(Credit: Mark Stetson)
LAS VEGAS—CES 2025 is awash in PC gaming handheld systems, but it looks like Acer has the biggest of the bunch so far. Acer's new 8- and- 11-inch Nitro Blaze handhelds aim for an elevated mobile PC gaming experience with laptop-grade processors and specs, high-resolution displays, and even AI capabilities. I got my hands on the new Nitro Blaze 8 and 11 at the show, and I'm impressed with Acer's unique angle into this burgeoning PC gaming scene. Check out the video above to see the monstrous handheld in action, and read on for more details.
Acer Nitro Blaze 11: Go Big or Go Home
The Acer Nitro Blaze 11 wowed me with its enormous 10.95-inch IPS display, which has an impressive 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, a 500-nit brightness rating, and a 10-point touch panel. The larger screen size is obviously the key selling point, but it's hard to convey how much more immersive mobile gaming becomes when adding several inches to the standard 7- or- 8-inch screen size we've grown used to with these devices.
(Credit: Mark Stetson)Despite the larger 11-inch size, the Nitro Blaze 11 isn't overly heavy, weighing 2.31 pounds. When held at arm's length, the bigger display fills a surprisingly large amount of your field of vision. If you want to back off from the big screen, the Blaze 11 enables that with Lenovo Legion Go-like detachable controllers and a built-in kickstand.
(Credit: Mark Stetson)My only immediate concerns about the 11-inch design are the buttons that detach each controller from the side of the tablet. Since they're positioned at the bottom of each controller's backside, it's possible to bump the detach buttons accidentally, leaving you with the risk of a detached controller in the middle of a fervent game.
(Credit: Mark Stetson)As for what drives the system, the Blaze 11 has an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS with 16GB of memory and up to 2TB of solid-state storage. This AMD chip has built-in NPU hardware that can generate up to 39 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of AI horsepower.
Most important, however, is the 12-core AMD Radeon 780M integrated graphics chip on the die. This chip was built on AMD's RDNA 3 graphics architecture, which features ray-tracing and AI-based graphics acceleration.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 provide wireless connectivity, but the handheld also has room for a 40Gbps USB-C Port, a second USB-C port, one USB Type-A port, and a microSD card slot.
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Acer Nitro Blaze 8: A Smaller-Size Upgrade
The Acer Nitro Blaze 8 is the smaller sibling of the pair, but it's no less powerful. Despite the decrease in size, this model contains the same AMD Ryzen chip, 16GB of RAM, and up to a 2TB SSD.
(Credit: Mark Stetson)The Blaze 8, made with a greater focus on portability, weighs just 1.58 pounds. It doesn't feature detachable controllers and skips the built-in kickstand, opting instead to focus on handheld gaming capability.
The 8-inch screen may be smaller, but it stands out with a faster 144Hz refresh rate, impressive 1600p WQXGA resolution, 500-nit brightness, 10-point touch, and 97% DCI P3 color gamut coverage. The results are surprisingly vivid and smooth gaming graphics powered by the AMD Radeon 780M with RDNA 3.
Both sizes of the Nitro Blaze run Windows 11 Home. They also support the Xbox PC Game Pass and the Acer Game Space app, a customizable platform that adapts popular game stores to the handheld PC environment.
Price and Availability
The 8-inch Acer Nitro Blaze will sell for $899.99 in base configurations featuring 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. The larger Nitro Blaze 11 has the same base specs and will start at $1,099.99. Of course, we've yet to review them, but this pricing is starting to challenge the math versus buying a gaming laptop. Regardless, we'll reserve any further judgment until we get a chance to spend more time with them.
Acer says that both systems will launch in Q2 2025, so between March and June of this year. Come back around then to see us fully test these new PC gaming handhelds when they drop later this year.