Premium handhelds push AI gaming PC prices past $2,000 as MSI and OnexPlayer target niche buyers

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ costs $1,699 and that is gaming laptop money for a handheld

MSI's Claw 8 EX AI+ will launch on June 23 at $1,699, making it the most expensive handheld gaming PC ever sold at retail. The device is the first to ship with Intel's Arc G3 Extreme processor, built on the Panther Lake platform with 12 Xe3 GPU cores and a 14-core CPU. It is also $500 more than the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which was already the priciest handheld on the market. The $1,699 figure comes from listings on Newegg and Best Buy, both of which went live this week. MSI's own online store lists the same configuration at $1,799. The spec sheet includes 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, a 1TB NVMe SSD, an 8-inch 1920×1200 120Hz IPS touch display, and an 80Wh battery. The Arc G3 Extreme is Intel's most powerful handheld chip. Its integrated Arc B390 graphics use the Xe3 architecture with support for hardware ray tracing and XeSS 3, Intel's AI-powered upscaling technology. Intel claims a 44 per cent generational performance improvement over its Lunar Lake predecessor at 1080p with XeSS enabled. Early simulations suggest the chip can hold 60 frames per second in Spider-Man 2 at 900p medium settings and above 60fps in Cyberpunk 2077 on the Steam Deck graphics preset, both at a 25-watt power envelope. Those numbers, if they hold in retail units, would represent a genuine leap over current handhelds. Intel has not published independent benchmarks, however, and simulated performance frequently overstates real-world results. The hardware surrounding the chip is premium. Hall Effect joysticks and triggers eliminate the stick drift that plagues conventional analogue inputs. Dual Thunderbolt 4 ports allow external GPU docking and high-speed data transfer, and Wi-Fi 7 provides multi-gigabit wireless connectivity. MSI also touts compatibility with Windows 11's Xbox Mode, formerly Xbox Full Screen Exclusive, which is designed to reduce input latency and improve frame pacing in handheld form factors. The device ships with a Copilot+ PC designation, though the practical value of that branding for a gaming handheld remains unclear. The price context matters. Valve raised Steam Deck OLED pricing on May 27, pushing the 512GB model from $549 to $789 and the 1TB model from $649 to $949. The ASUS ROG Ally X launched at $999 and the Lenovo Legion Go 2 starts at $1,199. The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ sits $500 above all of them. Every handheld in the category has gotten more expensive this year, and the reason is the same one driving up prices across consumer electronics. LPDDR5X prices surged 250 per cent in the past year as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron redirected memory production toward AI data centres. DDR5 prices in some markets have risen over 400 per cent. The 32GB of LPDDR5X inside the Claw 8 EX costs substantially more today than it would have 18 months ago. But component costs only partially explain a $1,699 price tag. At that figure, the Claw 8 EX is not competing with other handhelds. It is competing with gaming laptops that offer 15-inch or 16-inch displays, full keyboards, upgradeable storage, dedicated cooling systems, and in many cases more powerful discrete GPUs. A $1,699 gaming laptop from ASUS, Lenovo, or MSI's own lineup will outperform the Claw 8 EX in every metric except portability. Apple killed its $599 Mac Mini last month because the DRAM shortage made it impossible to sell at that price point. The entire consumer electronics industry is absorbing higher memory costs. MSI's problem is different: it is asking buyers to pay a premium for portability at a price where portability competes with performance. The handheld gaming market has grown rapidly since Valve launched the original Steam Deck at $399 in 2022. That price point proved portable PC gaming could be mainstream. Four years later, the category's flagship device costs more than four times as much. The technology has improved enormously, but the market MSI is targeting with a $1,699 handheld is a narrow one. The Claw 8 EX AI+ is available for pre-order now from Newegg, Best Buy, and MSI's online store, with shipping beginning June 23.

OnexPlayer X2 Mini Pro drops Ryzen AI Max+ 395 for 388, starts at $2,399 with fewer cores

OneXPlayer has launched its X2 Mini Pro on Indiegogo, listing the base configuration at $2,399. This is more than double the price of the Lenovo Legion Go 2. Upgrading to 64GB of RAM increases the price to $2,699, while the 64GB RAM with 2TB storage configuration lands at $2,799. A Liquid-Cooled Edition that connects to an external Frost Bay liquid-cooling dock starts at $2,459.99 and tops out at $2,859.99 for the highest configuration. And that asking price doesn't get you the power the company initially promised. OneXPlayer originally teased the X2 Mini Pro with AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395, a 16-core, 32-thread Strix Halo APU with 64MB of L3 cache and boost clocks up to 5.1GHz. The product page now lists the Ryzen AI Max+ 388 instead, which cuts that down to 8 cores, 16 threads, 32MB of L3 cache, and a 5.0GHz boost clock. Both chips share the same Radeon 8060S integrated graphics with a 55W default TDP and a configurable range of 45W to 120W, so gaming performance should be largely similar. But going from 16 cores to 8 without any announcement or explanation has not sat well with early backers. On the hardware side, the X2 Mini Pro features an 8.8-inch 144Hz OLED display with variable refresh rate support, detachable controllers, a magnetic snap-on keyboard, and a user-replaceable 85Wh battery. Storage is expandable to 8 TB with secondary mini SSDs and microSD cards. The Ryzen AI Max+ 388 provides 50 NPU TOPS, contributing to a total system performance figure of 118 TOPS, which OneXPlayer is leaning into for local AI workloads alongside gaming. That said, Intel Arc G3 Extreme-powered handhelds are coming from the likes of Acer and MSI, with MSI targeting a $1,500 price point for its Claw 8 EX AI+. Early hands-on testing suggests competitive performance to Strix Halo chips at that lower price, which makes the X2 Mini Pro's positioning a harder sell. OneXPlayer also showed off two additional Intel Arc G3 Extreme-powered devices at a recent event in China, the OneXPlayer X2 and the Apex Air, though full details on those have not been announced yet.