In the grand tradition of CES reveals that make you both question the tech you’re seeing and try to throw your wallet at it at the same time, Acer has just unveiled the Nitro Blaze 11—a gaming handheld so colossal it might just qualify as a piece of carry-on luggage.
For those reading who’ve looked at their Steam Deck and thought, “This is great, but what if it could also block out the sun or moonlight as a cheese board?” Good news—your oddly specific wish has been granted.
The metaphorical (and literal) elephant in the room regarding the Nitro Blaze 11 is its massive 10.95-inch display. With a 2560×1600 resolution and a silky-smooth 120Hz refresh rate, it promises to make pixel art games look like fine tapestry and AAA titles… well, like AAA titles on medium settings, given the Radeon 780M GPU under the hood.
But Acer didn’t stop at being big. They also went with being heavy. At 1050g, this handheld is twice the weight of a Steam Deck OLED and triple that of a Nintendo Switch. But if your wrists aren’t up to the workout, the Nitro Blaze 11 also comes with detachable controllers and a kickstand.
The Nitro Blaze 11 also has some pretty impressive specs that go beyond pure shock value. It boasts an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor, AMD Radeon 780M (RDNA 3) graphics, 16GB LPDDR5X @ 7500 MT/s memory, a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe drive, and a 55Wh battery.
As for what this, well, not baby, more like a small child, will cost you, the baseline price you’d be looking at is $1199 or R22,245. And while this is on the pricer side, even when it comes to handhelds, Acer has thrown in some genuinely useful extras to help make it go down easier.
For example, there is a front-facing camera for streaming and video calls. There are also three USB ports, including USB 4 Type-C with Thunderbolt, USB 3.2 Type-C, and a classic USB-A port.
However, the one place where the Nitro Blaze 11 seems to falter is when it comes to an issue already faced by handheld devices: the battery. No matter how you look at it, the 55Wh battery feels insufficient when it comes to the device, with Acer actually admitting that a larger battery was considered but ultimately nixed for weight concerns.
The Nitro Blaze 11 is set to launch sometime in Q2 2025, and whether or not it will carve out a significant niche in the increasingly crowded handheld market remains to be seen. However, I, for one, can’t wait to take this monster for a spin—even if my wrists will hate me for it.