Acer has so far stayed out of the handheld gaming PC race, but that’s about to change. It’s just announced its first Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally competitor, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7, which looks like it sits somewhere between last year’s Asus ROG Ally and the new ROG Ally X.
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Instead of using the same AMD Z1 Extreme chipset as Lenovo Legion Go or Asus ROG Ally X, Acer has opted for a Ryzen 8000 HS-class laptop processor paired with the same Radeon 780M GPU as the Ayaneo Kun. However, while the Ayaneo Kun is an expensive device built for enthusiasts expensive device, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 should make things a bit more palatable, even if we don’t yet know how much it will cost.
The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 features a 7-inch 1080p display that’s surrounded by a type of gamer aesthetic that will remind you of the 2010s. The all-black chassis is marked with red and white highlights, with little white markers around the joysticks that make it look like they’re being measured for something. It’s certainly a departure from the more plain-looking handheld gaming PCs we’ve seen over the last year or so, but if you want a louder design out of your handheld, you’ll get it here.Acer hasn’t announced when the Nitro Blaze 7 will be on store shelves, or how much it’ll cost. However, with this level of hardware, it’s certainly not going to be cheap. Here are the relevant specs. AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS (8 core, 16 threads, 24 MB cache, 5.1 GHz max boost). Supports Ryzen AI.
AMD Radeon 780M (Up to 2.7 GHz, AMD RDNA 3 12 CUs)
7″ Full HD (1920×1080) IPS Display, 144 Hz, 500 nits, 10-point touch panel, 7 ms response time
16GB LPDDRTx SDRAM, 7500 MT/s
Up to 2 TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 Gen 4 SSD
2 x USBR 4 ports, Micro SD Card (SD 4.0)
50.04 Wh Li-Polymer Battery. 65 W Type-C AC Adapter.
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A Different Approach
It’s not the first time the AMD Radeon 780M has found its way into a gaming handheld like this, but it is a break from the Z1 Extreme that has powered the most recent mainstream handhelds. It’s not hard to see the appeal – after all the Ayaneo Kun is still one of the most powerful handhelds we’ve reviewed, even a year later. This may mean better performance, but it will consume more battery than competing handhelds. The Ayaneo Kun, which comes with similar hardware, solves this problem to some extent by coming with a 75Wh battery, which is probably why this handheld lasted more than 9 hours in our tests. However, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 only has a 50Wh battery. We’ll have to wait until we get our hands on it for a full review, but the high-powered hardware could drain the battery quickly. The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 is quite possibly the most powerful gaming handheld to date, and that alone is worth the price of admission. But with a 50Wh battery, you’ll be lugging around power blocks wherever you take it. Acer Nitro Blaze 7 No pricing or release date yet.