Our Verdict
The price tag is almost a tragedy, but the silicon is stellar. That feels like the epitaph for PC gaming hardware in 2026, and makes the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM a tough recommendation to anyone except those willing to pay through the nose for the outright best around.
For
- Stellar gaming performance
- Excellent battery life
- Comfortable to use
- Good screen
Against
- Tragically expensive
- Multiple menus fighting for control
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It's clear the new MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM is the best gaming handheld in terms of almost all the metrics that count. It's the most powerful—delivering gaming performance well beyond that of the ROG Xbox Ally X with its AMD-powered Z2 Extreme APU—and it has an absolutely killer battery life, too. But these aren't the only metrics that count. Sure, they're the key ones if we're talking about what it's like to actually live with the MSI Claw 8 etc. but there's a large hurdle to get over before then. And it's a hurdle built out of pure cash.
The Claw 8 etc. is a handheld that's become as much of a casualty of the current memory and hardware crisis as the Steam Machine. To the point where, here at launch it's just looking like a near $2,000 toy for the really rather rich.
And this is a real failing for a handheld gaming PC. These aren't devices that are meant to be your sole machine; they're complementary systems for when you're travelling around, or just want to sit on a sofa instead of at your gaming desk. Which is why the Steam Deck was such a success. It understood the balance of price and performance was vital in this burgeoning market, and that it needed to be something additive to your gaming experience, not exclusory. And other players, such as Asus and Lenovo, were able to use their buying power to keep costs relatively low for their own subsequent devices.
That's all out of the window now, because there is no way to produce an affordable version of a handheld rocking the outstanding Intel Arc G3 Extreme silicon, whatever your buying power is. Which is a huge shame, because it really is the best gaming handheld I've ever spent time with. The chip at its heart is almost the entire reason behind that; because of its mix of extreme power and extreme Panther Lake efficiency it nails what I've always wanted a handheld gaming PC to be.
The level of compromise over the visual quality and frame rate of your games is impressively light, and while range anxiety is not necessarily a solved issue, the Endurance mode battery life is a bit of a revelation. But it's not all about Intel's silicon, because the enhanced MSI Claw design also plays its part. The weight is beautifully distributed, making it feel far lighter than it should, and the extended controller grips make it far more comfortable for a long session.
Buy if...
✅ You want the best handheld silicon: The MSI Claw 8 etc. is the current pinnacle of handheld gaming PC technology and if that's what you need in your life, it's right here for you.
Don't buy if...
❌ A handheld needs to be an affordable second-device: At $1,800 the Claw 8 etc. costs the same as a full Radeon RX 9070 XT gaming PC, making it very much a luxury purchase and an impulse buy only for the mega-loaded.
The price tag is almost a tragedy, but the silicon is stellar. That feels like the epitaph for PC gaming hardware in 2026, and makes the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM a tough recommendation to anyone except those willing to pay through the nose for the outright best around.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ features
Processor | Intel Arc G3 Extreme processor |
Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
Chipset | Integrated SoC |
Memory | 32 GB LPDDR5x-8533 onboard, dual channel |
Display | 8-inch FHD+ (1920 x 1200), Touchscreen, 48~120Hz VRR, 100% sRGB(Typical), 500nits(Typical), IPS-Level panel |
Graphics | Intel Arc GPU B390 |
Storage Slot | 1 x NVMe M.2 2280 SSD by PCIe Gen 4 x4 |
Sensor | 6-Axis IMU Vibration Motor |
Communication | Intel Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth v6 |
Audio | 2 x 2 W Speakers / 1x Audio combo jack / DTS Audio Processing / Hi-Res Audio ready |
I/O Port | 2 x Thunderbolt™ 4 (DisplayPort™ / Power Delivery 3.0) |
Security | Fingerprint sensor on power button |
Battery/Adapter | 4-Cell, Li-Polymer, 80 Whr / 65 W USB-C PD 3.0 |
Dimension | 296~321 (W) x 130 (D) x 25~48 (H) mm |
Weight | 785 g |
Color | Void Purple |
Price |
The key feature for the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM is its Intel Arc G3 Extreme silicon. This is the first chip from Intel that is explicitly designed for a handheld ecosystem, and the fact that it is denoted as an 'Arc' chip highlights its gaming credentials, and the focus on its integrated GPU. In fact, Intel's Tom Petersen went so far as to pitch his claim to actually call the chip a GPU with an integrated CPU when I spoke to him at Computex earlier in the year.
Though I'm pretty confident his pitch didn't get very far with the Intel leadership.
The integrated graphics are the same as those sitting in the top-end Panther Lake processors, the Arc B390. That's a 12 Xe core chip and one that's impressively capable at 1080p gaming, especially at low wattage levels, but the chip as a whole contains some interesting optimisations dedicated to handheld gaming specifically.
