The new Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered MSI Claw A8 gaming handheld has appeared at a US retailer, hinting at a launch in the near future. Unfortunately, however, initial pricing makes this model significantly more expensive than its Intel-based predecessors. For this AMD-powered version, Newegg US demands a massive $1,149.
The listing was spotted by Videocardz, specifically for a Claw A8 BZ2EM-070US, which is currently out of stock. This listing comes a bit late compared to other regions, which began seeing the new Claw reaching stores about a month ago. In fact, in China, this handheld has been available since July.
While waiting a bit longer is not that big of a deal, the $1,149 price tag is likely to be a problem. For example, you could grab this Claw A8 version for £849 from Currys in the UK. Subtract 20% VAT from that figure, and convert it to dollars, and you’re looking at around $950. That’s a $200 difference.
This makes the Ryzen variant of the Claw slightly more expensive than the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V MSI Claw 8 AI+, which is now retailing for $1,099, while packing 33% more memory, at 32GB. While the latter is also slightly slower in gaming, according to early testing, the difference isn’t that big.
As a reminder, the Z2 Extreme-powered MSI Claw A8 features the same 8in 1920×1200 120Hz VRR display as the other model. It swaps the Intel CPU/GPU for an AMD combo packing three Zen 5, plus five Zen 5c cores. This chip also contains an AMD Radeon RDNA 3.5 GPU with 16 compute units. Meanwhile, this new AMD model has 24GB of LPDDR5X 8,000MT/s memory. Both variants are powered by Windows 11.
This price could be the result of two factors: US tariffs and the ongoing hikes in RAM prices. At $1,149 the Claw is already in a hard spot against the $999 ROG Xbox Ally X, which is nearly identical in terms of specs, featuring the same AMD chip and amount of RAM. Worse still, the ROG is Microsoft’s baby, so you can expect better tweaks that could give it an advantage in performance, stability, or efficiency, all at a lower price.
