Acer’s first handheld gaming PC is the Nitro Blaze

Acer has truthful acold stayed retired of the handheld gaming PC race, but that’s astir to change. It’s conscionable announced its archetypal Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally competitor, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7, which looks similar it fits determination betwixt past year’s Asus ROG Ally and the newer ROG Ally X.

Like Asus — but dissimilar astir rivals — it features a 7-inch 1080p adaptable refresh complaint IPS surface to support things smooth, 1 that refreshes somewhat faster astatine 144Hz. (Acer tells The Verge it’s a landscape-native screen.) It’s besides got a newer Ryzen 7 8840HS chip, albeit with the aforesaid Radeon 780M integrated GPU arsenic astir different Windows handhelds.

With 16GB of 7500 MT/s representation and a 50 watt-hour battery, it’s a measurement up of the archetypal Ally’s 6400 MT/s representation and 40Wh pack, and it comes with up to 2TB worthy of SSD storage. But with 24GB of representation and an 80Wh pack, the $800 Asus ROG Ally X is presently the Windows handheld to beat, truthful I fishy this Acer volition request to outgo rather a spot little to compete.

The Nitro has nary touchpads, but it besides unusually has nary backmost buttons; astir PC handhelds present person astatine slightest 2 macro keys astir back. But I fishy immoderate volition beryllium blessed that it not lone has 2 USB4 ports, but that 1 of them is connected the bottom. Hopefully, we’ll get our prime of whether to complaint and dock from apical oregon bottommost with this portable PC.

Acer says it didn’t spouse with Microsoft for this one, truthful I wouldn’t expect this 1 to rotation retired with immoderate large UI improvements for Windows handheld gaming PCs. That said, it does travel with much dedicated mode power buttons than astir rivals, including a dedicated cardinal to bring up the virtual keyboard.

Here’s the full spec sheet:

Acer isn’t yet sharing prices oregon merchandise dates.