The most obvious is how the split between Performance, Efficient, and Low Power Efficient cores lines up in the new chip spec. Where your standard Core UItra 9 or 7 Panther Lake chip comes with four Cougar Cove Performance cores to give it that extra processing grunt, Intel has cut that in half, with only two Performance cores in the G3 series of chips.
Alongside that pair, are eight Darkmont Efficient cores and a further four Darkmont LP Efficient cores. That then gives you a 14-core processor, so you can have some decent multi-core performance in there without dedicating too much silicon to the highest-performing—and most thirsty—cores Intel has in the whole Panther Lake stack.
And the Darkmont cores are plenty versatile and powerful enough in this form, and not the weakheart cores you might have in your head from the first flush of Intel's big/little core design. This isn't a mobile workstation after all, this is a gaming chip, and everything is focused around that.
To that end the G3 chips come with the latest version of Intel's Intelligent Bias Control software (IBC v3.5). This is a piece of software designed to balance power between CPU and GPU tiles, and here it allows for the complete parking of the more power-hungry Performance cores when the chip is operating at a low power level, below 14 W. It also affects the Windows scheduler and points more work towards the Efficient cores; it's almost the entirely opposite way the original scheduler was designed when Intel first brought the hybrid core layout to the PC.
But, having played with a couple of other Arc G3 Extreme handhelds—the OneXPlayer 3 and the Acer Predator Atlas 8—there is a lot that MSI is bringing to the table here, too. And much of it is a vast improvement over the previous Claw handhelds. MSI has been making Intel-based handheld gaming PCs for a couple generations now and they've been decent, but never class-leading. That's changed here with the Claw 8 EX AI+, where it's focused on nailing the design in terms of ergonomics and the ephemeral feel of a device, as well as supporting the efficient Intel architecture with a fat 77.8 Whr battery.
The flared design of the grips mirrors the Xbox controller and therefore the comfort of the Xbox Ally X, and all the buttons feel far more definite than the slightly woolly, imprecise controls on the previous Claw devices. We also have Hall effect sticks and triggers to give you more accuracy and remove the issue of stick drift over time, too.
The 8-inch IPS-like panel taking up the front of the Claw—and oddly slightly jutting out at the bottom—is a really solid 1920 x 1200 screen. With VRR support, you're getting a refresh rate from 48 - 120 Hz and an impressively bright display, too. It's rated for a typical luminance level of 500 nits, which means you don't have to have it anywhere near 100% to get a very playable level of brightness on the thing.
It's not all on the outside, either. The internals have been given an upgrade, and arguably the most important is the one you'll barely notice. The cooling. MSI has used taller fans in the twin cooling array inside it, and there is an impressive amount of clearance between the outer shell and those li'l spinny things. All told, you're getting an extra 5 W of cooling capacity compared to previous Claw designs, and apparently 9% more airflow.
Combine that with the noted Panther Lake/Arc G3 efficiency, and you get a cooling system that stays mercifully quiet, but still impressively effective when you're really pushing the graphics silicon to its fullest.
Another internal feature that pleases me is the SSD. It's super easy to unscrew and pry the back off the Claw—without breaking the plastic shell—and you're immediately presented with the SSD. This makes it simple to replace or upgrade the standard 1 TB of storage it comes with, but MSI has also ensured compatibility with full-size 2280 SSDs as well as the smaller designs.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ performance
If you've seen anything of our coverage of Intel's Panther Lake you'll know we're big fans of its gaming performance, and that hasn't changed with my testing of this new MSI Claw and its Arc G3 Extreme processor. In fact, it has only been enhanced because of its effectiveness at low power especially.
Our standard handheld gaming PC benchmarking suite sees the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ topping the table with only one exception, the ageing Horizon Zero Dawn upscaling benchmark, which relies on an older version of AMD's FSR technology. It's an impressive display, with it not being at all close in most games compared with the current pinnacle of AMD's own dedicated handheld silicon, the Ryzen Z2 Extreme in the ROG Xbox Ally X.
1080p gaming performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM | 33 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS |
| Asus ROG Xbox Ally X | 26 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS |
| MSI Claw 8 AI+ | 20 Avg FPS, 15 1% Low FPS |
| Lenovo Legion Go S | 15 Avg FPS, 11 1% Low FPS |
As soon as you start twiddling the upscaling knobs you're getting to never less than fully playable on all the games in our tests. And that's without even going down the frame generation route. If you find a game, such as Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which has Intel's own XeSS FG baked into it, you are laughing. It pairs so well with the Arc G3 Extreme chip that Intel believes it should become a vital part of your gaming experience, and I have to agree.
