Acer joins the handheld gaming arena with the Nitro Blaze 7
Acer's first handheld gaming PC debuts with a lightweight build, masses of storage and a 144Hz refresh rate
Announced at Acer’s IFA 2024 showcase, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 is the brand’s debut effort in the handheld gaming PC space. It follows the likes of Valve’s Steam Deck and Asus’ ROG Ally in offering gaming PC power in a portable package.
With Asus recently releasing the beefed-up ROG Ally X, competition is heating up in this compact corner of the gaming PC market. Is the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 ready to set its rivals alight or will it quickly fizzle out? Let’s have a look at the loadout.
Acer Nitro Blaze 7 hands-on: Specification, price and release date
- AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor
- AMD Radeon 780M graphics
- 7in, 1,920 x 1,080, 144hz IPS display, 500nit peak brightness
- 16GB LPDDR5X RAM
- Up to 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD
- 50Wh battery
- 65W charger
- Dimensions (WDH): 256 x 23 x 114mm
- Weight: 670g
Acer Nitro Blaze 7 hands-on: Design and first impressions
Aesthetically, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 isn’t that far off the Asus ROG Ally and Ally X, with ergonomic grips on either side of a 7in IPS display. In terms of the build, the Nitro Blaze 7 lands between the ROG Ally and the Ally X; it’s chunkier and heavier than the former but not quite as bulky as the latter.
On the left handgrip, there’s a thumbstick near the top, with a D-pad just below it, while on the right, the thumbstick is further down, with ABXY buttons laid out above it. Dotted around are several other buttons, including a dedicated Acer Game Space button and a key for a pop-up keyboard.
Each hand grip also has a grille near the bottom from which audio is played via 1W speakers. If that’s not to your liking, there’s also a 3.5mm jack for wired headphones, as well as Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6e support.
On the top edge, we’ve got the same bumper and trigger layout as most handhelds, as well as volume buttons and a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader.
The 7in display is a FHD (1,920 x 1,080) panel with a claimed peak brightness of 500nits and a slick 144Hz refresh rate. The brightness is the same claim that we saw with the ROG Ally (though it actually performed a little better in testing) but this refresh rate is higher than anything else on the market right now, which could well give Acer an edge.
The display also supports ten points of touch detection and AMD’s FreeSync Premium, which aims to render gameplay free from tears and stuttering. The time I spent with the Nitro Blaze 7 was far from long enough to deliver any kind of final verdict but I can say that gameplay looked sharp and flowed well, so that’s a positive first step.
Lighting up the pixels is an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor with 16 threads and a maximum boost clock speed of 5.1GHz. RAM doesn’t quite extend to the ROG Ally X’s monstrous 24GB reserve but we still get a solid 16GB of LPDDR5X memory here, along with storage options going all the way up to a massive 2TB PCI SSD. There’s also support for a microSD card to further expand your storage capabilities.
The battery doesn’t match the ROG Ally X’s either, but the 50Wh cell is still decent, and you get a 65W charger bundled in for good measure.
Something else that could prove to be a secret weapon in the Nitro Blaze 7’s arsenal is support for AMD Ryzen AI, apparently reaching performance levels of up to 39 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). After flashing these figures, Acer didn’t elucidate much on what exactly Ryzen AI will add to the overall experience, but given that those two little letters need to be slapped on every piece of technology this year, having the capability there can’t hurt.
Acer Nitro Blaze 7 hands-on: Early Verdict
We’ll need to fully put the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 through the ringer in order to understand where it stands against the likes of the Steam Deck and the Asus ROG Ally X but it certainly makes a decent first impression.
We also don’t currently have any information on the expected price or release date. Considering the ROG Ally X cost £100 more than its predecessor, there’s definitely an opening in the market for Acer to swoop in and undercut the competition.
We’ll have more news on the Nitro Blaze 7 soon, and keep an eye out for our full review to see if this could be our pick of the ever-growing selection of handheld gaming PCs.
