The next MSI Claw could cost up to $1,700

Intel is preparing to make its big return to the portable PC console market with its Intel ARC G3 Extreme platform to compete with AMD on its own turf. We were able to take control of two machines featuring this new architecture, the Acer Predator Atlas 8 and the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+.

MSI has been a historic partner of Intel on its older generations of chips, with varying degrees of success. The next Claw has everything to please us, but its supposed price already worried us. The console has just appeared at an American distributor and its price is even worse than the predictions.

An MSI Claw for 1700 dollars?

If we thought that the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ was going to be around 1500 dollars, nothing suggested an even higher price. On the Best Buy website, the console displays a price of $1,699.99, well above the predictions of players and media. This is the most powerful version of the console, with G3 Extreme chip, 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

This future MSI Claw certainly uses the latest SoC for portable consoles, but does not include an Oled screen. For comparison, the Lenovo Legion Go 2 with the larger Oled panel in the same configuration sells between $1,800 and $1,900. The chip is certainly less powerful on paper (AMD's Ryzen Z2 Extreme), but the screen plays in a completely different category.

MSI has not yet confirmed the price for its next console and the product page on the Best Buy website is now offline. We can bet that changes are being studied on the MSI side.