MSI Claw 8 AI+ Handheld PC review

MSI and Intel deliver a top notch handheld Windows gaming experience

The last 4 years has really seen an explosion in handheld PC’s with people opting for new ways to play their existing games, they’ve always been around with companies like Ayaneo and GPD Win releasing handheld PC devices as far back as 2016 but these have typically been seen as enthusiast devices due to the lack of availability and the price point being asked. It wasn’t until a little device called the Steam Deck by Valve that this perception began to change becoming more palatable to the general public and other PC manufacturers took notice of the Steam Deck as it was still had the same reach as the Ayaneo and GPD Win devices in that you could only order it from Valve themselves, you couldn’t go into a local electronics store and pick the device up.

Enter the big 3

Republic of Gamers with the ROG Ally series, Lenovo with their Legion Go series and MSI with their Claw series, these three companies were the ones to adopt the handheld PC form factor for a general public release in stores while putting their own spin on the devices. The ROG Ally was the first and looked to lock in the general PC handheld feel, the Legion Go looked to differentiate itself by having removable controllers much akin the Nintendo Switch, and Claw looked to differentiate itself by adopting an Intel APU instead of an AMD one (they do offer devices with AMD chips). The majority of PC handhelds use AMD to power their devices but MSI decided to buck the trend and would give Intel a chance for the chipset which intrigued me, I’ve always been one to gravitate to what people would view as the “less popular” option, growing up I loved my Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, I loved the Nintendo GameCube, I was an early adopter of the PS3 and I even had the Xbox One over the PS4, not sure why I do this, perhaps a victim complex or I like to see the path less travelled and the fact that MSI would choose to use Intel in a world where everyone else is choosing AMD made me want to see how Team Blue stacked up against Team Red.

I’ve gone through the motions on handheld PCs, I really like them and the idea of them but the ones I’ve owned I’ve always had something that I wasn’t enthusiastic about and this has resulted in me looking for an alternative.

The specific device I’ve been using and will talk about is the MSI Claw 8 AI+. I’m not new to the handheld PC world I’ve gone through the motions on handheld PCs, I really like them and the idea of them but the ones I’ve owned I’ve always had something that I wasn’t enthusiastic about and this has resulted in me looking for an alternative. I bought the Steam Deck when it was released but I didn’t care for SteamOS and prefer having the assured compatibility on Windows, I purchased a ROG Ally but realised that I really liked having the 4 back buttons that the Steam Deck provided, decided to sell that device and bought a Legion Go with the money due to the increased back buttons and larger screen size and I was pretty happy with it overall, but following news and rumours with Lenovo announcing their Legion Go 2 would be over £1000 and would release sometime in the future I decided to sell the Legion Go to prepare for the Legion Go 2, this turned out to be a misjudgement as Lenovo took longer to release the device than I expected and the money saved was need for an emergency. This left me back with the Steam Deck and I was able to find a good deal on a second hand Claw 8 AI+ and decided to pull the trigger while I was in a better place money wise and I’d say I’m very glad with how this has played out.

The specs

The good

I’ve been using the Claw 8 AI+ exclusively for gaming and I’ve been having a fantastic time with it, everything I’ve been throwing at it has been working better than I expected and that’s thanks to a combination of things. The Xbox team have been doing work with Windows to make handhelds work better and in doing that they created the Full Screen Experience which is a Windows attempt at the SteamOS’s Gamemode, usually this only allows the Xbox PC app to be used, but some very smart people have created a program that will allow you to replace the Xbox PC app with any program you want called AnyFSE, so for this I opted to use the open source Playnite’s Full Screen mode which ensured that every game was treated the same no matter what launcher I had it on Steam, Epic, GOG, Xbox, EA or Ubisoft. I did explore using Winhanced, which I had previously written about but decided to opt for what I know as I’ve used Playnite for years and opted for comfort.

The games that I’ve been playing on the device has been Yooka-Replaylee, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 HD Remix, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, Sonic Racing Crossworlds and Fortnite, and everything I’ve thrown at the device has performed great, the only game that I’ve had to reduce the resolution on to keep the FPS above 60fps has been Yooka-Replaylee funnily enough and each game has been reaching at most 25 Watts for the total power draw, which is meaning that 80W/hr battery has been giving me around 3-4 hours of battery life which might not sound like much but for handheld PC’s that’s great especially for demanding games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade

One very important thing I want to raise is how the device feels, the ergonomics, to me it feels absolutely fantastic in the hands.

One very important thing I want to raise is how the device feels, the ergonomics, to me it feels absolutely fantastic in the hands. Some of the criticisms that I had about the Legion Go was that the device felt heavy and long play sessions would result in wrist and/or hand pain for me, but the Claw with it being the same size is lighter than both the Legion Go and the Legion Go 2, but the way that the device sits in your hands just feels much more comfortable and makes longer play sessions much more comfortable. Alongside this the device is almost absurdly quiet and runs very cool in my experience, when I used the Legion Go the device could often sound like it was going to take off from the fan speed and noise generated, it also didn’t help that I could hear coil whine in my device and had to add a piece of tape to the back to stop this, the Claw on the other hand has been an absolute pleasure to play with in quiet situations such as just before sleeping.

The bad

As I previously mentioned one of the things that pushed me away from the ROG Ally was that it only had 2 back paddles that you could remap, which the Claw unfortunately shares this same disappointment for me, I like to have macros for different things mapped to the back paddles such as opening a launcher’s overlay and the LB/RB buttons but it’s something that I can tolerate with how everything else is just clicking well for me on the device. Alongside this each device comes with their own software that is meant to be a unified launcher, but also the place for users to tinker with the settings of the device, a way of obscuring Windows with a controller friendly front end.

You’re given a lot of power over remapping the devices buttons except for what are called the dedicated “Claw” buttons

Legion Go has Legion Space, ROG Ally has Armory Crate and Claw has MSI Centre M, all of these options are serviceable I would never recommend them as the main way of interacting with the device, for some people it might be fine but for me I would rather take the time to set up something like Playnite and use that as my frontend, the MSI Centre M also has integration with the Xbox Game Bar where you can access the quick options which is very welcome as it’s something much easier to reach and doesn’t use a Windows pop out that could interfere with games being played in Fullscreen mode. You’re given a lot of power over remapping the devices buttons except for what are called the dedicated “Claw” buttons, one of them to open the MSI Centre M program and the other will open the quick settings within the Xbox Game Bar, you cannot remap these buttons which is annoying and something that I hope gets fixed as time goes on. One of the nicer things that other devices have implemented is using their dedicated buttons such as the MSI’s Claw Button and then combining that with other buttons on the device to give users quick macros that allow you to perform actions that might be more difficult to do otherwise, an example of this would be the Legion Go allowing you to hold the left Legion button and then press B which opens the virtual keyboard, this is a very nice feature to have, the only way I have been able to open the keyboard on the Claw is by pressing the quick settings button and then selecting the option to open the keyboard, a bit more involved that it could be in my opinion.

The verdict

The MSI Claw 8 AI+ so far has become my favourite handheld PC and I look forward to the next iteration especially with the performance reports that have been coming out for the Panther Lake chips. The specs that MSI decided on alongside the price point being cheaper than Lenovo’s Legion Go 2 has made me appreciate what both companies are doing. I would highly recommend the device if you’re looking for something that allows you to play all of your PC games and handles them well even when playing on Windows. Everyone has different priorities for their device and fortunately for me the MSI Claw 8 AI+ looks to tick the majority of the boxes that I feel are a requirement and makes the device easy to love.