We truly are in the dark days of RAMageddon right now, and while we’ve seen what pricey RAM has done to established industries like laptops or video game consoles with price hikes galore, the recent Steam Deck OLED price hike has brought things into sharper focus for handheld gaming PCs, too.
The new MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ might not have the catchiest name, but this impressive piece of hardware certainly has a high sticker price: $1,699.99. That could get you multiple consoles of yesteryear, but it's now the going rate for a new handheld PC.
Best Buy listing reveals MSI’s new handheld
At least we think it is. As spotted by Notebookcheck, the new MSI product leaked on Best Buy’s storefront this week but has since been delisted.
The latest Claw model is packing 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and the new Intel Arc G3 Extreme GPU. It's the first handheld from MSI built around that new chip, and it will introduce frame generation tech to the Claw lineup.
There’s also a large, 8-inch screen which runs at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 and has up to 120Hz refresh rate, and an 8Wh battery, which all sounds really impressive — but we can’t quite get over the digits in the price tag.
Was it a placeholder price? It’s hard to say, but it’s clear that a handheld PC is no longer the no-brainer value proposition it once was.
Is it still worth it?
As a longtime Steam Deck evangelist (I have two in my home), I’ve long pointed to the console as a fantastic investment. You get a capable piece of kit that can handle a ton of games that have been released in the last few decades, a smooth console-like interface, and all the advantages of the PC ecosystem, like cheap games and free online play.
Now, though, the Steam Deck OLED has jumped from $549 to $789 for the 512GB version, meaning a system that was already a little pricier than a Switch 2 is now costing 43% more than Nintendo’s latest hardware. In fact, the 1TB model is now $949, a 46% climb.
That’s a tough pill to swallow, given that the Steam Deck has been viewed (pretty fairly) as the more affordable handheld PC option for many people.
Sure, the Claw 8 EX AI+ is expensive, but at least it’s new and marks the debut of Intel’s Panther Lake chipset on MSI hardware. Meanwhile, the Steam Deck OLED—as much as I and many others love it—is approaching three years on the market.
In many ways, there’s no way to jump on board at the “entry” level for PC handhelds, and with Steam Machine pricing yet to be revealed, there’s every chance the category could shrink in the next few years just as much as it’s grown in the last few.
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