Acer Nitro Blaze 7 gaming handheld with Ryzen 8040 revealed at IFA
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Acer brought a brand new Nitro lineup to IFA, including its first attempt at a PC gaming handheld (an increasingly crowded field) and two new laptops — one each with Intel and AMD processors.
The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 differs from the best PC gaming handhelds we've seen so far in a number of ways. For starters, it's using an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS, rather than a Ryzen Z1 Extreme like the Asus ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go. But the chips are pretty similar, as both chips have 8 cores on AMD's Zen 4 process and a max boost clock of 5.1 GHz, as well as 12 RDNA 3 compute units.
With a 7-inch, 1920 x 1080p screen, Acer is going with the same resolution as Asus, but with a higher refresh rate of 144 Hz.
As other OEMs have done with their Windows 11-based gaming handhelds, Acer is putting its own handheld-friendly UI over the desktop. Acer's is called Game Space, which the company describes as a one-stop launcher that can interact with most gaming platforms.
The general hardware appears pretty similar in spirit to other Windows handhelds. The controls are in an Xbox-style layout, with the joysticks offset. Acer has some options buttons near the display, but others are down below the D-Pad and lower joysticks, which may be a bit of a reach. There's a microSD card reader to expand the 2TB of storage, and two USB 4 ports for charging and peripherals. Tom's Hardware managing editor Matt Safford saw the Blaze at IFA, and reports back that he was surprised by how thick it was.
The 50.04 WHr battery is about the same size as the cell in the Steam Deck OLED and ever-so-slightly larger than what you'll find in the Legion Go, but it pales in comparison to the 80 WHr unit in the more expensive Asus ROG Ally X.
Acer hasn't yet set a price or release date, but we hope to find out about that soon.
Nitro V Laptops
Acer's got two mid-priced gaming laptops as well. The two new Nitro V machines come in a 14-inch size and a 16-inch size. They have some pretty big differences beyond their screens.
The V 14 is an AMD system, pairing either the Ryzen 5 8645 HS or Ryzen 7 8845HS with Nvidia graphics. The options are pretty low-end, ranging from an RTX 2050 up through an RTX 4050. In contrast, the V 16 uses 14th Gen Intel CPUs (either a Core i5-14450HX or Core i7-14650HX), with GPU's ranging from an RTX 3050 up through an RTX 4060. The Nitro V 14 comes in a stylish white, while the V 16 is in a more standard black. And while the Ryzen-based laptop uses Wi-Fi 6E, the Intel-based V16 is on the older Wi-Fi 6 standard.
The two systems do share a number of specs. Both go up to 2TB of storage (though the Nitro does it in RAID0), and they use the same 57 WHr battery.
The Nitro V 16 will launch in October starting at $1,299.99, while the Nitro V 14 will come in September, starting at $1,099.99.
Update September 4, 10:53 a.m. ET with hands-on photos and impressions.
