MSI is the only company to bundle Intel’s new Lunar Lake processor in a portable gaming PC along with a large 80 Whr power supply.

MSI was exhibiting something that I was very excited to try out at Intel's Lunar Lake Launch Event. The new MSI Claw is the Claw 8 which is the second model of this handheld gaming PC. It's important to note that the Claw 8 is bigger in several ways, including battery and screen.

I was able to test the MSI Claw 8 at the event. It's a neat, black and silver design that is slightly more eye-catching compared to the previous one, which was a bit plain. The MSI Claw 8 features an 8-inch display, hence its name. It was a great screen to play Hi-Fi Rush.

I've never played Hi-Fi Rush, and I was terrible at it. I blamed that on the fact that the music was too loud to match beat for beat. It ran well on the Lunar Lake system. We were unable to test the device with any other games, but Hi-Fi Rush performed well. Lunar Lake's Xe2 GPU appears to be able to keep up with the game, even though it isn't the most demanding.

Damien Triolet is the director of GPU technical Marketing. He assures me that it scales down well with low power and should be a good candidate in designs which are more thermally sensitive, such as handhelds. I was hoping to get some insight into how it scaled in power up, a hint at Battlemage admittedly, but no dice.

The handheld itself felt well balanced in my hand. The 8-inch screen is quite large, but the buttons and macro paddles are easily accessible.

MSI is still working on the details. I was told that the design could change slightly. The rep was unable to reveal much other than that it is using an engineering sample for a Lunar Lake processor, the new Core Ultra200V-series and the battery has improved up to 80Whr. This is a significant increase over the original Claw 7's 53 Whr Battery. This should put it on par with the ROG ally X which has a battery capacity similar to the Claw 7's.

MSI is planning to release the Claw 8 in January. If I were you, then I would wait to see how the benchmarks compare to the Claw 7 powered by Meteor Lake, which is already available. We weren't impressed enough by the Claw 7 when we got to play with it. Maybe a little Lunar Lake efficiency and an improved GPU can help.