Review Of The Acer Nitro Blaze 7

Tom's Guide

Acer Nitro Blaze is the new gaming handheld on the block - doing things a little differently by packing a full blown laptop CPU inside. What does this do to performance? Find out in our hands-on impressions!

Transcript

00:00So back in January I told you that Acer could be working on a gaming handheld.

00:05Well, I'm at Aether 2024 and this is the Acer Nitro Blaze 7. Where's my medal?

00:13So as you can see it's all very much your standard gaming handheld sort of thing that

00:18you're expecting. Bunch of fans, you don't want to get stuff in there. But the main differences

00:22that we're noticing here, there are three of them. Number one is the choice of CPU. Now you see most

00:27companies like ASUS go for the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Whereas here, turns out that that's just not

00:35extreme enough for Acer and they've gone for the Ryzen 7 8840 HS. Now why have they gone for this

00:42rocket ship? Personally I don't know. But at the end of the day with the 28 watt TDP you can see

00:49frame rates of around about 70 frames a second in Shadow of the Tomb Raider which to be fair is

00:55pretty bonkers on a gaming handheld. Number two, while the 1080p IPS display sounds a bit standard

01:02on paper, what you're actually getting instead is a 144hz refresh rate which is 20 more than you're

01:10seeing on a lot of the competition. Now if you're there saying I'm the kind of person that can notice

01:14the difference between 120 and 144, I've got a bridge to sell you. But the faster the frame rates,

01:22the smoother the gameplay is regardless. And number three is the way that Acer is trying to work around

01:29Windows 11 on these things. As my man Tony said in his ASUS RG LIX review, Windows 11 absolutely sucks

01:37on a gaming handheld. And I'm trying to say that quietly because I am actually at EFSO. So when it

01:43comes to working your way around Windows 11 and like the trap pad and everything, you realize that to kind

01:48of do something as simple as I open the keyboard, you're doing like a multiple button shortcut to get

01:53there. Whereas here, you actually have a button in the bottom corner just to pop open the keyboard.

01:58Makes it a lot easier to get around Windows.

02:02Pricing is a big question mark at the moment. Acer hasn't said anything about that.

02:06Personally hoping for around about the $600 range like every other gaming handheld. If they went in like

02:13the LIX price, given like the smaller battery on this thing, it makes me a little bit nervous,

02:18but we'll find out. So what are your thoughts? Hit on down in the comments and let me know.

02:23If you want to see more of Ether 2024, you can check us out on tomsguide.com.

02:27Don't forget to subscribe. I've been Jason England and I'll speak to you in the next one.

02:43I'll see you in the next one.

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