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MSI unveiled its Claw 8 EX AI+ handheld at Computex earlier this month, and it has simply appeared on the company’s website for $1,799, whereas Newegg has it listed for $1,699. It options Intel’s new Arc G3 Extreme APU with flagship Arc B390 built-in graphics and 32GB of LPDDR5X reminiscence. MSI says it tried all the things to maintain prices as little as doable, and that it will be a troublesome yr forward with probabilities of much more worth hikes.
Andy Chu, the model’s product advertising and marketing lead, informed FRVR that “it’s a really difficult year for Intel and especially the OEM like us […] because we also need to take those cost hikes for those key components like memory and also storage.” It’s no secret at this point that DRAM and NAND prices have skyrocketed over the past few months, and even major vendors are struggling to keep up.
Every console is now more expensive than it was at launch, including the once bastion of affordability: the Steam Deck. The OLED version of Valve’s handheld retails for $949 despite featuring last-gen hardware. The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ brings a huge performance boost over it, so the price almost looks justified in comparison. The ROG Xbox Ally X with the Ryzen Z2 Extreme is available for $999 everywhere, and that is AMD’s mainstream rival to the Arc G3 Extreme for the time being.
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“All I can say is now we have tried each method to get the reminiscence and likewise storage at a decrease price. Like, deepen the connection between us and likewise these suppliers, prefer to have some offers… and I feel now we have carried out all the things we are able to do to make our system as reasonably priced as doable,” continued Chu. Not much you can do when hyperscalers annex all the production lines, offering fatter margins to these manufacturers.
It’s a bit ironic to explicitly market your product as “AI+” while publicly complaining about the very consequences of said AI boom, but we digress. “Unfortunately, I feel the state of affairs, the result’s what you see proper right here. So, I’d say, sure, it will likely be a troublesome yr for us and for the avid gamers,” warns Chu. We’ve already heard loads of admonitions from numerous firms, however it’s disheartening nonetheless to see the state of affairs perpetually spiral uncontrolled.
The govt goes on to say that “there’s much room for another price hike,” so even the $1,799 price ticket might go up within the following months. For context, yow will discover AMD’s Strix Halo-equipped handhelds above the $2,000 mark, and they’re considerably extra succesful machines. Even although they’re far and few in between, let’s not low cost laptops both which have Panther Lake silicon and cost less than $2,000.
To be clear, the Claw 8 EX AI+ is a reliable machine that we had been impressed by in our hands-on at Computex. Since Intel is barely launching the Arc G3 Extreme proper now, there was no cheaper base Arc G3 to place inside this factor both. Intel has mandated reminiscence speeds for Panther Lake, however MSI might’ve certainly minimize down on the 32GB pool to save lots of prices and make the hand-held extra reasonably priced general with 24GB and even 12GB configs.
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