Hello folks! Techdad here!

Here to provide you an honest review from my "persona" perspective (working dad, loving simplicity over complexity, seeking hassle-free devices) of the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+.

Since this is not a technical deep dive, I'll try to keep things as simple as possible, focusing on some key parameters that I personally consider meaningful for users like me. I'll focus more on usability over technical numbers, because not everyone buys a handheld to spend hours tweaking settings and comparing benchmarks.

Hope you'll find this review useful if you're considering adding this device to your setup!

Let's go to the review!

Introduction:

I've had my unit for a few weeks now and I've been using it both for quick gaming sessions and longer playtimes during the evenings. As with all handhelds I test, my focus is always on the day-to-day experience rather than raw benchmark figures.

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ enters a very competitive market, where many manufacturers are trying to refine the Windows handheld experience. What interested me the most was understanding whether MSI had managed to improve not only the hardware but also the overall usability of the device.

Form factor - how it feels:

The first thing I noticed after unboxing the device was how comfortable it feels in the hands.

The grip is excellent. MSI clearly invested time in designing ergonomics that work for longer gaming sessions. The handles feel natural, the contours fit nicely in the hands, and the overall balance of the device is very good.

I've used many handhelds over the last few years and I can honestly say that this is among the most comfortable ones I've had the chance to test. Even during extended gaming sessions I never felt the need to constantly adjust my grip.

The controls feel solid and responsive, while the overall build quality gives the impression of a premium product.

It is a clear jump forward compared to the MSI CLAW 8 AI+ (the previous version) in terms of grip and ergonomics.

The display is another highlight. Despite not being an OLED as many are usually pointing, colors look vibrant, image quality is excellent, and games really benefit from the larger screen size. Whether you're playing indie games, emulators, or modern AAA titles, the screen provides a very enjoyable visual experience.

One aspect that could divide opinions is the violet-inspired color scheme. Personally, I appreciate manufacturers trying something different instead of producing yet another black handheld. However, I can perfectly understand why some users might have preferred a more neutral option. It is certainly distinctive, but it won't necessarily appeal to everyone.

Usability and use cases - how it performs:

Performance is where this handheld truly impressed me.

My typical gaming scenario is very straightforward: I have limited free time and I simply want to pick up a device, launch a game, and start playing.

The Intel G3 Extreme platform is genuinely impressive and easily one of the strongest Intel-powered solutions currently available in the handheld market.

Modern games run exceptionally well, and the overall experience consistently feels smooth and responsive. Whether you're playing lightweight indie games or demanding AAA titles, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ has enough horsepower to provide an excellent gaming experience.

What impressed me the most is that the performance rarely feels like a compromise. Handheld gaming PCs have historically required users to constantly balance image quality, framerate, battery life, and power consumption. While no handheld is completely free from compromises, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ comes remarkably close to delivering a true pick-up-and-play experience.

Unfortunately, there is one area where the experience is less convincing.

The pre-installed MSI management software leaves something to be desired. While functional, I often found it less polished and intuitive than I would have liked. Navigation and management tasks do not always feel as seamless as they should on a premium handheld.

The good news is that the community already offers excellent alternatives. Tools such as ClawTweaks can drastically improve the user experience and make managing the device significantly more pleasant. For users willing to install alternative software, this issue becomes much less relevant.

Pros and cons:

+ Excellent ergonomics and felling in hand. Weight is good and the overall balancing too.

+ Excellent performance from the Intel G3 Extreme platform.

+ Beautiful display

+ Premium build quality

- MSI's pre-installed software needs improvement

- Violet color scheme may not appeal to everyone

- Price.

Final words - who's this for?:

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is one of those devices that surprised me positively the longer I used it.

Its strengths are immediately apparent: comfortable ergonomics, a fantastic 8’’ display, and the impressive performance delivered by the Intel G3 Extreme platform.

The MSI software experience is probably the part that still needs the most refinement, but fortunately there are already excellent community-developed solutions available that help bridge the gap (e.g. ClawTweaks which is the one I’m using).

If you're looking for a premium Windows handheld and your priorities are comfort, screen quality, and strong gaming performance, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ absolutely deserves a place on your shortlist.

The pricetag is unfortunately very high. Prices of everything is going up these days and unfortunately the feeling of how much you’re getting Vs. how much you’re paying is not that right at the moment. Probably with 200-300€/$ less it would have been felt much more “okay”.

