What would happen if you took the internals out of a next-gen Intel NUC Extreme, fitted it inside an oversized game controller case, added in all the buttons, sticks, triggers, and bumpers one could ever want, then gave it a (relatively) large touchscreen, then bestowed upon their creation a proper Operating System… and then added in a massive battery for hours of cordless gaming? That is obviously the question an MSI engineer wondered aloud one day, and the mad lads at MSI decided to find out when they created the CLAW blueprint. To varying degrees of success… with, in the past, most usually falling somewhere slightly better than ‘meh’ but never really being serious competition to the ROG Ally series. Now though? Now Intel has finally started to create System-on-a-Chip solutions that combine – on the same chunk of sand – insanely powerful yet (relatively) low energy consumption GPUs to go along with insanely powerful yet relatively low energy consuming CPUs. Which, in turn, MSI made into the foundation of their new MSI CLAW EX AI+ model.
This new beastly creation may certainly be a wee bit of a chonker (tipping the scales at 785grams or 1 pound, 11.7oz in hamburger helper units)… but it is easily the most powerful handheld gaming device to grace the market. One with so much horsepower it arguably does not blur the line between lowered-expectation gaming devices and proper portable computing… it erases it. Think 2 “Performance” Cores capable of 4.7Ghz. Think 8 “energy” cores cruising along at 3.5Ghz (and yet sipping power like a designated driver at a frat house rager). Think another 4 extremely “Low Power” cores that are still more capable than any ARM core to grace any Android Tablet released to date. All backstopped with a proper 35 watts of power… with optional 45 PL2 setting for even more short-term, math-crunching performance.
Think 32 Gigabytes (aka one truck payment’s worth) of blazing-fast LPDDR5-8533 to handle any Windows game released (so far)… or even enough that one can run BlueStacks and comfortably emulate any Android game ever. Better still, 32GB is enough to properly run Microsoft… errr… Totally Not AI Vibe Coded™ Windows 11 (albeit it only comes with the Home edition of Windows 11). Thus allowing it to run every PC game (and their accompanying store… all via MS Center M) released to date. Including old-school DOS and even earlier-gen game console games. All of which can be stored on its full-sized M.2 2280 NVMe drive, USB 4 ‘thumb drives’, or even on a (not included) NVMe based microSD Express card… all because this portable computer comes with both proper internal storage and proper high-performance removable storage abilities.
If all that is not enough to impress, this line-blurring… line-destroying “handheld gaming device” comes with a proper GPU (BattleMage B390) and a proper NPU (capable of 46 Trillion Operations Per Second). Meaning one can run Photoshop (or better still PhotoCraft once it gets out of Beta) with all its “AI” features enabled. One can run DaVinci Resolve Studio without tearing one’s hair out. One can run StaxRip for proper encoding at “good enough” frames per second, and then play those videos back on KODI… on a big-screen TV. Wirelessly. One can do all that and even run Word or Excel to get actual work done on a secondary screen while you (pretend to) get your PhD coursework completed. All seamlessly and without a hitch. All from a so-called handheld gaming device. A device whose marketing focuses more on the fact it has enough video processing horsepower to run AAA games on its integrated (500nits, 100%sRGB, multi-touch enabled, 1920×1200 – aka the superior 16:10 format) screen than on highlighting just how much real-world power it has.
If all that sounds like a late-night 90s infomercial and you are waiting for the catch to go along with the ‘’but wait, there’s more!’’ hook your cynical heart will not be disappointed…because there is one. Namely the price. With an asking price of (as of the release of this review) $2149 CAD, this new MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ also blurs the line between what a “laptop” and “gaming device” will set you back.
As such, it is not a question if it beats the ROG Ally X20 and Steam Deck like they are late paying the vig… because obviously it can. So, no, that is not the question you should be asking. The actual question is a much harsher litmus test: can it offer enough performance to justify its asking price? For example, is it good enough that maybe instead of an Ally X20, a PlayStation, and a high-end laptop you can save a bit of dosh and just get the CLAW, a TB4 HUB, and a decent laptop. That, to us, is the actually interesting question. Not if it is superior to other handheld gaming devices… because obviously it should be. So without further ado, let us find out the answer to that question.
