MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM: the greatest gaming machine you can take anywhere

You can’t have missed the MSI Claw if you’ve been looking at handheld gaming devices recently. The original took the concept of portable handhelds and ran with it, offering a seven-inch 1080p screen and a fast Intel processor in an innovative handheld shell.

But MSI wasn’t finished there. The MSI Claw 8 AI+ A2VM is here, and it’s better than the original in every way. The screen is bigger and brighter, the processor faster, the battery the largest on the market so that you can keep on playing while others have to go and charge. It’s lightweight at just 795g, infused with AI, and may just be the best handheld PC on the market right now.

The new Claw takes everything that was great about the original and improves upon it. Now you can get an eight-inch screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and capable of putting out a huge 500 nits of brightness. It supports a 120Hz refresh rate too, for those games that live or die by their framerates, and has VRR capability to keep your gameplay smooth. It’s a touchscreen too, making fingertip control of your games a possibility for those times when the controller’s sticks and buttons just won’t do.

Cutting-edge hardware

Those times will be few and far between, however, as the controller built into the Claw 8 AI+ takes some of the best technology and melds it to create an integrated gamepad that you won’t want to put down. The analogue sticks and triggers use Hall effect magnetic magic to detect your movements without contact between parts. Elsewhere, custom buttons such as shortcuts to Quick Settings and MSI Center M allow you quick and easy access to the Claw’s settings and preferences without having to go through Windows menus. There's RGB in the sticks and buttons too, to create a striking look while you play, as well as six-axis inertial measurement for using tilt controls in games. Of course, you get a 3.5mm audio socket, but there's Bluetooth 5.4 on board too, so you can cut the cord with a wireless headset. There's even a fingerprint reader for the kind of security that ensures no one else can use your Claw 8 AI+.

The Claw 8 AI+ is cutting-edge handheld hardware, with components that wouldn’t be out of place in prestige laptops. The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor offers eight cores, four of which are the Performance type that push games to new heights. The max turbo frequency of 4.8GHz means you’ll never be left behind by any software, and the Intel Arc Graphics 140V is capable of driving the screen to its fullest extent. There's 32GB of fast RAM too, along with a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD to keep those loading times under control (with a Micro SD reader to expand the storage in a convenient way), and the latest Wi-Fi 7 for fast, reliable connections to gaming servers and the wider internet. A pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports top off the spec list nicely, offering charging, video output, connection to docks (such as MSI’s Nest docking station, which can be bought in a bundle with the Claw) and external GPUs.

Pure gaming power

And all this comes with a surprisingly low power draw. The six-cell, 80Wh battery is larger than that in the previous Claw, and the handheld is highly optimised to use as little power as possible while delivering amazing gaming experiences for up to four hours at a time. This means it lasts longer, and there's a 65W power adapter in the box to juice it back up when it does eventually run out of energy. Cooling is provided by MSI’s Cooler Boost HyperFlow technology, with a dual-fan, dual-heat pipe system to efficiently dissipate the heat of gaming sessions.

It’s not all about the hardware, however. The MSI Center M has had an overhaul for the new handheld, and now integrates Windows Game Bar into a dynamic home page that shows the cover art of your games as well as handling peripheral and network management, performance profile switching, and AI-powered hardware adjustments.

The Claw 8 AI+ is completely optimised for AI. It’s a Copilot+ PC, with an NPU on board and up to 119 TOPS available from the chipset, which makes it good for more than just games. Running a full copy of Windows 11, you’re able to hook it up to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and use it just like any other PC, for content creation, browsing, or gaming on the bigger screen.

Gaming is its true vocation, and as an eligible model for the Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred campaign, users can redeem the base game and Vessel of Hatred expansion pack while stocks last.

Available for pre-order at Currys for £899, and with a docking bundle available for those who want to use it as a high-performance home PC, the MSI Claw 8 AI+ is a stellar gaming machine that fits right in your bag.