Nitro Blaze 8 and 11: Acer goes to the huge 11 inch for its new gaming handheld

Nitro Blaze 8 and 11: Acer goes to a huge 11 inch for its new gaming laptop 16 comments

Image: Acer

Acer is following up the Nitro Blaze 7, introduced about four months ago, with two gaming handhelds at CES 2025 that bring mobile gaming to a significantly larger form factor with screens up to 11 inches. On the technology side, there remains the famous AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS with Radeon 780M. Handhelds are planned for the summer.

The gaming portable device category, which has become increasingly popular in recent years, has until now mainly consisted of products in the 7 or 8 inch range. The best example is Valve’s Steam Deck OLED, whose screen measures 7.4 inches (approximately 17 cm). Until now, Acer was also represented in this size category with the Nitro Blaze 7, presented at IFA.

Summary :

11 inches with 2560 × 1600 pixels and 120 Hz

Since everything in Las Vegas needs to be bigger and louder, the company has come up with a gaming handheld with the Nitro Blaze 11 that deviates significantly from previous norms. Specifically, the IPS LCD panel measures 10.95 inches, offers 2,560 × 1,600 pixels, supports up to 120 Hz, covers 98% of the DCI-P3 color space, and is said to be bright at up to 500 nits.

More than 1 kg of play material

At 36.4 × 17.1 × 1.59 cm (W × H × D) and a weight of 1050 g, the device is proportionally larger and heavier. The controllers can be removed like the Nintendo Switch or Lenovo Legion Go, and a built-in stand allows the tablet to rest on the table.

Nitro Blaze 11 (Image: Acer) Image 1 of 3

Nitro Blaze 8 as a smaller and larger model

The controllers of the smaller Nitro Blaze 8, which measures 30.5 × 13.4 × 2.2 cm and weighs 750 g, are firmly connected to the display and other hardware. Compared to the Nitro Blaze 7, the IPS LCD panel reaches 8.8 inches and offers a higher resolution of 2,560 × 1,600 pixels instead of Full HD. However, other key data of the display such as 144 Hz or the brightness of 500 nits have remained the same.

Ryzen 7 8849HS instead of Z1 or Z2 – right?

The gaming handhelds are united by the processor used: instead of the Z1 or the new Z2 from AMD, the Ryzen 7 8840HS as in the Nitro Blaze 7 is used in both models. The Hawk Point family APU offers 8 Zen 4 CPU cores with up to 5.1 GHz (single core), 16 threads and an RDNA 3 GPU with 12 CUs.

Or will this SoC be available as the Ryzen Z2? The announcement of the Z2 Extreme, Z2 and Z2 Go suggests that the older Hawk Point chip is behind the Z2 – the Razer handheld model can also be “upgraded” via firmware.

Performance like a Z1 Extreme can be expected

The chip is, in name or not, virtually identical to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which the Asus ROG Ally X uses. AMD specifies the default TDP at 28 watts and the cTDP at 20 to 30 watts, but Acer has not yet commented on the specific configuration. The devices are also identically configured with the 16GB LPDDR5X-7500 and up to 2TB M.2 SSD running Windows 11.

Nitro Blaze 8 (Image: Acer) Image 1 of 4

Battery increases by 10 percent to 55 Wh

The battery is also the same, with 55Wh batteries now installed compared to the 50Wh Nitro Blaze 7. However, Acer did not increase the capacity further for the larger Nitro Blaze 11. Other manufacturers like Asus went up to 80Wh for the aforementioned ROG Ally X. Acer includes a 100-watt power supply with USB-C for the larger handheld. and a 65-watt power supply with USB-C for the smallest. There are ports for USB4, USB-A 3.2 and USB-C 3.2 and one for microSD.

Late availability

Acer plans to launch the Nitro Blaze 8 (GN782U) and Nitro Blaze 11 (GN7112U) to the market at the end of the second quarter; prices have not yet been determined. The Nitro Blaze 7, introduced four months ago, is not yet available in Germany.

Techconseil received information about this item from Acer under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible publication date.

Themes: Acer CES 2025 Gaming Quelle: Acer