Another CES, another new handheld gaming console. Except Acer's Nitro Blaze 11 isn't your average Steam Deck competitor.
The Taiwanese tech company announced the portable PC Monday ahead of the massive annual trade show in Las Vegas, a new entry in its Nitro series of handheld gaming devices. It's huge in size but shockingly light, with a detachable controller design that makes it feel an awful lot like a Nintendo Switch on steroids — with the added twist of some laptop functionality.
Mashable got to go hands-on with the Nitro Blaze 11 just before launch, and while it swings a bit toward "who is this for?" territory, it's an incredibly cool and versatile gadget for the right kind of user with cash to burn.
It simply must be said: At over 14 inches wide and nearly seven inches tall, this thing is gigantic — massive, hulking, jumbo, beefy, majestic even. It gives Apple's largest iPad Pro a run for its money. It dwarfs my hands, and these puppies used to be able to stretch a full octave on a standard piano.
Yet, the Nitro Blaze 11's dimensions are slightly deceptive. Picking it up for the first time is a disarming experience: It weighs only 1,050 grams, or about 2.3 pounds. I can't believe how light it is; it's surprisingly comfortable to hold. A big win for gamers' wrists everywhere.
It's especially impressive when you consider the amount of power the device packs. Inside, there's a laptop-tier AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS processor with 16GB of RAM and an NPU that can hit up to 39 trillion operations per second (TOPS) in AI tasks. That's coupled with AMD Radeon 780M graphics and up to 2TB of storage. I should note that it got pretty hot on the back just sitting on its pedestal in Acer's media showroom.
The Nitro Blaze 11 isn't rated for battery life just yet, but an Acer rep told me there's probably a reason for that: "It's not something to boast about." Not entirely surprising, all specs considered.
The device's display is an immersive 10.95-inch touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. It's an IPS display, not OLED like the ones on the latest Steam Deck and Switch, but it looks fluid and plenty vibrant in person. (It's rated at 500 nits of brightness.)
On either side of the screen are two detachable controllers, which slide easily out of their slots and click satisfyingly back into place. Both of them have a joystick with a colorful lit-up border; there's a D-pad below the left one and action buttons above the right. They feel a little plasticky but well-made overall, and the joysticks' movement is silky smooth. They feature magnetic Hall Effect technology (as are their triggers), so the long-term stick drift issues that plague the Switch should be a non-issue here.
In a Nintendo similarity, the backside of the Nitro Blaze 11 has a kickstand that lets you switch (!) to playing it in tabletop mode. It's sturdy and stays in place when not in use. When I pointed out the Switchiness of the Nitro Blaze 11's design, Acer's rep remarked, "It works."
Here's where we start veering away from Switch territory: The Nitro Blaze 11 runs on Windows 11 and comes with some fixings that make it usable as a laptop alternative. There's a front camera situated at the very top of its display, for instance, and users can connect it to peripherals like a keyboard via Bluetooth or its USB-A port. It doesn't feel like a total laptop replacement, but if you need to hop on a quick Zoom call or write up an email and it's the only device you have on you, you're not SOL.
Acer's rep told me that the company hasn't quite defined its target audience for the Nitro Blaze 11 just yet, but younger commuters in Asia who want a discreet way to play PC games on the go are top of mind.
I'm sort of stuck on the same issue. With a starting price of $1,099, I think a standard gaming laptop would be a wiser purchase for most people. At the same time, I want one. It's sick. It's slick. And sometimes awesomeness trumps practicality.
The Nitro Blaze 11 launches in Q2 2025 alongside the smaller new Acer Nitro Blaze 8 ($899), which has an 8.8-inch 144Hz display; it omits its bigger sibling's detachable controllers, kickstand, and camera. Stay tuned for our full review.
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