ACER’s Nitro Blaze 7 Is The Latest Gaming Handheld on The Market, Powered By AMD Ryzen 8840HS

Acer has finally stepped into the handheld markets, unveiling its newest "Nitro Blaze 7" handheld with AMD's Hawk Point APU & an interesting design.

The handheld markets are heating up, with companies like ASUS and Lenovo preparing next-gen devices to take the segment to a whole new level. In the midst of it, new entrants are joining the race, with the latest addition being Acer through its Nitro Blaze 7 gaming handheld device, as teased earlier. Acer has decided to take off the curtains from its portable device and rather surprise the markets through the device's unique design language along with decent-looking specifications.

Moving on to the specifications, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 features AMD's Ryzen 7 8840HS "Hawk Point" APU, which is indeed the next mainstream platform for handheld manufacturers to refer to. The APU comes with 8 Zen 4 cores, 16 threads, a core clock of up to 5.1 GHz, and a TDP that can be configured between 20-30W and 16 MB of L3 cache. To drive gaming, the chip features the RDNA 3-based AMD Radeon 780M iGPU, which offers 12 compute units and is a decent iGPU for entry-level gaming.

In terms of memory and storage, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 comes with LPDDR5x-7500 memory with a 16 GB capacity, and apparently, this is the only configuration being offered. The device features support for up to 2 TB of PCIe Gen 4 SSD, which is on par with counterparts such as the ROG Ally X offer. The handheld also includes a dedicated SD card reader as well in case the storage runs low, so overall, the Nitro Blaze 7 is pretty equipped in the memory and storage department.

Acer Nitro Blaze 7 features a 7-inch 1080p IPS display, with a refresh rate of 144 Hz along with a 500-nits peak brightness and support for AMD's FreeSync Premium. The handheld certainly has an edge over ASUS's ROG Ally in terms of the refresh rate. Hence, it can be said that the device is more "gaming-oriented" rather than conventional use. However, with a 50.04 Whr battery onboard, the on-device timings might not impress consumers as compared to alternatives in the market, but it still does the job.

For the onboard network and connectivity options, the Nitro Blaze 7 features 2x USB4 Type-C ports rated at 40 Gbps, which is quite impressive, and it comes with support for WiFi-6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Acer has nailed elements of the design of the handheld since it features red and black accents all over the device, portraying the "gaming-focused" look, but interestingly, Acer decided not to introduce back buttons or even a touch pad, which might hinder navigation for users.

Acer has yet to reveal the pricing and release dates of the handheld, but we can expect it to retail in the price segment similar to what competitors such as ASUS and Lenovo offer. Overall, the new device will surely ramp up the competition in the segment, and we can't wait to see what it brings onboard.