The rumored Acer handheld is real, and it’s a curious device. The new Acer Nitro Blaze falls somewhere between the Asus ROG Ally and Ally X in terms of power, but no price or availability details have yet been announced, so it’s hard to judge in terms of value right now.
We managed to take a sneak peek at Nitro Blaze following Acer‘s presentation at IFA 2024. It’s very thin, and the display looks great up close, but the decision to paste decals across the front of the handheld ruins the aesthetic.
Here are the Acer Nitro Blaze specs:
| Acer Nitro Blaze specs | |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon 780M |
| Display | 7-inch, 1,920 x 1,080, 144Hz, 500 nits, AMD FreeSync Premium |
| Memory | 16GB LPDDR5x-7500 |
| Storage | Up to 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD |
| I/O Ports | 2 x USB4, microSD card (4.0) |
| Battery | 50Wh |
| Dimensions | 25.6cm x 11.35cm x 2.25cm |
| Weight | 670g |
The initial teases for the Nitro Blaze were light on details, with just an X (formerly Twitter) post teasing that something was coming at IFA. Because of the impending launch of Intel’s Lunar Lake, we believed the new architecture could power the device, but instead, Acer is using AMD’s Ryzen 7 8840HS.
While the RDNA 3 GPU architecture with 12 compute units in this chip is similar to one in the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme which powers the ROG Ally devices, Asus’ newest handheld, the Ally X, has an edge thanks to 24GB of system memory, of which more can be assigned to cover graphical needs.
It’s not a huge surprise to see Acer side with AMD for a handheld, given that the only Intel-based handheld, the MSI Claw A1M, bombed upon release. MSI and Intel are maintaining their partnership for the MSI Claw 8 AI+, however, which was also revealed at IFA this year.
Beyond the list of specs, and our chance to take a closer look at the device, few details are known. Acer may plan to release the Nitro Blaze in 2024 or early 2025, but it needs to get the price right. With the Asus ROG Ally X being on the market for $799, and with an immense amount of power under its belt, Acer must absolutely come in under this price to avoid killing all interest.
It’s not necessarily a bad idea to aim for the middle of the market in terms of power for a first console, but the MSRP needs to represent this situation. Both the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go have taken price cuts recently, and the Nitro Blaze should look to these devices as a guideline, especially when it uses the same Windows platform too, rather than a proprietary operating system such as SteamOS.
We’ll be bringing you more IFA coverage as the show continues, but in the meantime, you can check out our Intel Lunar Lake guide to get an idea of how these new chips stack up against the competition.