The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ costs $1,699 and that is gaming laptop money for a handheld
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MSI's Claw 8 EX AI+ launches June 23 at $1,699, making it the most expensive handheld gaming PC ever sold at retail. It features Intel's new Arc G3 Extreme processor (Panther Lake, 12 Xe3 GPU cores), 32GB LPDDR5X RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, an 8-inch 120Hz display, and an 80Wh battery. The price is $500 more than the next priciest handheld, the Lenovo Legion Go 2 at $1,199, and puts it in direct competition with full gaming laptops that offer larger screens, keyboards, and often more powerful GPUs. Early simulated benchmarks suggest meaningful performance gains over current handhelds, but independent results are not yet available. The steep price is partly driven by a 250% surge in LPDDR5X memory costs as manufacturers redirect production toward AI data centres, though component costs alone don't fully explain the $1,699 tag. The handheld gaming market has grown dramatically since the original Steam Deck launched at $399 in 2022, but MSI's flagship now targets a very narrow audience willing to pay laptop money for portability.
