‘The most eye-watering thing I’ve seen since the solar eclipse’ — experiencing the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+’s staggering performance honestly blew my mind but I’m afraid I can’t get over that absurd price tag

MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ review: two-minute review The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is a high-octane handheld games console that can run PC and Xbox games from a wide range of game stores.

With the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chipset — featuring the Intel Arc B390 GPU and 32GB RAM — it’s easily the most powerful portable console I’ve ever (quite literally) gotten my hands on.

But there’s a pretty huge catch to that performance: a price tag that would buy you two Steam Deck OLEDs or a mid-price gaming laptop.

Let’s start with the superficial stuff: the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ looks gorgeous.

Its screen is an extensive eight inches across, offers wonderfully rich colors and a silky-smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

Combined with its discreet RGB lighting around the asymmetrically placed thumbsticks and Void Purple colorway, it has a unique look that definitely helps it stand out from the crowd.

But its design goes far beyond aesthetics.

Its Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers should not only offer greater longevity, but they felt really responsive, even if they’re not quite as sensitive as the TMR versions now offered by some controllers.

Meanwhile, it felt perfectly ergonomic in my hands — I was genuinely surprised how light it felt for a 1.73 lb / 786g console — although its laser-etched grips sure made my hands feel sweaty, for some reason.

What cements the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ as one of the best handheld games consoles out there, though, is its performance.

It’s the first gaming handheld on the market with the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chipset and, boy, does that have a pronounced effect on how it plays.

While benchmarks showed it offered similar CPU performance to the recent Asus ROG Xbox Ally X , thanks to its Intel Arc B390 GPU and 32GB RAM, it managed to smash its 3D Mark benchmarks by between 35% and 76% — that’s a significant performance upgrade.

Numbers only tell part of the story, though: what was the Claw actually like in action? Well, Baldur’s Gate 3 looked truly gorgeous on Ultra graphics settings and yet it hovered around a decent 38fps.

Meanwhile, despite only being released in 2025, both Doom: The Dark Ages and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 played at a rock-solid 60fps — whether I was punching demons to death or countering devastating attacks, there wasn’t a hint of latency or lag.