Acer's First Handheld Gaming PC Is the Nitro Blaze

Acer has announced its first Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally competitor, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7. The Verge's Sean Hollister reports: Like Asus -- but unlike most rivals -- it features a seven-inch 1080p variable refresh rate IPS screen to keep things smooth, one that refreshes slightly faster at 144Hz. (Acer tells The Verge it's a landscape-native screen.) It's also got a newer Ryzen 7 8840HS chip, albeit with the same Radeon 780M integrated GPU as most other Windows handhelds. With 16GB of 7500 MT/s memory and a 50 watt-hour battery, it's a step ahead of the original Ally's 6400 MT/s memory and 40Wh pack, and it comes with up to 2TB worth of SSD storage. But with 24GB of memory and an 80Wh pack, the $800 Asus ROG Ally X is currently the Windows handheld to beat, so I suspect this Acer will need to cost quite a bit less to compete.

The Nitro has no touchpads, but it also unusually has no back buttons; most PC handhelds now have at least two macro keys around back. But I suspect some people will be happy that it not only has two USB4 ports but that one of them is on the bottom. Hopefully, we'll get our choice of whether to charge and dock from top or bottom with this portable PC. Acer released a product launch video on YouTube but hasn't shared pricing or release information.

All useless

[Pinky's Brain]

No one wants to pay patent extortion fees except the big boys and Valve who was forced to, so no one makes good control schemes ... and Valve might never make one again.

Patents, destroying innovation and market function for no benefit to society.

The 780M isn't bad

[rsilvergun]

But I can't help but think AMD couldn't do better. This is also one of the few sub $1,000 devices you can get it in which is ridiculous because for the same price, sometimes the last you can get an integrated GPU in the equivalent devices.

These little steam decks because of the need for battery life Make a little more sense for that but it's annoying that you can't find a 780M in a sub $600 laptop. Once I get up to 600 bucks for a laptop it's not much further to go to get a proper integrated GPU.

And

Re:

[Luckyo]

>Enough for a short commute if you have public transit to work or school

You have discovered the purpose of handhelds. Rest of time they're either plugged in, or replaced with a laptop or desktop.

The real question is

[ravenshrike]

Who has the less infuriating warranty setup between ASUS and Acer? Can Acer clear the abysmally low bar set by ASUS?

Re:

[Luckyo]

To be fair ASUS has implemented a lot of fixes to RMA policy in US, and their recent problems only concerned the US entity. Rest of the world wasn't affected by shitty RMA practices.

But if you're looking for a solid handheld for gaming and gaming only, it's still really hard to compete with Valve's offering. It's cheaper and for games it works with it tends to offer more stable (if a bit lower) frame rates. And in case of lower end of the frame rate spectrum, stability of it becomes pronounced, because ther

Yeeha!

[RitchCraft]

Windows 11 in the palm of your hand. What a feature! No thanks.

Re:

[Luckyo]

It's watching you all-the-time. Think of the AI tracking applications!

Now excuse me while I look at another application on my smartphone...

Storage?

[reynolds_john]

It will be out of disk space after like one or two installs of Call of Duty Special Black Ops VII Warfare Extreme.

Re:

[bjwest]

Did you not watch the video? It has, what appears to be, user replaceable NVMe storage that can handle up to 2 terabytes. Does CoD take up a terabyte of storage? Also, why would anyone install a single game twice on any device, let alone a handheld one?

VRR! Finally!

[Zuriel]

Variable refresh rate support is incredibly important for making games feel smooth at lower frame rates, so it was always a head scratcher for it to be missing from handhelds. With VRR you don't suddenly get stutter or tearing if you fall below the screen's refresh rate, so there's no need to fiddle with settings to keep the game running at the screen's exact refresh rate at all times. The refresh rate just follows the game's rendering speed on the fly and dropping to 53 FPS feels the same as solid 60 FPS.

Re:

[Luckyo]

Stutter is slightly increased by adaptive refresh rate, as there are pipeline issues with it still. All while tearing is all but irrelevant on small high resolution screens where it's barely noticeable if at all. Notably, so is high framerate, because small screens fit in your focus vision, and it's your peripheral that tracks most of the high refresh rate.

The most important thing in handhelds is stability of framerate. That's what keeps stutters away. And I suspect that steamdeck still remains #1 in that a