It was only a matter of time before ACER made their own Steam Deck competitor, and we’re honestly surprised that it took this long. Meet ACER’s Nitro Blaze 7, the brand’s on take on the handheld gaming PC, and if its specs are any indication, it might just give Valve and ASUS a run for their money.
The ACER Nitro Blaze 7 has a 7-inch, full HD display that boasts a 144Hz refresh rate, though the brand’s touch-capable display uses an LCD panel, likely to cut costs. It does have AMD’s FreeSync tech to help smoothen out the gameplay. As far as hardware goes, the handheld sports an AMD Ryzen 8040 Series processor, with up to 39 AI TOPS (trillions of operations per second) and 16GB of RAM. Users can get up to 2TB of SSD storage which is handy because games nowadays are getting utterly ridiculous in terms of install sizes.
As with its main rival the ROG Ally X, the Nitro Blaze 7 also runs on Windows 11, though ACER has put in their own UI to make handheld gaming a little easier. Dubbed Acer Game Space, we’re assuming this will function similarly to its equivalents in rival devices, basically allowing you to tweak the machine’s settings as well as serve as the launchpad for games you’ve already installed in it. Speaking of games, buyers of the handheld will get three free months of PC Game Pass which should come in handy.
Despite announcing the machine at IFA, ACER has not made any mention of price or availability as of yet. We’re hoping that the company will release this console in time for the holiday season, where it’ll do battle with a number of other hand-held PC gaming consoles that’s already been launched this year.
