Acer’s Nitro Blaze 11 makes my Steam Deck look tiny
Two new gaming handhelds go large - and one is a lot larger than the other
They’ve become a bit of a thing in recent years, but you rarely see people using handheld gaming PCs out and about. There’s a feeling that these are usually sofa-bound gadgets, designed to be played while Super Sunday is on in the background or everyone else is engrossed in another episode of Silo… so what the heck, why not make one that’s massive? Enter the Acer Nitro Blaze 11.
This mammoth machine has a 10.95in touchscreen, making it a considerable 3.5in bigger than a Steam Deck OLED. It’s got a 120Hz refresh rate, too, so games should look that much smoother – although the panel is a more old-school IPS LCD, so won’t be a match on colour or contrast.
The 2560×1600 resolution requires a hefty amount of oomph to play newer games at, so inside there’s an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor and Radeon 780M graphics card teamed with 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage. A 55Whr battery should be good for several hours of gaming between charges, and the power supply delivers a substantial 100W for rapid refuelling.
You get all the usual buttons you’d expect from a gaming handheld, including Hall-effect sticks and triggers, plus a front-facing camera for making video calls. Connectivity is pretty decent for a handheld, with a single USB4 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Type-C and one USB 3.2 Type-A. There’s also a microSD card slot for adding extra storage.
It weighs just over a kilogram, but if your arms get tired from holding it you can detach the controllers from either side and deploy the built-in kickstand to take the load off – a bit like an incredibly powerful Nintendo Switch. That also makes it a little bit easier to transport… although, like moths around a giant lightbulb, you can expect to draw a small crowd if you pull one of these out on the train.
There’s also a new Nitro Blaze 8, which, you guessed it, has a smaller screen (8.8in). The rest of the internal specs are the same, except the ‘small’ one has an even faster 144Hz refresh rate. It also only comes bundled with a 65W charger – there’s no word if it’ll actually top up at the same 100W as the Nitro Blaze 11 if fed from a suitably beefy power brick.
Acer has also chucked in three free months of PC Game Pass, which includes a bunch of recent must-play releases including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
The Blaze 8 will be hitting Europe in March, with no word on official pricing just yet. Expect the Acer Nitro Blaze 11 to follow quickly after.
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Tom Wiggins
Contributor 
