MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

Design

• Wider than rivals, but more stable in-hand
• Pleasant purple colourway
• Solid port selection

When I first got hands-on with the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM back at Computex, I initially found it quite unwieldy, with it seeming quite wide in-hand by comparison to rivals from Lenovo and Asus.

However, on closer inspection and with longer-term use, it turns out I misjudged MSI’s latest handheld. It is a smidgen wider than the Legion Go 2, for instance, but it feels quite stable in hand as a result.

At 785g, it’s over 100 grams lighter than the Legion Go 2, too, which is more noticeable than you may think. Unfortunately, though, MSI doesn’t provide an integrated kickstand for propping this device up if you want to use an external controller.

Unlike its contemporaries, MSI has stuck with the idea of putting its handhelds in funky colours, with the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM coming in a pleasant dark purple hue. There are extra splashes of colour thanks to the RGB-enabled rings around the thumbsticks on either side.

The control layout MSI has opted for is identical to an Xbox controller, with a pair of diagonally opposing thumbsticks on either side of the screen, plus a D-Pad on the left and ABXY buttons on the right.

Ports-wise, the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM utilises a pair of USB4 Type-C ports on top, plus a microSD card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. This is par for the course with these handhelds, although I maintain it would be nice to see a little more variety, such as a USB-A for connecting wireless peripherals without the polling rate limitations of Bluetooth.

Controls

• Familiar Xbox controller layout
• Comfortable Hall effect thumbsticks
• Redesigned D-Pad for added tactility

The general feel of the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM’s controls is familiar if you’ve used an Xbox controller for even a femtosecond, as it splits a standard controller in half between the 8- inch screen, providing all the controls you need. ABXY buttons, thumbsticks and a D-Pad are all here. 

MSI has retained the same Hall effect thumbsticks as previous Claw handhelds, meaning they’re a lot more accurate and durable than more traditional mechanisms. They have a smooth feel to them in use, and are slightly smaller than the thumbsticks you’ll find on a proper Xbox controller.

The top side is home to a set of shoulder buttons and Hall effect triggers that have some useful texturing on them and good travel for analogue inputs. As previously mentioned, there are also two shallow, but clicky paddles on the rear side.

The D-Pad has been redesigned to some degree, with the same design as MSI’s previous handhelds, although the brand has now added a metal dome inside. This adds some clickiness to it and an extra degree of tactility, which is always welcome.

My general impressions when running through some Hitman World of Assassination over the cloud or with Forza Horizon 5 natively on the unit are positive, and I had no issues with how the controls felt. I also feel obliged to say there is some good rumble, and the pair of 2W speakers are generally decent.

Display

• Large IPS screen
• Punchy brightness, but middling elsewhere
• Okay resolution for the size

Rather disappointingly, the screen on the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM doesn’t seem to have changed too much from previous Claw handhelds, as MSI has stuck with an 8-inch 1920×1200 resolution IPS panel, with a higher 120Hz refresh rate.

Going for IPS over OLED at this higher price point is perhaps a bit of a surprise, especially given OLED is becoming more popular for handhelds – the Legion Go 2 has an OLED panel, as does Asus’ new ROG Xbox Ally X20, and of course, the Steam Deck OLED has one. It may be the case that MSI faced the same trade-off as Asus originally did between OLED and variable refresh rate as with the first ROG Xbox Ally models.

Nonetheless, getting my trusty colorimeter out revealed this to be a punchy screen, with a peak brightness of 483.4 nits and some okay contrast for the panel type, with a 1520:1 ratio. The 0.26 black level out of the box is fine, if unremarkable.

For mainstream gaming workloads, the 98% sRGB colour accuracy is more than fine, although the 76% result for both the DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB gamuts means it isn’t a screen for anything more than that. Given this device’s purpose, it isn’t much of a miss.

In a general sense, I found the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM’s panel to provide decent detail with a 1920×1200 max resolution, plus the 120Hz refresh rate certainly aids in providing a sharper and smoother feel than 60Hz choices, which is very welcome. It is lacking a bit of depth and overall sharpness against an OLED panel, though.

Performance

• G3 Extreme provides immense power
• Fantastic gaming performance for a handheld
• Solid RAM and SSD configuration

The big thing with the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM isn’t necessarily on the outside, but rather inside. It’s one of the first handhelds to pack Intel’s Arc G3 Extreme SoC, which leverages the grunt we’ve seen with its new Panther Lake chips and a beefier iGPU than its previous Intel chips and packs it into a specific SKU designed for gaming handhelds like this one.

MSI claims that the Arc G3 Extreme should unlock 42% faster performance on average compared to the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme kitted out in other handhelds. For reference, this is a 14-core chip (with the core count split between two Performance cores, eight Efficiency cores and four Low Power Efficiency cores) with 14 threads (as there isn’t hyperthreading), and a boost clock of up to 4.7GHz.

The closest laptop chip to this is the Core Ultra X7 358H you’ll find in laptops such as the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, although the G3 Extreme misses out on two cores and threads. Running through synthetic benchmarks reveals similarly potent single-core scores in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 (at least when plugged in), although there is a drop-off in multi-threaded tasks owing to that slightly lower core and thread count.

Against Z2E, we’re seeing a major boost in grunt in both single- and multi-threaded loads, especially when plugged in, which is a testament to the beefiness of Intel’s Panther Lake architecture. Even when unplugged, it’s still faster, and there isn’t much of a drop-off in synthetic performance when the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM runs unplugged.

The real draw of the G3 Extreme, though, is the presence of the full-fat Arc B390 iGPU we’ve seen in these top-spec Panther Lake laptops, with 12 Xe3 cores that make a marked difference to the integrated graphics performance and overall raw power against previous Intel chips we’ve seen in handhelds.

