Acer has opted to enter the saturated handheld gaming PC market with the Nitro Blaze 7, an all-new Windows 11-powered device that aims to rival the likes of the ASUS ROG Ally and Steam Deck. An announcement surfaced today along with some technical specs, but for now, the tech titan is keeping the price and the release date under wraps.
Oh Look, Another One
In recent months, ASUS, Valve, MSI, Logitech, and Lenovo, among others, have all made waves in the handheld gaming market, releasing or announcing various devices to compete with one another. It’s a little late to the party, but Acer is now on the scene with the Nitro Blaze 7, but there are concerns that it’s mistimed and not innovative enough to succeed.
Acer has thrown a Ryzen 7 8840HS laptop-grade processor into the Nitro Blaze 7 and linked it with a Radeon 780M GPU, which is fast becoming par for the handheld course. It also features 16 GB of fairly speedy memory and a 50Wh battery, but it’s not enough to compete with the recent ASUS ROG Ally X, deemed the best handheld gaming device on the market.
Like many other devices, the Nitro Blaze 7 features a 7-inch 1080p screen, capable of refreshing at 144Hz. As it’s Windows 11-based, it’ll be able to run a staggering number of games, but it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill device with no trackpads or macro buttons – it only has as many as an Xbox controller has, for example.
It’ll take a pricing miracle for the Nitro Blaze 7 to succeed – this is a space to watch for sure.
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