Acer Nitro Blaze 7 is the newest Steam Deck competitor: Here’s everything you need to know

The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 joins the likes of the Lenovo Legion Go, Asus ROG Ally X, and the recently announced MSI Claw 8 AI+.

Its design language reminds me of Acer’s Nitro gaming laptop line, with a striking black-and-red color scheme that screams “I’m a gaming beast!”

The question is, does its performance match its aggressive aesthetics? We won’t know until we test it ourselves, but let’s take a look at the specs.

Acer Nitro Blaze 7: Everything we know

First, let’s talk about the display. The Nitro Blaze 7 comes with a 7-inch, 1080p IPS touchsceen, similar to the ROG Ally X. But the difference is, unlike the Asus handheld’s 120Hz refresh rate display, the Nitro Blaze 7 has a 144Hz screen.

Credit: Acer

I’m not convinced that users will be able to get games to run anywhere near 144 frames per second to take advantage of the Nitro Blaze 7’s refresh rate. However, the Acer handheld’s 144Hz screen should make gameplay feel smooth and seamless.

The display supports AMD FreeSync Premium, too, a technology that should enhance the visual performance of the Nitro Blaze 7’s panel.

This AMD mention brings me to my next point.

Nitro Blaze 7 internals

The Nitro Blaze 7 comes with an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor, which boasts up to 39 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second). This is a metric that helps users understand how well a device can handle AI-based computational tasks.

Credit: Acer

For reference, laptops like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip) have up to 45 TOPS of power, so the Nitro Blaze 7 isn’t far off from some laptops’ AI capabilities.

You may be wondering, “What does AI have to do with gaming?” Well, AI is helpful for graphical upscaling when a game is rendered at a lower resolution to reduce strain on the GPU.

The Nitro Blaze 7 also comes with the following:

• AMD Radeon 780M GPU

• 16GB of RAM

• Up to 2TB of SSD storage

As you might have guessed, the Nitro Blaze 7 also ships with Windows 11 Home. For my candid thoughts on Windows on a gaming handheld PC, read my Asus ROG Ally X review.

Credit: Acer

Regarding ports and connectivity, the Nitro Blaze 7 supports Wi-Fi 6E, and features a USB4 (USB Type-C) port and a microSD card reader.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any word on pricing just yet, but we’ll update this piece as soon as we know.