Back at Computex 2026, MSI had its third generation Claw EX 8 AI+ gaming handheld out on the floor, an opportunity that we gladly took for a hands on, with our initial impressions of it falling in the “colour us impressed” bracket. The only thing missing at that point was pricing, up until recently.
The price tag for the Claw EX 8 AI+ was disclosed by MSI via its official product page. The handheld will retail at an eye-watering US$1,799 (~RM7,443). That’s more or less within the ballpark figure of AU$2,749 (~RM7,956) that was posted earlier by Australian retailer, Scorptec, in May. That said, it doesn’t make it any less eye-watering and haemorrhaging to the wallet. By comparison, it’s currently the most expensive gaming handheld on the market, with the Lenovo Legion Go 2 trailing behind at RM7,109, while the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X still officially retails at RM4,299, although you can already find the console being sold for cheaper online, and that is to say nothing of the Xbox Ally X 20 that’s certainly not going to be cheap either.
At that price, MSI is seems to be offering only one configuration: an Intel Arc B3 Extreme processor and 32GB LPDDR5x-8533 RAM. The rest of the handheld’s specs are the same as before. You get an 8-inch FHD+ IPS touch display with 120Hz variable refresh rate, Hall Effect joysticks and triggers, an 80Wh battery, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD sans DRAM, and because it’s an MSI product, a Cooler Boost HyperFlow cooling solution. Oh, and it’s also preloaded with an Xbox Mode, much like the Xbox Ally X.
Now, if you thought the price tag of the Claw EX 8 AI+ was having you coughing blood, there’s actually more bad news. In an interview with FRVR, MSI told the outlet that consumers will need to steel themselves for a potential price hike. The company says that it has tried to keep costs as low as possible, but the rising cost and price hike of memory and storage have not made it easy, primarily due to the boom in AI.
On a side note, it’s ironic that MSI would complain about the rising cost of memory products brought about by the surge in AI consumption, yet choose to market the Claw EX 8 AI+ with that very word in its name. Again, just a passing thought.
(Source: MSI, Tom’s Hardware, FRVR)
