MSI's Elusive Claw 8 AI+ Is Finally In Stock To Crash The Switch 2 Launch Party
One of our favorite PC gaming handhelds is finally in stock at several U.S. retailers, though the timing of its release means it will be going up against Nintendo's Switch 2 console. We're talking about MSI's recently-minted Claw 8 AI+, which as we stated in our review "sits in the top tier of gaming handhelds on the market currently," along with other premium contenders.
We posted our Claw 8 AI+ review back in late April, but in the weeks that followed, it remained an elusive handheld, at least in the U.S. That just changed—several retailers are finally showing the Claw 8 AI+ as being in stock. Amazon even says it will arrive in time for Father's Day, in case you want to splurge on a gift for your pops (or drop hints for your kids).
Here are a couple of retail options...
- MSI Claw 8 AI+ w/ 1TB (A2VM-001US): $999 at Amazon
- MSI Claw 8 AI+ w/ 1TB (A2VM-001US): $999 at Adorama
Sadly, the Polar Tempest Edition with a brighter white and black colorway is not for sale anywhere that we can find, though outside of a possible 2TB storage upgrade, it's the same hardware as the regular Claw 8 AI+, just in a different color.
The Claw 8 AI+ features an 8-inch display with a 1920x1200 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 450 nits of brightness, and 100% coverage of the sRGB color space. If you pop the hood, you'll find an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor based on Lunar Lake, which is comprised of four performance cores clocked at up to 4.8GHz, four efficient cores clocked at up to 3.7GHz, and 12MB of L3 cache. It's also sporting an integrated Intel Arc 140V GPU clocked at up to 1.95GHz.
MSI bucked the general trend of stuffing AMD hardware inside, opting instead for an Intel-based handheld. It did the same thing with the maiden Claw handheld, which was built around Intel's Meteor Lake architecture. That said, MSI revealed at Computex that it has plans to release an AMD-based Claw.
Other specs include 32GB of LPDDR5X-8533 RAM, 1TB Kioxia BG6 PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid state drive (SSD), Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity (two ports on the top), a microSD slot for expandable storage, a 3.5mm combo audio jack, and a 6-cell non-removable battery.
Realistically, the Claw 8 AI+ and Switch 2 are two different animals despite sharing the same handheld form factor. That's also reflected in the price difference—as configured, the currently-available Claw 8 AI+ costs more than twice as much as the Switch 2.
Even though they're not in direct competition, it's unfortunate for MSI that the Claw 8 AI+ only just-now became available, right as the Switch 2 gets ready for its big retail debut. For those who've been waiting for this model, though, today is a good day.
