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 first Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally competitor, nan Acer Nitro Blaze 7, which looks for illustration it fits location betwixt past year’s Asus ROG Ally and nan 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 sewage a newer Ryzen 7 8840HS chip, albeit pinch nan 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 nan original Ally’s 6400 MT/s representation and 40Wh pack, and it comes pinch up to 2TB worthy of SSD storage. But pinch 24GB of representation and an 80Wh pack, nan $800 Asus ROG Ally X is presently nan Windows handheld to beat, truthful I fishy this Acer will request to costs rather a spot little to compete.

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

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

Here’s nan full spec sheet:

Acer isn’t yet sharing prices aliases merchandise dates.