You can save £100 on this Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered MSI Claw A8 handheld from Cyberpower

Currently the cheapest of its Z2E kind

MSI's Claw A8 was one of the first handheld PCs to come packing AMD's beefier Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, promising a comfortable chassis, capacious RAM and storage arrangements, and a big 8-inch 1920x1200 IPS touchscreen on top. It launched at £849, which while cheaper than the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, still came in rather expensive. However, a handy price cut down to £749 from Cyberpower has made this model the cheapest of all the Z2 Extreme handhelds by a considerably healthier margin.

Although RPS hasn't tested the Claw A8 specifically - James did like its Intel-powered cousin, the Claw 8 AI+ - I have put it through its paces elsewhere. In my review, I was left impressed by the grunt of the Z2 Extreme chip inside, though as with any portable PC, expectations for certain games' quality settings should be tempered. If you bump the visual preset down to 'High' in Forza Horizon 5, I saw a solid 59fps result at the handheld's native 1920x1200 resolution, while Rainbow Six Extraction hit 64fps at its highest Ultra preset. More demanding fare, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Returnal, only provided 30fps or lower at native resolution and high settings, but toning their graphics down down comfortably yielded smoother framerates.

Alongisde the Z2 Extreme chip, this Claw A8 comes with 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD that, weirdly, is much brisker when the device is plugged in rather than on battery power. On the point of battery life, this handheld comes with an 80Whr cell that matches the capacity of the ROG Xbox Ally X, and I managed just shy of three hours in a gaming benchmark test at 150 nits of brightness. The 65W brick was decently quick at getting charge back into the device, though.

The 8-inch 1920x1200 120Hz IPS screen is bright and on the larger side for a gaming handheld, and it provides smooth motion and good detail in conjunction with solid contrast and colours. This is also a comfortable handheld with sensible button placement and tactile controls; my real downer on it at the time of review was the fact it was running full-fat Windows 11, which isn't a touch-friendly OS, unlike the Steam Deck's SteamOS or Bazzite flavours of Linux. The advent of Xbox FSE for Windows on handhelds besides the ROG Xbox Ally brethren will provide you with a better experience, although it isn't perfect.

If you've been after a beefy Windows gaming handheld for less, this £100 discount on the MSI Claw A8 from Cyberpower is a potent and rare discount to find.