MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ Review: Great Power, Shocking Price

It’s practically covered in ports—two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C, a microSD slot, and even a 3.5-mm audio jack. It’s relatively future-proof, allowing you to upgrade the SSD (if they’re ever affordable again), with Wi-Fi 7 support.

It’s all crammed into a “Void Purple” shell that impresses with a premium feel. An etched micro-texture offers a secure grip, while the Xbox-standard control layout is within easy reach for most players, although the four menu and system buttons flanking the screen may require a stretch. Analog sticks (encircled with LED light halos, naturally) and shoulder triggers are built with Hall effect sensors for improved accuracy and long-term resilience and offer a nice degree of resistance when pressed. The chunky, angular D-pad feels great too, although its concave shape may take a moment to get used to, and its glossy plastic picks up microscratches easily.

Although it’s running Windows 11 under the hood, the full-screen Xbox Mode takes the lead, giving a unified view of games installed from any storefront. The Claw lacks a dedicated Xbox system button, but with two mappable rear grip buttons, it’s easy enough to assign one. Given that you can install any other client, I set the other as a Steam menu button, useful for shortcuts when running Steam’s Big Picture Mode.

Despite the Claw’s 785-gram heft, its ergonomics and weight distribution compensate wonderfully. It outweighs both the Steam Deck and the ROG Xbox Ally X, but I found it much more comfortable to use, even for protracted play sessions. Advanced haptics also impress, with a nice sense of feedback accurately representing on-screen action.

The screen is great, but not amazing. The IPS panel delivers a crisp, clear image with brightness up to 500 nits, but at this price, I’d hope for an OLED panel to make colors really pop. That 120-Hz VRR ensures a smooth image at least, and the 16:10 aspect ratio gives a subtle but noticeable bit more real estate to your games.

I wasn’t initially a fan of the screen extending below the “shell” of the unit, but it’s a clever design, serving as a kickstand to let the handheld stand vertically. This is surprisingly useful if you want to connect the device to an output dock for TV play. I used an OWC Thunderbolt Go dock, and while it’s not as elegant or secure as sliding a Nintendo Switch 2 into its caddy, it means the Claw can fit neatly into a media unit. Just pair a game controller and you’re good for big-screen gaming.

Arc de Triomphe

Photograph: Matt Kamen

The real star of the Claw is Intel’s new Arc chipset, which delivers phenomenal results. The Arc G3 Extreme is built around Intel’s Panther Lake architecture, which offers a massive performance increase over the preceding Lunar Lake chips. It’s significantly faster than pretty much any other chip in a PC handheld, and Intel’s XeSS—Xe Super Sampling, its answer to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR—can improve performance further with smart upscaling and frame generation.