MSI Claw 8 AI+ Review

Introduction

It was always going to be easy for MSI to improve the Claw. The first iteration was regarded as a complete non-starter compared to the Steam Deck, the Lenovo Legion Go, and the Asus ROG Ally. But MSI has done so much more than just make simple refinements to the Claw 8 AI+, it’s gone above and beyond to create a proper contender in the best PC handheld space. 

With improved software, performance, and battery life, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is an impressive bit of kit that takes almost every task in its stride. While there are negatives to the device – namely its price and the occasional Center M quirk – the performance of this handheld compared to its predecessor is a remarkable turn around. 

But is it enough to worry the big players in the market?

Design

• Improved vent design
• 2x Thunderbolt USB-C ports
• 120g heavier than the Claw A1M

While MSI certainly had to go back to the drawing board with its handheld, the Claw’s design remains largely unchanged. What has changed, though, are the dimensions. Now sporting an 8-inch FHD+ screen and 80Whr battery, the Claw’s bigger than ever.

It’s not quite the biggest handheld we’ve tested – that title belongs to the Legion Go – but it is noticeably larger than the Ally, pushing it into a category of handhelds that feel ever so slightly less portable than they should be. 

The added size comes with extra weight, the 8 AI+ now weighs 795g, 120g more than its predecessor and slightly heavier than the Ally X. MSI has tried to offset this with its ergonomic grips, which are comfortable and well-shaped. However, during long gaming sessions, I found myself needing to either take breaks or find something to rest it on.

Thankfully, resting the Claw on a cushion no longer causes the fans to overwork, due to redesigned vents positioned just above the macro buttons on both sides. This not only improves air flow and comfort but also gives the device a much neater, symmetrical look. 

Beyond just function, MSI has also refined the Claw’s overall aesthetic. Despite being made of plastic, the Claw doesn’t feel cheap, and the new Sandstone colour adds a sleek, modern aesthetic that stands out from the usual black-and-white handhelds. 

This attention to detail extends well beyond the finish. The power button, with an in-built fingerprint scanner, is positioned for easy access with your left-hand, making sign-ins so much faster.

One of my favourite details are the raised dots that sit over the SD card reader and two Thunderbolt ports. This means in low lighting, you no longer have to fumble in the dark to plug your handheld in – you just run your finger across the top to find the port. 

The extra Thunderbolt 4 slot also means you can plug your device into your monitor for 4K gaming at home or even into an external GPU to give it just a bit of extra juice. 

Controls

• Redesigned control design make a big difference
• Fingerprint security for quick sign-ins
• Hall effect sticks are brilliant

The 8 AI+ has all the same controls as the original Claw, but the design of some of the buttons have been changed to improve the overall performance. 

While the layout of the controls is largely the same as before, the design of the bumpers and the macro buttons have been rethought. The bumpers are now much easier to find and push, while the macro buttons have been flattened to reduce any accidental mislicks. 

MSI has also tweaked the design of the four shortcut buttons, which are positioned around the screen. These are relatively easy to find – even as someone with small hands – but I was particularly disappointed to learn that the right-hand side menu button still opens up the settings pane on the left-hand side of the screen. This makes navigation slightly trickier, as you have to shift the weight of the Claw onto your left hand to use the touchscreen. The software for these buttons can also be a bit fiddly but they are spaced out well and relatively easy to press.

Aside from that, the Claw’s controls work really well. The D-pad, shoulder, and trigger buttons are incredibly tactile and responsive, and the Hall effect thumbsticks feel nice to the touch. I put these to the test in several games from Rocket League to Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and they felt incredibly responsive. 

The face buttons aren’t particularly loud when pressed and the D-pad is surprisingly soft to the touch. However, I will say that the raised edges on the D-pad catch the underside of your thumb if you’re trying to perform combinations, which isn’t exactly ideal.

Display

• Bigger screen than the Claw A1M 
• Smooth 120Hz refresh rate
• Now finally features VRR

The success of the Steam Deck OLED now means everyone wants handhelds with fancy displays. While the Claw 8 AI+ doesn’t deliver on our OLED desires, it does give us an improved display.

