At this point, it’s unusual for a major event in the tech industry to pass without a handful of new handhelds – and while the Nintendo Switch 2 may still be just a twinkle in Nintendo’s eye, the PC gaming handheld market is booming.
The latest company to jump aboard this particular gravy train is Acer, bringing its low-cost Nitro gaming brand to the forefront with the new Nitro Blaze 8 and Nitro Blaze 11, officially debuting this week at CES 2025. Acer is a bit late with the handheld PC party, with Valve’s Steam Deck apparently kicking off in 2022 and other manufacturers already starting 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 a while that Acer will make it into the handheld PC hall of fame, partly just because I like Acer’s hardware; I’ve long been a fan of the Swift laptop line, and the gaming brands Predator and Nitro have a good track record of delivering strong performance at reasonable prices. But after seeing what Acer had on display at CES, I’m not entirely convinced…
A monster handheld
We already knew Acer had a handheld in the works, but that was the Nitro Blaze 8 – the Blaze 11 was a CES surprise. The Blaze 8 (which honestly should be called the Blaze 9 because it has an 8.8-inch screen) looks like Acer’s take on the traditional gaming handheld formula, with specs broadly similar to competitors like the Lenovo Legion Go and Asus ROG Ally X.
But the Blaze 11? That has a massive 10.95-inch 1600p display and will cost you $1,099 (about £1,000 / AU$1,740) – a high price of entry for a product in a market where $500 seems to be the ideal price.
An 11-inch display on a handheld is, to be honest, a bit crazy. Just look at that press at the top: does that really look comfortable to use? How heavy is it in the hands? Going from something like a Steam Deck or the featherweight Switch Lite to this big boy will definitely take some adjustment. And despite its huge screen, the Nitro Blaze 11 only has a 55Wh battery (possibly to keep the overall weight down a bit), compared to the 80Wh battery in the ROG Ally
How big is too big?
11 inches is… pretty big. (You in the back, stop giggling.) That’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 grab it on either side to use it.
I’ll say this in Acer’s defense: Like the Nintendo Switch or Lenovo Legion Go, the Blaze has 11 removable controllers (which I won’t call “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 display. While this is a feature I’ve largely sniffed at in the past – I literally never used my own first-gen Switch in this configuration – I have to admit it makes more sense with a larger screen. As seen in Acer’s promo images, the Blaze 11 also comes with a separate connector that can transform these two non-joy cons (sorry) into a single gamepad for a better experience.
Still, with such a large screen and such a high price tag, I have to seriously question the utility of the Blaze 11 over simply buying a traditional gaming laptop. I’ll reserve full judgment until I can properly assess this strange, chunky contraption for myself; but at this point I have to say that this might be the strangest design choice I’ve seen Acer make in a long time.