Been running a Claw 8 AI+ as my main handheld for a bit over a year, picked it up a few months after launch. Went with it mostly for the Lunar Lake efficiency after watching what the original Claw's thermals had been through, and the 258V setup ended up being solid. Long sessions on indies without hunting for outlets was the main thing that kept me on it, plus full Windows for stuff outside Steam.

The reason I moved on wasn't really the Claw's fault, more that I started dabbling in newer AAA titles at higher settings. Stellar Blade at anything above medium was clearly asking too much, and I was starting to hit the 32GB RAM ceiling with some occasional Photoshop and light video work on the road. Looked at what the Strix Halo handhelds could do and ended up picking up the OneXPlayer Apex 395, non-water-cooled version, 64GB and 2TB in white. Two weeks in.

Where the Apex delivers is raw output. Stellar Blade at max feels great, Tekken 8 stays there without breaking a sweat, and the 8060S iGPU with the wider memory bus makes a real difference at native res on newer titles. The 64GB unified memory has actually been the sleeper win for me, running heavier Photoshop and Blender projects on the side without hitting swap. The clip-on battery pack is a smart design too. Leave it off at home when you're plugged in, snap it on for couch time or travel.

The one thing you sign up for is weight. The Claw at 795g in one piece is right at my comfort ceiling for a couple hours, and the Apex body plus clip-on battery pushes past that. Fair trade for what it delivers, but if grab-and-go was 80% of my use I'd have thought harder about it.

The Claw is still the play at $900 for anyone running mostly indies and older AAA, and Lunar Lake at low TDPs is genuinely hard to beat on battery. Where the Apex justifies the price gap for me is the ceiling on newer AAA and the RAM headroom for the work side.

A year with the Claw 8 AI+, some honest thoughts as I move on