This time around MSI has opted for an 8-inch FHD+ 120Hz display over the 7-inch FHD display from the original claw. It also now has a variable refresh rate, which was one of the main criticisms of the original Claw. 

The quality of the 1920×1200 resolution display is surprisingly good. It packs in plenty of detail, especially when compared to the 800p 90Hz Steam Deck OLED screen, and feels smoother and more responsive. And at 500 nits, it is plenty bright to game on in all conditions – even in sunlight.

The colours are rich and vibrant, but because it’s an IPS LCD screen, the contrast isn’t fantastic. I found that in particularly dark scenes, like night time in Horizon Zero Dawn or Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, I had to boost the brightness to see what I was doing. It’s not ideal, but it is to be expected with an IPS panel. 

That being said, I can’t do much else to fault the display. It’s big, bright, and inviting, and I’ve enjoyed playing games on it.

Performance

• The Intel hardware impresses
• Benchmarks are some of the best we’ve seen
• The Claw stays cool, even under load

The MSI Claw 8 AI+ is the first handheld we’ve seen that’s powered by Intel Lunar Lake. While there was a slight concern over MSI’s decision to stick with Intel over AMD, it’s clear that call has paid off.

In simple terms, the Claw’s performance is the best yet, beating every other handheld we’ve benchmarked so far. But first, let’s look at the specs.

Under the hood, MSI has crammed a powerful Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, which is built to prioritise power efficiency, an improved Intel Arc 140V iGPU, which has eight Xe² cores and eight ray-tracing units at its disposal. That’s quite the statement from a company whose first handheld failed to make a splash.

For memory, it has 32GB of LPDDR5x-8533 RAM and storage wise, 1TB SSD will keep you going, but there’s also a micro SD card slot hiding on the top rail should you need it.

The specs are a marked improvement from the original model and those improvements made themselves abundantly clear in our benchmarks. 

Against the Steam Deck OLED, the Ally, Ally X, Ayaneo 2S, and the Lenovo Legion Go, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ consistently came out on top for our 3DMark Time Spy, PC Mark 10, and Geekbench scores. This shows the power of the partnership of the Intel CPU and iGPU in performing both gaming and office-based tasks. 

The Claw also has fantastic SSD performance with a read speed of 6155.43MB/s and a write speed of 5301.85MS/s according to Crystal Disk Mark, suggesting game installs and loading screens should complete with ease. 

While the numbers above are certainly impressive, there is a caveat. The Claw does what it needs to and on paper it looks like the obvious choice, but when it comes to actual performance, the handheld isn’t as consistent as I’d have liked. In games like Rocket League, FC 25, Firewatch, and The Invicibles, the Claw was able to hold a steady 60 or so FPS. 

However, in more graphically demanding games like Horizon Zero Dawn, the Claw struggled to maintain a decent average. This was particularly noticeable in Kingdom Come Deliverance, where my FPS dipped to as low as 16 once I entered the city of Guttenberg. To fix this, I had to drop the graphical settings down, but even then, it struggled to stay stable.

To understand the performance better, I put the Claw to the test, benchmarking three games – Horizon Zero Dawn, Cyberpunk 2077, and Dirt Rally – at the highest level of graphics at 720p and 1080p. I did these benchmarks at 8W, 17W, 30W, as well as the AI and Endurance settings to give you a better idea of how these can affect performance and power efficiency. 

These tests were also performed on battery as the Claw is designed to be a portable handheld. 

As you can see, the Claw is by far one of the most powerful portable handhelds yet, but its performance can be fairly spotty. In our Horizon Zero Dawn tests, the Rog Ally just beats the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and the Rog Ally X at 720p by a single frame, but at 1080p, the Claw runs away with it with an average of 40 fps. This is a similar story for Cyberpunk 2077, where the Ally X pips the Claw in our 720p tests, but not in our 1080p tests.

