What just happened? MSI is no longer exclusively using Intel's chips for its Claw series of PC gaming handhelds. The company has announced a new version of the Claw 8, and it features an AMD Ryzen APU. The firm also revealed an updated version of the Intel-powered Claw 8 AI+.
MSI showed off the Claw A8 BZ2EM at Computex 2025. Note that the Ryzen Z2 Extreme it uses is different from the Ryzen Z2 Go found in the Legion Go S, which offers lower performance than the Z1 Extreme.
Credit: PCWorld
MSI's first Ryzen-powered handheld packs an 8-inch, 1,200p (16:10) LCD screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, 100% sRGB coverage, and 500 nits of typical brightness. MSI says there will be "up to 24GB" of DDR5x-8000 RAM, which is less than the 32GB found in the Lunar Lake-powered MSI Claw 8 AI+.
The Claw A8 BZ2EM, which follows MSI's trend of using catchy, memorable names, also has a single PCIe 4 x4 M.2 slot for storage, a fingerprint reader, a MicroSD card reader, and two USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports. It comes with a 6-cell 80Wh battery and weighs 1.6 pounds.
The handheld will be available in both white and lime green colors. It supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
The Ryzen Z2 Extreme, which was listed as powering the upcoming Asus ROG Ally 2 in leaked specs earlier this month, is said to offer three Zen 5 and five Zen 5c cores and 16 threads, along with Radeon 890M graphics (16 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units).
MSI isn't moving away from Intel for its handhelds. The company is releasing an updated version of the MSI Claw 8 AI+ called the "Polar Tempest Edition." It comes with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor, a 2TB NVMe SSD, and Wi-Fi 7. The handheld also has what the company calls a "glittering UV coating."
MSI never revealed the prices for either device. The current Claw 8 AI+ goes for $1,000 in the US, so it's expected that the two new models will be somewhere around this figure.
The handheld PC gaming market is a crowded one. Zotac is set to unveil the Zotac Zone 2 at Computex, which will run an all-new operating system based on Linux distro Manjaro.
MSI reveals its first AMD-powered Claw handheld, featuring the Ryzen Z2 Extreme
