Acer’s first handheld gaming PC is the Nitro Blaze

Acer has so far stayed out of the handheld gaming PC race, but that’s about to change. It’s just announced its first Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally competitor, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7, which looks like it fits somewhere between last year’s Asus ROG Ally and the newer ROG Ally X.

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 says it didn’t partner with Microsoft for this one, so I wouldn’t expect it to roll out with any major UI improvements for Windows handheld gaming PCs. That said, it does come with more dedicated mode switch buttons than most rivals, including a dedicated key to bring up the virtual keyboard.

Here’s the whole spec sheet:

Acer isn’t yet sharing prices or release dates.