Official MSI benchmarks put the Claw 8 AI+ handheld at 20% higher performance than the current best gaming handheld

MSI’s upcoming Claw 8 AI+ gaming handheld appears to perform around 20% better than our current favorite gaming handheld—the Asus ROG Ally X—at the same power consumption level. In some games, it might even reach 113%, but there are some odd games in the company’s benchmark ringer.

The scores come from MSI’s own official, in-house benchmarks, which ETA PRIME shared on their YouTube channel after checking out the Claw 8 AI+ at a recent MSI event (via WCCFtech).

At these kinds of events it’s rare you get a moment to do your own tests, so we’re all stuck with what information MSI deigns to divulge. 

As much as these Claw 8 AI+ charts promise some smashing numbers, I’m wondering why MSI has chosen to benchmark with games that came out in 2010 like Metro 2023, instead of the more recent Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition that we often use to compare machines today. 

That is not to assume the company is hiding anything, just a bit of a weird choice to pick so many older games to show its new device off with.

The Claw 8 AI+ and its 7-inch sister are to be the first major handhelds to ship with Intel’s Lunar Lake Ultra 7 258V chip, which we’ve already had a little play around with in other machines. Turns out it’s pretty nippy, which bodes well for the MSI handhelds.

We saw the non-Hyper-Threaded Ultra 7 258V CPU manage 27 fps in Metro Exodus, in fact, so as long as the Claw 8 AI+ doesn’t suffer from too much thermal throttling—a big hurdle for the best gaming handhelds—we should get some great frame rates out of the Claw. Here’s hoping, anyway.