After teasing it yesterday, Acer formerly unveiled a new handheld gaming PC at IFA 2024. Called the Nitro Blaze 7, the handheld already looks like a unique entry among the best handheld gaming PCs with a much smaller design than we typically see. The interesting change is under the hood, though. Acer is debuting a chip we’ve never seen in a mainstream handheld, and it’s not one of Intel’s new Lunar Lake CPUs.
Acer is using the AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS instead, which is an eight-core chip packing the integrated Radeon 780M GPU. Handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally X using the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which is basically a rebranded version of the Ryzen 7 7840U. The chip Acer is using has access to more power, but it’s otherwise unchanged compared to the Z1 Extreme. According to Notebookcheck’s database, this chip should be about 8% faster than the Z1 Extreme on average — however, that includes all benchmarks, not just gaming.
The Nitro Blaze 7 may be more powerful than the competition, and it’s also literally more powerful. The Ryzen 7 8840HS can draw more power. Paired with only a 50 watt-hour battery — recent handhelds like the ROG Ally X go up to 80Wh — the Nitro Blaze 7 might not have the best battery life.
Although the Ryzen 7 8840HS is faster on paper than handhelds like Lenovo Legion Go, Acer isn’t making any bold performance claims. Instead, the company focused on all of the aspects of the handheld surrounding the chip. The Nitro Blaze 7 comes with a 7-inch 1080p screen that sports a refresh rate up to 144Hz, as well as FreeSync Premium certification. In addition, Acer is offering 16GB of LPDDR5x-7500 memory, along with up to 2TB of storage built in.
Outside of the core specs, Acer packs in dual USB 4 ports, each Type-C capable of 40Gbps, and a microSD card reader. Both USB-C ports work for charging, and you should be able to connect accessories like an external GPU to the spare port. Wirelessly, you can connect with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
On the software side, Acer is unsurprisingly using Windows 11. Despite the progress on SteamOS in other handhelds, Valve has yet to release the operating system the Steam Deck uses widely. Instead, Acer is sticking with Windows 11 and using its new Game Space app for easy handheld navigation. For these Windows handhelds, software can make or break the experience — just read our MSI Claw review for an example — so that will be important aspect for Acer to nail.
Acer hasn’t shared any performance numbers or shown the Nitro Blaze 7 in action yet. The company also hasn’t shared what Game Space looks like or what it’s capable of. We’re on the ground in Berlin for IFA 2024, so we’ll be on the lookout for the Nitro Blaze 7 to get a better sense of how it will compete with the growing list of handheld gaming PCs.
Although we should be able to see the Nitro Blaze 7 in the flesh, Acer is still keeping some details under wraps. The company hasn’t shared configuration details, for example, which will be important considering you can pack up to 2TB of storage in the device. It also hasn’t announced pricing, which is a vital aspect of getting any new handheld gaming PC off the ground.
