Introducing Acer’s First Portable Gaming PC: Nitro Blaze, Handheld Console for On-the-Go Gaming

Acer’s finally jumping into the handheld gaming PC scene, and its first offering is the Nitro Blaze 7. This thing looks like a mashup of last year’s Asus ROG Ally and the newer ROG Ally X – think of it as a bridge between the two. And, just like Asus, it’s rocking a seven-inch 1080p variable refresh rate IPS screen, which means it’ll keep things smooth with a 144Hz refresh rate. Plus, it’s got a Ryzen 7 8840HS chip, paired with the same Radeon 780M integrated GPU as most other Windows handhelds.

The specs are looking decent, with 16GB of 7500 MT/s memory and a 50 watt-hour battery. You’ll also get up to 2TB of SSD storage – not bad! But, let’s be real, the Asus ROG Ally X is still the reigning champ in this space, with 24GB of memory and an 80Wh pack. So, Acer’s gonna need to price this thing competitively if it wants to take down the king.

Now, about that design… I’m getting a serious black widow spider vibe from the shiny black and red color scheme. It’s definitely eye-catching, though. And, unlike some other handhelds, this one doesn’t have a touchpad, but it does have no back buttons – which might be a blessing or a curse depending on how you feel about macro keys.

One cool feature is the two USB4 ports, with one of them situated on the bottom. Hopefully, that means we’ll get a choice of whether to charge and dock from top or bottom. As for dedicated keys, this thing’s got a bunch of them, including a button to bring up the virtual keyboard.

Acer didn’t partner with Microsoft on this one, so don’t expect any major UI improvements for Windows handheld gaming PCs. But, hey, more dedicated mode switch buttons is always a good thing! And, here’s the whole spec sheet if you want to get into the nitty-gritty details.

As for pricing and release dates, Acer’s being tight-lipped for now. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this thing shakes out.