From spending time playing Batman on the device, with multi frame gen enabled, it really does make a huge difference to the smoothness of the game, without hugely impacting the input latency. It's one of those times where I completely forgot what I was testing because all of the tech and frame gen faded into the background as I just spent time playing a great PC game without thinking about anything else.
Thankfully, that's how Intel is talking about frame gen with regards to the G3 Extreme series. It's all about making the experience smoother, not necessarily about winning people over with explicitly higher measured frame rates. That is what frame generation is good for: smoothing out gaming performance, not for giving you a veneer of higher performance.
Endurance mode performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM (Endurance mode) | 37 Avg FPS, 29 1% Low FPS |
| MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM (Default) | 50 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS |
| Asus ROG Xbox Ally X (Default) | 39 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS |
But one of the things that really stands out to me is the efficiency of the new Intel silicon when it comes to Endurance mode. When you enable Endurance in the MSI quick settings it turns on efficiency mode, which theoretically locks the frame rate to 30, 40, or 60 fps. Well, I'm not entirely sure about that, given the variety in average fps I've measured in my benchmarking, but it certainly pulls down the peak PL2 performance down to a maximum of 20 W, with PL1 stuck at 15 W.
This effectively doubles the battery life of the device, but delivers gaming performance that, to all practical purposes, feels about the same as you would get from running the Xbox Ally X at its top settings. There are times where the full power of the Z2 Extreme does edge out the 15 - 20 W performance of the MSI Claw, but those aren't all that common.
This performance and efficiency one-two punch is a hell of a double-whammy.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ value
Value? In the current handheld gaming market, surely you jest? This is where all my positivity about the new Intel Arc G3 series architecture and MSI's re-design of the Claw evaporates up against the molten heat of the memory crisis, because there is no getting away from the fact that we're talking about a gaming handheld that costs $1,800.
As soon as the AI/datacentre market started hoovering up all available DRAM and subsequently NAND memory the writing was on the wall for consumer technology. The laws of supply and demand meant prices were only going to spiral upwards and this has arguably hit the MSI Claw harder than many others.
That's because Panther Lake and the Arc G3 series chips' performance targets were designed around the bandwidth of high-performance LPDDR5X memory. Intel reportedly mandated at least LPDDR5X-7467 for a system to be classed as having either the top B370 or B390 iGPUs, otherwise they would just be noted as 'Intel Graphics'. The G3 Extreme here sits alongside 32 GB of LPDDR5X-8533, which costs a pretty penny and is likely a big reason for the high price of the device itself.
I spoke to Intel's Tom Petersen at Computex earlier this year specifically about whether we'd see any machines using the non-Extreme version of the two G3 chips the company announced, and he was sceptical precisely because of this.
"I don't know the answer to that one," he says. "It's a great question. I think we're in a weird time with the whole DRAM thing going on right now, where the pricing difference between the two chips is small, and small relative to what's going on with DRAM.
"So, if you're going to spend the money on DRAM, why not just get the best one? I think there's some of that going on. As DRAM prices come down and the market starts normalising a little bit, then the differentiation of price that you can get by picking different SKUs will be a more important differentiator than the end user. That's my guess."
Which kinda sucks. The memory just costs far more than the difference between the two G3 processors, making that saving largely irrelevant for anyone looking to try and create a cheaper option.
You only have to look at the Acer Predator Atlas 8, which is also using the G3 series of chips and is releasing a straight Arc G3 version. But that's looking to be priced around $1,500 despite using the cheaper chip. The equivalent Atlas 8 compared to the MSI Claw 8 etc. is running to over $2,000. However you cut it, the mix of CPU and memory silicon is expensive.
So, the price is understandable then, but that doesn't change the fact that at this level it's impossible to recommend the Claw 8 etc. to anyone who makes their purchases with any form of value judgement in mind. If you're just after the best/fastest, and hang the expense, all power to you, but for the rest of us there's little by way of a value proposition here.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ sound
When it comes to the actual sound reproduction of the speakers in the MSI Claw EX AI+ they're fine. Nothing more, nothing less. Arguably there's not a whole lot you can do with the sort of space you have to jam a set of speakers into, but they still do an admirable job anyway. Though I will say that I'd still advise you to use a set of earbuds or headphones with the device for the best aural experience.
But the other side of this equation is the sound the device's cooling makes when you're pushing the silicon to its limits. And in that I'm far more impressed.
It's not that the device is silent under load—you will still hear those fans when they're really blowing—but the tone is as unobtrusive as they get and the work MSI has done to improve the cooling array of the latest MSI Claw has really paid off. If you're rocking Endurance mode and playing some relatively lightweight games you will barely hear the whoosh of air carrying off the heat from the silicon.