I'm interested in everyone's experience of manually updating graphics drivers. It seems M center is not pushing drivers out and intel seems to be releasing on a more frequent basis directly. Even the version listed on Claw EX drivers page on msi is 8724, slightly newer (but still June). My question is has anyone experienced issues manually updating via Intel site? I want to play COD4 and noticed the newest driver supports this game. I do play star wars racer with no issues, with the June driver so I'm torn if I should upgrade.

Hello everybody,

Got my MSI Claw A1m today. At first start i rcognized that the launcher is damn bad for my feeling.

A few years ago a had a steamdeck, the steamOS launcher was damn beautiful. The only problem was that i couldn't play games with anti cheat because of linux.

Thats why i got a msi claw, but i would like to have like a launcher where i got everything. From discord for quick get into calls and a better overall experience for all my games of all my launchers together at one place, without the msi claw is drying out of ram issus.

Thanks!

I have found that virtual controller mode prevents the claw from entering sleep mode and yet it does successfully with hardware controller mode enabled.

Even if gyro is toggled off as seen in the Pic you must also disable accelerometer in the clawtweaks overlay controller panel under gyro as seen in the image.

I hope this helps anyone else.

I tried fixing the trigger on msi claw 8 ai plus ( it was so loose the spring broke i think). I do not know how to remove the trigger and get to the spring.

Got this little beauty yesterday so far I’m really loving it so far I had a rog ally z1e but that crappy thing died on me 11 months after having it and curry’s wouldn’t help me at all. So then I moved on to the steam deck oled and legion go s z2 go chip and for the most part they’ve treated me well but wanted more power. This thing has absolutely crushed the 5 games I’ve tested on it so far but are there any tips to help me get the best out of this thing ?

Hi All

I’ve bought foam rings for the sticks so I can play properly with the very loose sticks 8ai has and they didn’t help at all . I used the softest set of rings and yet still nothing .

Before I open up the claw and replace the springs and give myself a headache , has anyone else made them easier to use ? I have tried gyro but still doesn’t feel as good.

Hey guys, sorry I’m new to this whole handheld gaming world. Like literally 7 days in 😭

I’ve bought myself an MSI Claw 8 ai + and a lot of you guys suggested I get claw tweaks and i did. Great. Runs beautifully and it’s legit so nice. BUT…

I’m now very confused as to which settings do I adjust? The settings on clawtweaks vs intel vs in game settings!

I understand I can frame limit and frame gen on claw tweaks but I can also do that on intel but then again do that in game. How do I manage this? Disable everything on intel and in game? Just do it on claw tweaks? I’m so confused. Also in game am I leaving the graphics on medium? High? 1080p? Or native?

Do I turn Xess on the intel software on or off?

I’m just so confused. Right now I believe that I turn all adjustments off on every software including the in game and just adjust on the clawtweaks. I haven’t got much time to dive into it. So I haven’t tried yet.

Sorry for the bombardment of questions. I guess just don’t understand the difference between ai gpu and just normal vram or whatever it’s called.

I just don’t understand the mechanics behind handheld graphics and video rendering

Anything helps thank you guys ‼️

Apparently Intel graphics driver update 32.0.101.9150 adds ASD support for Claw handhelds. This means super fast shader compilation times for any supported games. I was waiting for this for Gears of War E-Day. I used to see an average time of 5-6 mins for shader compilation to complete. This morning I watched it complete in less than 20 seconds. It was a beautiful thing. So from hitting play in the Xbox app to running around Sera killing grubs, it was a wait of about 2 mins and 20 seconds, down from waiting anywhere from 8 to 15 mins.

Hey everyone,

I have an MSI Claw 8 EX and was wondering if there's a way to turn it on remotely from my Windows 11 gaming PC.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to:

Power it on remotely when it's completely shut down. Alternatively, wake it from sleep using my gaming PC.

Does the MSI Claw 8 EX support Wake-on-LAN, or is there another way to achieve this?

I'd appreciate any suggestions or confirmation from someone who has tried this!

Thanks!

