arc-g-series-processors-set-a-new-standard-for-handheld-pc-gaming">formally announcing</a> them as the Arc G3 and Arc G3 Extreme.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">There’s a lot we don’t know about the chips, but Intel’s confirming today that the Panther Lake variant contains two fewer CPU cores than Intel’s Panther Lake laptop chips, but feature a full compliment of Xe3 GPU cores to run games. (They have 2 P-cores, 8 E-eores, and 4 LP E-cores, plus up to 12 Xe3 graphics cores in total.)</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/SCR-20260528-gqln.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Intel" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">Intel will support them with day-0 graphics driver updates as new games come out, and precompiled shaders so you don’t have as much stutter or load time in games, it claims.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">And, they’ll feature in at least three handhelds: the leaked <a href="https://wccftech.com/msi-claw-8-ex-ai-with-arc-g3-extreme-spotted-at-an-australian-retailer-starting-at-1780/">MSI Claw 8 EX AI Plus</a>, the just-announced <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/one-netbook/onexplayer-3-next-gen-3-in-1-ai-gaming-and-productivity-handheld">OneXPlayer 3</a> with detachable controllers coming in June, and the just-announced Acer Predator Atlas 8 — which just might wind up being Acer’s <em>first</em> handheld after the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/4/24235413/acer-nitro-blaze-7-handheld-gaming-pc-specs">Acer Nitro Blaze 7</a>, 8, and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/852473/acer-nitro-blaze-11-gaming-handheld-what-happened">gigantic 11 went MIA</a>. </p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_15.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;The Predator Atlas 8, with dedicated Xbox Game Bar and “PredatorSense” buttons.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Acer" data-portal-copyright="Image: Acer" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">The new Atlas 8 will come in at least two variants, one with an Intel Arc G3 Extreme and its Arc B390 graphics with 12 Xe3 GPU cores, and one with an Intel Arc G3 and the Arc B370 with 10 Xe3 cores instead. Each is paired with 24GB of LPDDR5x RAM at 7467 MT/s, and cooled by “the first metal fan in a handheld” with 89 blades and a claimed 10 percent airflow increase over the competition.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The handheld will weigh around 810 grams (1.79lb) with a large 80Wh battery, or 770 grams (1.7lb) with an above-average 60Wh battery — presumably the higher end model comes with the bigger battery, like competing handhelds do.</p>
<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/PREDATOR-ATLAS-8-PA08-I51-Lifestyle-01.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="&lt;em&gt;All the ports are up on top.&lt;/em&gt; | Image: Acer" data-portal-copyright="Image: Acer" />
<p class="has-text-align-none">The 8-inch screen sounds above average, too. It’s a 1920 x 1200 IPS panel at 16:10 aspect ratio, in a native landscape arrangement, with 500 nits of brightness and 48-120Hz variable refresh rate, covered in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/23/21335252/corning-gorilla-glass-victus-drop-scratch-resistant-apple-samsung">Gorilla Glass Victus</a> with Corning’s DXC anti-glare coating with 100 percent sRGB and 77 percent Adobe RGB coverage.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">You won’t find magnetic Hall effect or TMR joysticks here, just carbon film ones that might eventually drift, but it does have Hall effect triggers with adjustable hair-trigger stops, two back buttons, and a fingerprint sensor in the power button. It’ll come with Windows 11 and Xbox Mode on up to a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD of the full-length M.2 2280 variety. While we haven’t held it yet, the spec sheet shows it’s roughly an inch thick (28.5mm) at its thinnest point and over two inches thick (58.37mm) at the grips.  </p>

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<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_5.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=4.5803249097473,0,90.839350180505,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="More images in our gallery. | Images: Acer" data-portal-copyright="Images: Acer" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_7.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=2.9226618705036,0,94.154676258993,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_14-1.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=2.9226618705036,0,94.154676258993,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_12.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0.63291139240506,0,98.73417721519,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />

<img src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/Predator-Atlas-8-PA08-I51-_11.jpeg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=12.690839694656,0,74.618320610687,100" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="" />
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<p class="has-text-align-none">And being an Intel platform, it comes with two Thunderbolt 4 ports (supporting 65W USB-C charging) and Intel’s flavor of Wi-Fi 7, as well as a UHS-II microSD card reader and 3.5mm headset jack. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none">The company’s not talking battery life or price just yet, but it’s planning to launch the Atlas 8 in October. </p>

<p class="has-text-align-none"><a href="https://wccftech.com/msi-claw-8-ex-ai-with-arc-g3-extreme-spotted-at-an-australian-retailer-starting-at-1780/">Retailer leaks</a> suggest these handhelds could be quite pricey. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way of all handhelds these days: The <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/938340/valve-steam-deck-price-increase">Steam Deck got a huge price hike</a> just yesterday.</p>

<p class="has-text-align-none"><em><strong>Update, May 28th: </strong>Added more info from Intel and OneXPlayer, including confirmation of two more handhelds.</em></p>
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