There are plenty of PC gaming handhelds to choose from these days, but Acer hopes to stand out in a big way with its new Nitro Blaze 8 (8.8-inch screen) and Nitro Blaze 11 (10.95-inch screen) sporting some of the biggest displays we’ve seen from these kinds of devices to date. And with a 2560 x 1600 resolution on both devices and 144 Hz for the smaller device and 120 Hz for the larger one, there are plenty of pixels to push here, too.
Those high-res, high-refresh IPS screens are certainly going to push (and exceed) the limit of current silicon with many AAA games. But if you were hoping Acer had something new on hand to power its handhelds, both are powered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 8840HS CPU, with the same 780M found in the Z1 Extreme chip housed in Asus’ ROG Ally. At the very least, expect to be relying heavily on AMD’s upscaling tech in many games.
Acer’s specs say both devices have a 55 Whr battery, which is more than the original Ally (40 Whr) and the Steam Deck OLED (50 Whr), but a lot less than the Ally X’s 80 Whr battery. Both devices also come with 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage alongside their Ryzen 7 8840HS chips, and the touchscreens on both models are rated to 500 nits of brightness. For some reason, Acer is also prominently calling out the CPUs’ 39 total AI TOPS. In short, given the specs, I wouldn’t expect the new Nitros to stand out in terms of frame rates or battery life. But they're definitely bigger than much of the competition.
The larger Blaze 11 does at least have removable controllers, effectively making it a larger version of Lenovo’s Legion Go, but presumably without the built-in mouse sensor. The controllers also don’t look to have dedicated cursor control, so expect to be doing a lot of tapping and swiping around the Windows 11 Home OS when you aren’t in Acer’s Game Space software.
As you might imagine, the larger displays also make for a heavier handheld. The Nitro Blaze tips the scale at a reasonable 1.59 pounds, but the Nitro 11 is a more substantial 2.31 pounds.
In a brief hands-on with the new devices, the Blaze 11 didn't look or feel as overwhelmingly large as it did in some of the company's press photos. But it's definitely not something you're easily going to carry around with you. Then again, the same thing is true of larger gaming laptops. My main concern with the Blaze 11 is battery life. The large, high-res screen is certainly going to use more power than other portables. But given its size and the likelihood that you're mostly going to be using it while lounging around at home, you probably won't be far from your USB-C charger.
Acer says the Nitro Blaze 8 and Blaze 11 will arrive sometime in Q2, with pricing that matches their screen size: The 8-inch model will start at $899, while the 11-incher will be $1,099 to start.
