MSI is the first to bundle Intel's new Lunar Lake chip inside a handheld gaming PC alongside a chunky 80 Whr battery
Over at Intel's Lunar Lake launch event, MSI had something on show that I was particularly excited to give a whirl. It's the new MSI Claw, the Claw 8, which is actually the second model of the handheld gaming PC. The important thing is that it's bigger in a few ways, including both battery and screen.
I had a chance to give the MSI Claw 8 a go over at the event. It's a neat design in a black and silver colourway, and slightly more eye-catching than the last, which was a little plain to look at. The MSI Claw 8 has an 8-inch screen, hence the name, which was pretty glorious to play some Hi-Fi Rush on.
I've never played Hi-Fi Rush and was understandably terrible at the game, but I blame that on it being too loud at the event to match the music beat for beat. Importantly, it ran well on the Lunar Lake machine. MSI had no other games we could play on the device for a true test of its prowess, though Hi-Fi Rush ran smoothly. It probably should, as it's not the most demanding game around, but Lunar Lake's new Xe2 GPU does appear to keep up well.
Speaking to Damien Triolet, director of GPU technical marketing, he assures me that Xe2 scales down particularly well with low power, and this should make it a good candidate for more thermally sensitive designs, such as a handheld. I was hoping for some hint at how it scaled up in power, admittedly, hinting at Battlemage, but no dice.
Anyways, as for the handheld itself, it felt pretty well balanced in my hands. It's pretty big, from the 8-inch screen, but the buttons are easy to reach, if nothing spectacular, and there are a pair of macro paddles on the rear.
I'm told the design may change slightly, however—MSI is still working out all the details. The rep wasn't able to say much more than it's using an engineering sample of a Lunar Lake chip, the new Core Ultra 200V-series, and the battery has been improved up to 80 Whr. That's a big increase over the 53 Whr battery in the original Claw 7. That should put it right up there with the ROG Ally X, which has a similar battery capacity, and is all the better for it.
MSI is aiming to get the Claw 8 out come January, and if I were you, I'd wait around for that release to see how it fares in benchmarks, because there aren't enough reasons to be dropping cash on the Meteor Lake powered Claw 7 already available. That one didn't really impress us enough when we had some hands-on time with it, at least not enough to beat out the other options available today. But maybe a little Lunar Lake power efficiency and a new and improved GPU will help.