And even if you are hammering the G3 Extreme, I never felt the same sort of loathing I get from a really egregious gaming laptop's turbine roar under gaming loads.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ thermals
This is an Intel CPU, so when we really put it under sustained load, such as with a ten minute Cinebench 2024 run, then yes, we're going to be hitting high temperatures. But it's also no different to the sorts of temperatures you'll see from AMD's own handheld chips when put under the same processing pressure.
There's a solitary degree in it, which could easily be passed off as variance in testing, but the Arc G3 Extreme in the MSI Claw measured 97 °C as its maximum temperature, while the Ryzen Z2 Extreme in the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X hits 96 °C.
Cooling
Thermal performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM | 97 Max CPU temp (°C), 37 Max CPU package power (W) |
| Asus ROG Xbox Ally X | 96 Max CPU temp (°C), 55 Max CPU package power (W) |
| Lenovo Legion Go S | 99.2 Max CPU temp (°C), 38 Max CPU package power (W) |
But at no point do either of these handhelds ever get to the point where they are too hot to touch. The cooling design vents the hot air out of the top of the MSI Claw, while drawing it in from twin fans oriented to pull in from the rear of the device. This means you're never hit by the hot air when you're using it in a normal way, with the screen out in front of you.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ software
We're still talking about a Windows-based handheld, and even with the Xbox Mode operating to full effect, the MSI Claw remains a device that feels like it's got a bunch of software snakes writhing around under the surface all fighting to control what happens in there. The simple, unified nature of SteamOS is what has drawn people to Valve's Linux-based operating system, and why a bunch of other Linux distributions have co-opted it as the front-end for their own handheld versions.
But Windows is still very much a desktop OS, and one that still has some roots in the aging operating systems of its past that it cannot escape. There are still Windows 2000-era menu systems lurking inside Windows 11 if you look not very hard at all. And even with the Xbox mode layer cleaning things up for handhelds it's still not entirely unified.
Yes, you can have Steam boot into Big Picture mode, but I found Xbox mode seemed to block that from loading immediately after booting. So you're still going to boot into either MSI's own game and system launcher or the Xbox app. Either way is clunky and requires you to jump through a few more hoops, click a few more buttons, to get to the game you want.
Then there's the overlay. Pressing the menu button on the Claw brings up what's essentially the Gamebar menu as an overlay, just like with the Xbox Ally X. Except here, after maybe a one second delay, it will jarringly flick you over to the MSI quick menu. I will say this is probably where you want to land when you hit that button, as it gives you all the necessary control over performance, controls, and recording, but it's not a slick experience.
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ battery life
If gaming performance is the attention grabbing metric for most PC gamers when it comes to handheld PCs, battery life is the one that will have the biggest impact on your overall experience with the device when you get it in your hands.
I was already impressed with the MSI Claw EX AI+ CG3EM when I first ran my battery life benchmarks on its default, AI Engine power mode. This gets you running up to 37 W and I am getting another half an hour of solid gaming time over and above the Xbox Ally X, and that's all while performing at a much higher level.
But the joy for me of the new Arc G3 Extreme chip is its performance when you're not throwing that much power down its throat. Switch on Endurance mode in the MSI quick menu, which puts you in the Efficiency preset in the Intel Graphics Software app, and my measured battery life literally doubles.
Battery life
PCMark 10 | Battery life (gaming test)
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM (Endurance mode) | 308 |
| MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM (Default) | 153 |
| Asus ROG Xbox Ally X (Default) | 125 |
| MSI Claw 8 AI+ (Default) | 129 |
| Lenovo Legion Go S (Default) | 126 |
| Asus ROG Ally X (Default) | 128 |
| OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro (Default) | 82 |
We use PCMark's Gaming battery life test, which loops through older 3DMark tests, continually hammering the battery until it gives out and the system goes into shutdown. And with Endurance mode enabled I've seen the Claw go from two and a half hours in that test to over five hours. And, remember, that will give you essentially the same actual gaming performance as the ROG Xbox Ally X across most games I've tested.
Now, that doesn't mean battery life is a solved issue, but this is you playing games without worrying about what that little percentage indicator in the top right of your screen says. And if you're playing something like Olli Olli World or Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders, you can expect to bat well above that five hours average, too.
In fact, Intel actually measured the battery life of the Claw with the classic Team Fortress 2 running on it, and managed to get a healthy 11 hours of game time out of it. Actually, nearer 12. That's more than enough TF2 for anyone.
1. Best overall:
Asus ROG Xbox Ally X
2. Best budget:
Asus ROG Xbox Ally
3. Best high performance:
MSI Claw 8 EX AI+
The price tag is almost a tragedy, but the silicon is stellar. That feels like the epitaph for PC gaming hardware in 2026, and makes the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ CG3EM a tough recommendation to anyone except those willing to pay through the nose for the outright best around.
