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Acer has announced two gaming handhelds at CES 2025: the Nitro Blaze 11 and the Nitro Blaze 8. The former sports a massive 10.95-inch screen, which is frankly as impressive as it is ridiculous. The latter, meanwhile, features a more standard 8.8-inch screen, but bigger is always better, right?
Well, in this instance, not entirely. The Nitro Blaze 11's 120Hz WQXGA (Wide Quad Extended Graphics Array) touchscreen display has a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels (16:10 aspect ratio) with a peak brightness of 500 nits. Arguably, the main selling point of the Blaze 11 - aside from the gargantuan screen - is the Switch-like detachable controllers. Coupled with a built-in kickstand, the AMD Ryzen™ 7 8840HS processor, and AMD Radeon™ 780M graphics, the purported powerhouse of a machine is designed to allow genuinely immersive gaming experiences via different play modes.
Other specs, including a front-facing camera, round out the Blaze 11's impressive arsenal, indicating that this machine is intended for gaming, work, and general leisure activities (such as checking out SteamDeckHQ's remarkable coverage of Valve's handheld baby). Given this device's hybrid nature, I'd like to assume that it has an equally impressive battery life, although nothing has been announced yet.
The Blaze 11's smaller brother, the Nitro Blaze 8, is a more standard handheld gaming-focused offering. While the same CPU and GPU are utilized, we have an 8.8-inch WQXGA touchscreen display, this time with an improved 144Hz refresh rate. Detachable controllers and the kickstand are a no-go this time around. The handhelds also include 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM at 7500MT/s and up to 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD.
Both devices will be available in Q2 2025, with the Nitro Blaze 11 starting at $1,099.99 and the Nitro Blaze 8 starting at $899.99.
It's worth bringing it all back to the Steam Deck and how it compares with Acer's latest announcements. Naturally, the form factor of the Blaze 8 is most like the Steam Deck, although it's safe to say that that's where most of the close similarities end. With the Steam Deck OLED utilizing a 7.4-inch HDR touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 and a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz, Acer effortlessly runs technical circles around it in those respects. Acer's handhelds will also be a bit more powerful than the Deck, although it does have a higher resolution to hit and higher power usage, and Windows tends to be more resource-heavy.
The Steam Deck OLED's max brightness of 600 nits in SDR and 1000 in HDR is one of the rare technical examples of the Deck performing better on paper, though, and the vividity of the screen is not to be scoffed at - as we know.
However, SteamOS is still an absolute godsend and makes the handheld experience on the Steam Deck better compared to an awkward implementation of Windows often found in similar competing devices. However, whether that's worth a gulf in power is up to you. The price of entry for the Steam Deck is also significantly less, with a maximum price of $649 for the 1TB model, with much cheaper (and now refurbished) models being available. So it's ultimately a question of value and what is deemed both affordable and best value for money. Time will tell.
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