Acer Tells Gamers to Blaze It With Its New Handheld PC That Looks like a Toy Race Car

As successful immoderate race, being down the battalion has immoderate advantages. It means you tin look astatine your competitors and capitalize connected their mistakes earlier you swoop successful for the win. Acer thinks its champion accidental to instrumentality connected the Steam Deck is the Nitro Blaze. It’s coming successful with a weird contention car-heavy plan and the astir 4/20-friendly names we’ve seen for the still-burgeoning satellite of handheld gaming PCs. Besides the unusual design, the device’s large assertion to fame arsenic a Windows 11 handheld gaming rig is the afloat 2 TB of SSD storage.

First, we person to speech astir its look. It has a signifier origin similar an Asus ROG Ally X crossed with a Lenovo Legion Go. It has a level face, and a 7-inch IPS LCD touchscreen drops abruptly into the grips. Its backplate features 2 rounded vents that look similar a car’s velocity gauges. The beforehand sheet besides has a fig of decals that look to beryllium ripped retired of a sports car’s dashboard, arsenic if the “Nitro” moniker wasn’t capable to invoke the velocity of a blistery rod. 

Both the Legion Go and Asus ROG Ally apical retired with the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU, but Acer’s taking a somewhat antithetic tack with the Hawk Point epoch AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS. Specs-wise, the 2 chips are cervix and neck. Both enactment the aforesaid RDNA 3 integrated graphics. The 8840HS supports up to 30 W TDP, similar the Z1 Extreme. Acer besides boasts the spot has 39 full TOPS for AI show successful its CPU, though I’m wracking my encephalon trying to find a usage lawsuit for AI processing connected specified a small, gaming-centric machine.

Other than its CPU, the instrumentality runs connected 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The 7-inch show supports up to 144 Hz refresh rates and AMD FreeSync. It volition beryllium hard to bushed Valve’s OLED show connected its latest handheld, but astatine slightest it’s a bully baseline. As for artillery life, it has a 50Wh battery. It’s equivalent to the Steam Deck OLED, but it pales compared to the Ally X’s 80Wh battery.

At slightest this feline looks excited. Image: Acer

The controls are what you expect, from the look buttons to the d-pad and near and close hallway effect triggers. There’s nary trackpad; strangely enough, determination are nary rear bumpers arsenic you get connected astir different big-name PC makers’ handhelds. Instead, there’s a circumstantial fastener to bring up Acer Game Space. It’s a caller app similar Lenovo’s Legion Space oregon Armoury Crate that allows users to bypass Windows and rapidly entree their games.

The handheld clocks successful astatine 670 grams, oregon 1.4 pounds. That’s conscionable a interaction lighter than the Ally X and a small heavier than the original ROG Ally oregon Steam Deck OLED. It’s acold lighter than the Legion Go with its attached controllers, but past again, truthful are astir handhelds. At a small implicit 10 inches wide, it’s going to beryllium somewhat much compact than an Ally oregon Deck, which whitethorn beryllium a constituent successful its favour for axenic portability.

Otherwise, it does person 2 USB-C ports and a microSD paper slot connected apical of that whopping 2 TB of retention astatine the precocious end. My accustomed proposition for idiosyncratic buying for a handheld is to drawback the minimum SSD you deliberation you’ll request to play your games connected the go, past drawback a cheaper microSD paper connected merchantability for your less-intensive titles oregon for emulation. You usually volition spot 2 TB connected the higher extremity gaming laptop oregon desktop configurations for gamers who privation to person to uninstall a crippled arsenic seldom arsenic possible.

Acer antecedently told Tom’s Guide it was “watching” the gaming handheld space. That seems a small connected the nose, considering the Nitro Blaze looks precise comfy without immoderate standout features prevention for the bigger SSD. I’m hoping much clip with its racecar plan volition endear maine much to it, but I’m conscionable wondering if the specs are hiding thing much profound.