Official: the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus has an Asus-matching 80Wh battery and Intel Lunar Lake

Just three months after releasing its first gaming handheld PC to damning reviews — here’s mine — MSI is already announcing a likely replacement. The MSI Claw 8 AI Plus swaps its lackluster Intel Meteor Lake chip for the brand-new Lunar Lake ones, while replacing its seven-inch, 1080p 120Hz variable resolution rate screen for a larger eight-inch one. (But there will be a new 7-inch one too, as we learned days after I first wrote this story.)here’s mine

Perhaps even more importantly, the 8-incher will boast up to an 80 watt-hour battery, MSI tells The Verge — tying it with the recently announced Asus ROG Ally X for biggest battery in a PC gaming handheld. Despite the larger screen, it’ll still offer a smooth 120Hz refresh rate with VRR, writes MSI marketing specialist Anne Lee. Asus ROG Ally X

The Claw will also offer a second USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 capabilities, just like the Asus, will come with a wall-mounted charger instead of the two-cord brick of the original, and will have enhanced “tactile feel of the LB/RB buttons.”

MSI didn’t provide any other details or a single image of the new handheld, only telling us that the company would release more info at Computex — the PC show that’s currently underway in Taipei, Taiwan. But we know as of today that Intel’s Lunar Lake has up to 50 percent more GPU performance than Meteor Lake and its Xe2 GPU needs less power for the same performance — though Intel doesn’t label its chart axes, so we have no clue how much.at Computex

MSI did announce version of the Claw today: a limited-edition version that looks a tad like the game’s Pip-Boy wrist computers but is unfortunately based on the original seven-inch MSI Claw with Meteor Lake, not Lunar Lake. So unless there are a lot of utterly diehard + Claw fans, I expect that one will be similarly dead on arrival. Still, MSI’s press release says it will have “the largest battery in the industry,” so maybe it’ll have a surprise or two inside?

In case you’re wondering, yes, I have been retesting the original MSI Claw with the newest BIOS and sets of drivers, and I’m not yet finding enough of a performance boost to change my recommendation at all.

Update, June 7th: Jacob Roach of Digital Trends has pics of the Lunar Lake version — and it’s a complete redesign with an M.2 2280 slot for longer SSDs that’s coming in September. And we’ve got more about the Claw 8 and an upgraded Claw 7 based on a great PCWorld interview with one of its makers.has pics of the Lunar Lake version