At this time, it is unusual for a major event in the technology industry to pass without a new handful of handheld devices – and while the Nintendo Switch 2 may still be just a glimmer in Nintendo’s eye, the handheld PC gaming market is booming.
The latest company to jump aboard this special gravy train is Acer, bringing its budget Nitro gaming brand to the fore with the new Nitro Blaze 8 and Nitro Blaze 11, officially shown off at CES 2025 this week. Acer is somewhat late to the handheld PC party, with Valve’s Steam Deck apparently kicking things off back in 2022, and other manufacturers already entering their second generation, such as Lenovo with the Lenovo Legion Go S, which was also unveiled at this year’s CES .
I’ve been hoping for an Acer entry into the Handheld PC Hall of Fame for a while now, partly just because I like Acer’s hardware; I’ve long been a fan of the Swift laptop range, and the Predator and Nitro gaming brands have a good track record when it comes to delivering strong performance at reasonable prices. But after seeing what Acer had on display at CES, I’m not entirely convinced…
A monster handheld
Now, we already knew Acer had a handheld in the works, but it was the Nitro Blaze 8 – the Blaze 11 was a CES surprise. The Blaze 8 (which, frankly, should be called the Blaze 9 since it has an 8.8-inch screen) looks like Acer’s spin on the traditional gaming handheld formula, with specs largely similar to competitors like the Lenovo Legion Go and the Asus ROG Ally X.
But Blaze 11? It has a magnificent 10.95-inch 1600p display and will set you back $1,099 (about £1,000 / AU$1,740) – a high entry price for a product in a market where the $500 mark seems to be the ideal price point.
An 11-inch screen on a handheld is, frankly, a little crazy. Just look at that print image up: does it look really comfortable to use? How heavy is it in the hands? Going from something like a Steam Deck or the featherweight Switch Lite to this fat boy will definitely take some adjusting. And despite its massive display, the Nitro Blaze 11 only packs a 55Whr battery (possibly to keep the overall weight down a bit) compared to the 80Whr battery in the ROG Ally X.
How big is too big?
11 inches is… pretty big. (You in the back, stop giggling.) It’s almost the screen size of the laptop I’m writing this review on (a 13-inch HP Specter x360), and I don’t have to physically grip it on both sides to use it .
I’ll say this in Acer’s defense: Like the Nintendo Switch or Lenovo Legion Go, the Blaze has 11 detachable controllers (which I’ll refrain from calling ‘joy-cons’) that slot into place on either side of the main unit, which itself has a stand , so you can use it as a kind of portable gaming monitor. While this is a feature I’ve largely snorted at in the past—I’ve literally never used my own first-gen Switch in this configuration—I’ll admit it makes more sense with a bigger screen. As seen in Acer’s promo images, the Blaze 11 also comes with a separate connector that can turn these two no-joy cons (sorry) into a one-of-a-kind gamepad for a better experience.
Still, with such a large screen and such a high price tag, I have to seriously question the practicality of the Blaze 11 compared to just buying a traditional gaming laptop. I reserve my full judgment until I am able to properly review this strange, powerful device myself; but right now I have to say that this might be the strangest design choice I’ve seen Acer make in a long time.
