Whereas others at PC Gamer have been extolling the virtues of their Steam Decks, I’ve held off on shelling out for a PC gaming handheld for one principal purpose: Not one of the gaming handhelds available on the market are sufficiently big to double as an impromptu charcuterie board. Fortunately, at CES 2025, Acer simply unveiled the Nitro Blaze 11—an upcoming gaming handheld hellbent on stretching the boundaries of the phrase “portability.”
The Nitro Blaze 11 includes a 10.95-inch, 144 Hz WQXGA display screen, which conveniently offers the gadget the required proportions for appearing as a serviceable eye defend in case you discover your gaming session interrupted by an sudden flashbang grenade. In accordance with the press launch, the veritable slab of allegedly-portable computing is powered by a Ryzen 8040 processor, a Radeon 780M GPU, and 16 GB of LPDDR5x RAM. And with as much as 2 TB of storage, it may be massive on the within, too.
Whereas it is comforting to know that the Nitro Blaze 11 could have a passing likelihood at returning a tennis serve ought to the necessity come up, I am involved about how my wrists will really feel after an hour of supporting its 1050g weight. That is roughly 2.3 kilos—multiple and a half instances the burden of a Steam Deck OLED, and greater than thrice the burden of a Nintendo Change. Fortunately, it is acquired removable controllers and a Change-style kickstand, sparing my wrists the ache of my advancing carpal tunnel and my family members the ache of getting to surprise, “Why on Earth is he holding that?”
The Nitro Blaze 11 will value $1100 when it releases a while in Q2 2025. Should you’re concerned with the identical inside specs in a kind issue much less able to bludgeoning a low-flying hen, it’s going to launch alongside the Nitro Blaze 8: a smaller sibling handheld with an 8.8-inch display screen and a $900 price ticket.
