Acer’s Nitro Blaze 11 is an enormous new take on gaming handhelds

The Steam Deck has been the template for handheld gaming PCs for almost three years now, with its competitors all following the same form factor to a greater or lesser degree. Acer has already designed something like that — the Nitro Blaze 7 — but, at CES 2025, it’s ready to go bigger. Much, much bigger… with the Nitro Blaze 11, which is part Steam Deck, part Nintendo Switch, part iPad, built around a massive screen.

The central feature is a 10.95-inch 2560×1600 IPS display, extending the slightly taller 16:10 ratio to a much higher resolution you’d normally only see on a premium laptop. It’s also faster than usual for a handheld with its 144Hz refresh rate.

The device breaks apart into three sections — like the Nintendo Switch or the Lenovo Legion Go — allowing you to use the chunky center as a tablet or simply hold the controllers separately (and perhaps more comfortably, since it’s a whopping 2.31 pounds versus the Steam Deck’s 1.41 pounds). There’s also a kickstand built into the rear.

Considering that bombastic screen, the hardware within is a bit underwhelming. We’re seeing an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor, the same 8-core chip that was in the Nitro 7 last year. It’s a powerful chip, also featured in some high-end laptops, but it’s not something that really needs that extra space. Ditto for the other hardware specs: 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a maximum “up to” 2TB of Gen4 storage. (No word on whether that’s user-accessible, like in some other handheld designs.)

The Nitro Blaze 11 also has two USB-C ports (one with USB4 and one with USB 3.2) plus a USB-A port for easy access to older accessories and a MicroSD slot for fast storage expansion. The battery is 55 watt-hours — big for a handheld but not huge, and notably smaller than the upgraded 80 watt-hour battery on the Asus ROG Ally X.

Other hardware highlights include Hall effect thumbsticks and triggers, 100-watt charging with the included adapter, and (for better or worse) Windows 11 with Acer’s software on top.

Acer will also offer a more conventional alternative: the Nitro Blaze 8. It has an 8.8-inch screen, with the same resolution and refresh rate, that’s still big for a handheld but much smaller and without the Switch-style breakaway controllers. Other hardware is pretty much identical to the Nitro Blaze 11, including the Ryzen 7 8840HS processor and the 55 watt-hour battery (though oddly it only gets a 65-watt charger).

The Nitro Blaze 11 doesn’t currently have a price or release date, though presumably it’ll materialize sometime before the end of 2025. The Nitro Blaze 8 is a little more concrete, with a launch pinned for March in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, starting at a hefty €999 (about $1,028 USD). It’s set for release in North America and Australia at some point, though dates and prices aren’t available.

Oddly, it looks like the original Nitro Blaze 7 has yet to materialize, despite being announced back in September. It doesn’t get a mention in Acer’s CES press materials. I’ve asked Acer for some clarification on this point — is it still coming or has it been dropped in favor of these bigger designs? — and will update this article if I get a reply.