However, it seemed to struggle a bit with Dirt Rally. At 720p, the Claw managed 56 fps to the Ally X’s 83, and at 1080p, the Claw struggled with an average of 36 fps, compared to the Ally  X’s 55 fps. 

The Claw performs at its best at 30W, but the benchmarking proves that you’re not going to sacrifice too much by allowing the AI to tweak your settings for you – providing, of course, that you have the power cable ready when you eventually near that 15% battery mark. 

The other thing to say is that even at load, the Claw stays pretty cool. The fans do kick in quite a bit, especially when playing more recent triple-A titles, but they’re quite quiet. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they’re silent as I definitely noticed their gentle whir when I was playing in bed one night, but they’re quiet enough for your partner to ignore and sleep soundly next to you if required.

You can change the fan curve if you want, but the default settings are enough to keep the Claw nice and cool. 

Battery Life

• Best battery life in our testing yet
• The 80Whr battery last hours, even with demanding games
• But AI settings can get in the way of performance

The MSI Claw 8 AI+ follows the trend of handheld PCs with bigger batteries – except in the Claw’s case, it does it better. 

With a 80Wh battery, which is only found in the Asus Rog Ally X, the Claw offers some of the best battery life in the market right now. In fact, in our PCMark 10 battery tests, the Claw delivered results of 3 hours 19 minutes – that’s the best in our handheld testing yet. 

Of course, the actual battery life depends on how you use the Claw, what resolution you play your games in, and what your TDP is set to. For the most part, I found leaving the TDP on 17W  gave me the best battery performance during my testing – especially in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, where I got just over two hours of game time at 1200p on medium settings.

I also tried the Claw in our Horizon Zero Dawn tests, playing the game at 720p on Ultra. With the TPD set to 17W, I was able to get just over three hours worth of game time, putting the Claw just ahead of the Ally X.

I also experimented quite a bit with the AI preset, which allows the device to change the power draw on the fly. The AI setting’s TDP mostly sat at around 16-17W, but I found that as the battery life dwindled, so too did the performance of the Claw. Despite turning off all battery saving settings, the AI basically put the handheld into power saving mode when it hit ~15%. While testing this with Horizon Zero Dawn and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, I saw my FPS drop from around 30 FPS to around 10 in just seconds, introducing stuttering in the process.

As for charging times, well the Claw takes just over two hours to be fully charged with the 65W charger included in the box. It’s worth noting that if you’re just topping up the battery rather than charging it from zero, you can still use the device and play games on it – it just takes much longer to charge. 

It’s safe to say that the 80Whr battery is a massive improvement over the original model and the numbers speak for themselves. 

Games and Software

• Comes with Windows 11 and Microsoft Copilot+
• Can install games from any storefront
• Improved MSI Control panel

If the original Claw was remembered for anything, it was for its dreadful software. Fortunately MSI’s Center M software has been improved for the 8 AI+ but it’s still not perfect. 

During my first few days of testing, I found the handset glitched between desktop and gaming mode, locking out the face buttons from being used until I restarted the handset. I’ve not been able to replicate this at all and I’m hoping it’s just a bug that’ll be fixed by an update, but it did force me to abandon playing a game. 

One of the most prominent problems, though, is the way in which the software interacts with games. While testing FC 25, Rocket League, and Cyberpunk 2077, the MSI Quick settings sidebar would appear instantly when requested. The same goes for the Center M menu. However, in Horizon Zero Dawn and The Invicibles, requesting one of these via the shortcut buttons would result in a horrendous delay – sometimes up to ten seconds – that would often pull you out of the game completely.

Let me be clear, when the software works, it’s fluid and easy to use, but when it doesn’t it’s a frustrating experience. I’m sure MSI will fix it in a future update, but for now it’s something to consider if you’re weighing up your options against one of the other hugely popular handheld devices. 

MSI has also put a huge focus on AI with this model, as indicated by the name. As well as the AI engine the device has, the Claw ships with Microsoft Copilot+, allowing you to perform some tasks like X using cloud-based processing. The AI engine itself has its pros and cons, but beyond that, I don’t think the average user will interact with it much.

Should you buy it?