A Chinese TechTuber by the name of 会弹钢琴的疯疯 (loosely translated by Google Translate into Crazy Guy Who Can Play The Piano), recently showed off an MSI Claw 8 which they managed to secure. The unit is basically the same model that the console’s brand was showing off back at Computex 2025, and given its availability in China, they decided to take it for a spin and see how well the chip performs.
As a quick primer, the original Claw 7 debuted using Intel’s Meteor Lake mobile architecture and was, simply put, less than stellar in its performance. MSI eventually released a follow-up model, the 8 AI+, fitted with the Lunar Lake processor, and after multiple software updates, it supposedly stands as one of the better gaming handhelds on the market. Specs-wise, the Z2 Extreme SoC is based on AMD’s 4nm TSMC process node, and features eight Zen5 cores and 16 RDNA3.5 Compute Units (CUs) via the Radeon 890M.
As per the findings of 会弹钢琴的疯疯, the Claw 8 Z2 Extreme managed to deliver some strong performance across the board. While at a 17W TDP, the console is nearly toe-to-toe with Lunar Lake Core Ultra 7 258V in 3DMark’s Time Spy, and is practically on par with the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, of which the chipset is pretty much derived from.
At TDPs between 11W and 13W, 会弹钢琴的疯疯 found that the Claw 8 was able to maintain an average framerate of 33 fps while playing Black Myth: Wukong at FHD resolution. Couple that with the handheld’s massive 80Wh battery and with a steady power consumption of 18W, you’re basically looking at around 4.5 hours worth of game time, which is quite impressive. That average frame trend continues with Expedition 33, which 会弹钢琴的疯疯 says is able to maintain a steady 30 fps as well.
At the time of writing, the MSI Claw 8 with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme SoC is currently being sold in China only. As for when we would be seeing the console hitting our market, we reached out to MSI and, surprisingly, the brand said that it plans on bringing it in sometime this month. In the meantime, the 8 AI+ is available in Malaysia for RM4,799.
(Source: 会弹钢琴的疯疯 via YouTube)
