It’s been a massive year for handhelds and it doesn’t look set to slow down anytime soon with MSI releasing a follow up to the first major Intel handheld the MSI Claw with the MSI Claw 8 AI+. I had nice surprised over the weekend when I rolled up to PAX Australia and saw that it was hands-on at the MSI booth.
I had a few weeks with the original MSI Claw earlier this year, traveling to Taiwan with it, and being really impressed with the form factor and battery life of the product, but it was hard for it to match other seasoned handhelds such as the ASUS ROG Ally, but the MSI Claw 8 AI+ feels like an entirely different product all together.
Whilst my hands-on time was brief, it’s very clear that this is one to keep an eye on. The biggest change is that it has a larger 8-inch display which already puts it in a league of its own. Whilst the Lenovo Legion Go also has an 8-inch display, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ feels a lot thinner and lighter than that, having not much more of a bigger footprint than 7-inch devices.
Whilst it’s not an OLED display, it is a brighter screen coming in at 500 nits of brightness, and even under the harsh lights of PAX, it looked absolutely fantastic whilst playing Cyberpunk 2077 with the neon colours absolutely popping. It’s a 120hz display as well, so you’ll be able to take advantage of those faster frame rates.
The Claw 8 AI+ has a distinct look about it with a grey/beige colour that I’m not the biggest fan of if I’m being honest just because I’m a fan of all black tech, but I do like that it really separates itself from a design point of view, and it does look extremely premium.
Whilst the ergonomics of the original MSI Claw were already great, some improvements have been made here with new triggers that feel a lot more tactile and better to press, as well as redesigned back buttons that equally felt like they sat in a better spot in your hands.
Other changes include a second Thunderbolt 4 port which is a great addition as it means you can charge whilst connecting another USB-C port for peripherals and such, and MSI Control Centre M has also been improved although admittedly, I only got a brief chance to play with it.
Whilst there’s a new Intel Lunar Lake Chip that features AI processing in the Claw 8 AI+, I obviously didn’t really get a good feel for how it was running, but Cyberpunk 2077 ran fairly well on the chip. There’s also a bigger 80wh battery (same as the Ally X) which should go a long way.
We don’t have final pricing for the MSI Claw 8 AI+ just yet, but we do know it’s going to release at the start of 2025 (likely January), so we’ll let you know when have final specs and release information, but for the moment, it’s still an exciting time to be a handheld fan.