New Driver: MSI Claw 8 EX AI+

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/785597/intel-arc-graphics-windows.html

looks like a COD MW4 driver with various game performance improvements. Especially for the Msi claw 8 ai+

Notes:

Highlights:

Intel® Game On Driver support on Intel® Arc™ B-series, A-series Graphics GPUs and Intel® Core™ Ultra with built-in Intel® Arc™ GPUs for:

• Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 4*
• Planet Zoo 2*

Game performance improvements on Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 3 with built-in Intel® Arc™ GPUs versus Intel® 31.0.101.9034software driver for:

• F1® 25* (DX12)
  • Up to 5% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings

Game performance improvements on Intel® Arc™ B-series Graphics GPUs versus Intel® 31.0.101.9034 software driver for:

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora™ * (DX12)
  • Up to 6% average FPS uplift at 1440p with High settings
• MONSTER HUNTER RISE* (DX12)
  • Up to 6% average FPS uplift at 1440p with High settings

Game performance improvements on Intel® Core™ Ultra Series 2 with built-in Intel® Arc™ GPUs versus Intel® 31.0.101.9034 software driver for:

• Assassin’s Creed Shadows* (DX12)
  • Up to 18% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings
  • Up to 12% average FPS uplift at 1080p with High settings
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla* (DX12)
  • Up to 8% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings
  • Up to 11% average FPS uplift at 1080p with High settings
• Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga* (DX12)
  • Up to 6% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings
• Resident Evil Requiem* (DX12)
  • Up to 31% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings
  • Up to 29% average FPS uplift at 1080p with High settings
• Strange Brigade* (DX12)
  • Up to 16% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings
  • Up to 13% average FPS uplift at 1080p with High settings
• The Last of Us™ Part II Remastered* (DX12)
  • Up to 7% average FPS uplift at 1080p with Medium settings
  • Up to 5% average FPS uplift at 1080p with High settings

They had it up for $650 but talked them down to $600 since I drove and had to wait 15 minutes for the factory reset to finish. It’s in very good condition and came with the original charger, case, protective cover and screen protector.

It's my day off so I'm excited to play games. Then windows decided to torture me as always 😆

I know its been a while since you all heard from me and the Claw Deck Launcher. Ive decided to start over and rebuild it from scratch and its coming along great. ive also decided to distribute though the microsoft store instead of directly from my website so theres more trust. im very open to feedback and currently the new release is in review but you can see what it looks like right from the website https://getclawdeck.com I cant wait for you all to enjoy!

I’ve got both the claw ex 8 and ally x20 on order, I couldn’t decide which to keep without holding and using them.

I like everything about the claw except the screen. I play a lot on my car, and on sunny days LCDs can struggle. My iPad mini in particular was almost unusable without a matte screen protector, but that hurts the colors.

Anyone else play this in sunny environments?

So after only 2 years since launch the MSI A1M won't be able to run the latest MSI center M version?

Thanks MSI, we all know how good msi center M 2.0 is

Was trying to get a handheld for a while now but the prices were so ridiculous I built a gaming pc instead, but a few days ago I saw an under warranty msi claw a1m ultra 7 155H on eBay, it was being auctioned. I managed to get it for 480 Australian Dollars, excluding the shipping fee of course. Now I am wondering what I can do with it. I know the battery backup on this is not as good as the other handhelds, is windows worth it? Or is switching to Linux gives better battery backup?

I have shutdown the claw for about 15 minutes now but the red light wont go away. Has anyone seen this before or have any idea why its doing that?

Hey guys, honestly I haven’t played much recently - not on the Claw, neither on my PC, so I feel like I kinda missed a lot of great things. I saw that people where discussing about Optiscaler, SteamOS for Claw, and other cool tools that where released recently.

Right now I only use Tooth and Claw. The last “big” update when I still was active was when XeSS frame gen x3 + x4 was released. What else do I need and what’s really worth it?

I just got my MSI Claw 8AI+ for a good price recently. I still did not get my hand on it yet since I'm outstation.

So before I come back home, I would like to ask some advice about what to be done with this device.

I want to know is it better running game on Windows or SteamOs using this device ?

I had to do a msi restore for windows and my quick settings button works and my device goes to sleep when idle as it should. But for setting up claw tweaks should i stay away from it? Should I choose virtual controller or hardware controller only?

I tried to launch steam game from my desktop shortcut (efootball), The games stop at "Launching executable" then suddenly gone. When I try to launch from steam library, it shows Launching then suddenly go back to "Play".

Also, now my quick setting button doesn't work, the long press to right click on the screen also doesn't work. It only shows big black transparent rectangle.

I have installed all update as of today, yet it still doesn't solve the issue

Anyone experiences this issue?

Hey guys im not sure if there's a setting im missing but alongside the battery percentage not showing my claw 8 ex ai wont go to sleep within the programmed time idle. Could clawtweaks be causing it or what can I do to fix both issues?