In terms of actual games, I ran everything both plugged in with the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM with its full 45W TDP, and unplugged, which runs between 20W and 35W. Both are a considerable step up from the 15W Balanced mode on rivals like the Legion Go 2, and it shows in the numbers.

Plugged in, I saw Cyberpunk 2077 hit 35.30fps at 1080p in its Ultra preset, while Returnal managed 47fps at Epic. Both are comfortably ahead of the 27.09fps and 24fps I saw from the Legion Go 2, and they’re playable without having to compromise too much on visuals. Drop Cyberpunk to High, and you’re looking at 41.67fps, while Returnal climbs to 54fps.

Upscaling helps further. With XeSS 3.0 on Auto, Cyberpunk 2077 reached 44.05fps at Ultra, and Returnal jumped to 60fps at Epic, or 72fps if you drop the resolution to 720p. Ray tracing is still a stretch for a handheld, though. Cyberpunk with RT Ultra manages just 13.96fps at 1080p, but XeSS gets that up to a far more usable 27.42fps.

Unplugged, the drop is surprisingly small. Cyberpunk 2077 posted 34.63fps at Ultra and 41.66fps at High, while Returnal ran at 41fps at Epic. The Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM doesn’t have to be tethered to a wall to deliver a good gaming experience, which can’t be said of every handheld.

For less demanding and more competitive titles such as Rainbow Six Extraction, this hit 105fps at 1080p plugged in with its dynamic resolution at the default highest preset (102fps unplugged). That’s almost enough to max out the 120Hz refresh rate of the panel without touching any settings, and dropping to 720p pushes it all the way up to 162fps plugged in, or 158fps unplugged.

Forza Horizon 5 was just as strong. At 1080p on the High preset, I saw an average of 87fps plugged in and 84fps unplugged. Switch to the Medium preset, and that rises to 94fps either way at 1080p, while 720p Medium hit 120fps plugged in and 113fps unplugged, which is plenty for a handheld screen of this size.

With the move to XeSS 3, Intel has also added Multi Frame Gen powers in a similar vein to Nvidia’s move to DLSS4 (and now DLSS 4.5) with the RTX 50 series of discrete cards. This is operated in a different manner to DLSS, utilising a multiplier override in Intel’s graphics software, rather than the game itself, requiring the game’s graphics to have XeSS Frame Generation enabled before restarting once enabling the chosen multiplier (2x, 3x, or 4x). There is likely to be a latency hit with Intel’s MFG as with Nvidia’s, and it’s common sense to aim for as high a base FPS figure as possible to minimise latency and for a smoother experience.

Intel has said that if a game already supports XeSS 2, then it’ll automatically support XeSS 3, which was the case with Cyberpunk 2077, where I tested it. It was as easy as enabling XeSS Frame Gen in the game’s settings, shutting it down, choosing the 4x multiplier in Intel’s software and rebooting Cyberpunk. At 1080p, it took rasterised Ultra Cyberpunk 2077 up to 137.82fps, and RT: Ultra to 88.25fps when plugged in. For an iGPU, it’s very impressive.

The Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM comes with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM running at a brisk 8533MT/s to provide solid headroom for intensive gaming loads, while a 1TB SSD is solid for storing your games. When plugged in, it’s quite a fast one, too, with measured reads and writes of 7039.44 MB/s and 6378.93 MB/s, respectively – unplug the handheld, though, and speeds drop down to MB/s and MB/s, respectively.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 2 hours 31 minutes in the gaming battery test
• 65W brick puts charge back into it fast

The Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM features a large 80Whr cell, which is the same size as the ROG Ally X and its associated Xbox counterpart, and double the size of the battery in the original Asus ROG Ally.

With the brightness dialled down to the same 150 nits we use for laptop testing, this MSI handheld managed to last for 15 hours 42 minutes on a charge with the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark test, which is respectable and consistent with its more conventional laptop compatriots.

Gaming is of course a bigger battery drain, and in the PCMark 10 Gaming benchmark, it went down to two hours and 31 minutes of use before conking out. This is about the same as some of the other beefier handhelds I’ve tested, and means you’ll want to keep a power bank or the 65W power brick nearby if you’re going to be using the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM for an extended period.

That said, it’s a reasonably brisk adapter in putting charge back into that 80Whr cell, taking 45 minutes to get it from zero to 50 percent, while a full charge took closer to 100 minutes.

Games & Software

• Xbox FSE and MSI Center M as launcher options
• Slick, console-type UI with Windows 11 underneath
• Some teething problems and finicky elements

The Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM comes running full-fat desktop Windows 11, working as the base operating system atop which you can run a choice of launchers to make this MSI handheld feel more like a proper gaming handheld.

Microsoft recently updated Windows 11 to include Xbox FSE out of the box, and sure enough, this MSI handheld launched straight into the Xbox app to provide a slick, console-like interface. It pulls all of your games installed from different apps into one convenient list, regardless of whether they’re installed via the Xbox app itself or through third-party launchers such as Steam and Ubisoft Connect. Launching a game is as easy as clicking on it – it pulls through the relevant process and boots the game with ease.

That said, to actually install anything, you have to swipe up and go into desktop Windows 11, which remains infuriating to try and use on a touchscreen. Without a trackpad, as you get on the Legion Go 2, it’s much more difficult to navigate around the interface.

The MSI app that the Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM comes with is okay as a secondary option, as it provides a quick and easy means of getting into installed games that get pulled through from whichever launcher you use – Steam, Ubisoft Connect, Epic Games or whichever. It isn’t as feature-rich as Asus’ ROG Armoury Crate SE by any means, though, and at times, it can be a little buggy and blow a gasket. 

Should you buy it?