Acer Unveils Nitro Blaze 11 With Detachable Controllers For Big Time Handheld Gaming
Some of you reading this may not even be aware that Acer has already thrown its hat into the handheld gaming ring. In what's quickly become a battle royale of participants, companies like ASUS (ROG Ally/Ally X), Lenovo (Legion Go), MSI (Claw), and of course Valve (Steam Deck) tend to hog the limelight. Be that as it may, Acer joined the fray last September with its Nitro Blaze 7, and now it's expanding its presence with two bigger variants, the Nitro Blaze 8 and Nitro Blaze 11.
We're especially intrigued by the addition of the Nitro Blaze 11, which as it name implies rocks a 10.95-inch (close enough to 11, right?) IPS display. It features a 2560x1600 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 500 nits brightness, 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, and of course touch support..
The NItro Blaze 8, meanwhile, sports an 8.8-inch IPS display. Acer could have been forgiven for dubbing it the Blaze 9, but it avoided the temptation for a more aggressive rounding up of the key spec. (Psst, wireless router makers, take notice!) Like its bigger Nitro Blaze 11 sibling, the display on the 8.8-inch model offers up a 2560x1600 resolution, so the screen real estate is the same. However, it has a higher refresh rate at 144Hz, and nearly the same DCI-P3 color gamut rating (97%).
Both are powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS 'Hawk Point' processor based on Zen 4 (8C/16T, 3.3GHz to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache, 28W TDP). AMD's Hawk Point part also features Radeon 780M graphics (12 graphics cores, up to 2.7GHz) and an onboard NPU delivering up to 16 TOPS. The overall TOPS on tap from the chip as a whole check in at 39 TOPS.
Other specs include 16GB of LPDDR5X-7500 RAM, up to 2TB of PCIe 4.0 solid state drive (SSD) storage, dual 2W speakers, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless support, and a decent selection of ports (1x USB4, 1x USB 3.2 Type-C, 1x USB 3.2 Type-A, microSD card slot).
All that said, the size and minor display spec discrepancies are not the only things separating the Nitro Blaze 11 and Nitro Blaze 8. The larger 11-inch handheld ups the ante with detachable controllers "for solo and connected play." It also comes with a "sturdy built-in stand" and a front-facing camera for video calls and streaming.
Acer says the Nitro Blaze 8 and Nitro Blaze 11 will be available in the second quarter starting at $899.99 and $1,099.99, respectively.
