After teasing it yesterday, Acer formerly unveiled a new handheld gaming PC at IFA 2024. Called the Nitro Blaze 7, the handheld already looks like a unique entry among the best handheld gaming PCs with a much smaller design than we typically see. The interesting change is under the hood, though. Acer is debuting a chip we’ve never seen in a mainstream handheld, and it’s not one of Intel’s new Lunar Lake CPUs.
Acer is using the AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS instead, which is an eight-core chip packing the integrated Radeon 780M GPU. Handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally X using the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which is basically a rebranded version of the Ryzen 7 7840U. The chip Acer is using has access to more power, but it’s otherwise unchanged compared to the Z1 Extreme. According to Notebookcheck’s database, this chip should be about 8% faster than the Z1 Extreme on average — however, that includes all benchmarks, not just gaming.
The Nitro Blaze 7 may be more powerful than the competition, and it’s also literally more powerful. The Ryzen 7 8840HS can draw more power. Paired with only a 50 watt-hour battery — recent handhelds like the ROG Ally X go up to 80Wh — the Nitro Blaze 7 might not have the best battery life.
Although the Ryzen 7 8840HS is faster on paper than handhelds like Lenovo Legion Go, Acer isn’t making any bold performance claims. Instead, the company focused on all of the aspects of the handheld surrounding the chip. The Nitro Blaze 7 comes with a 7-inch 1080p screen that sports a refresh rate up to 144Hz, as well as FreeSync Premium certification. In addition, Acer is offering 16GB of LPDDR5x-7500 memory, along with up to 2TB of storage built in.
Outside of the core specs, Acer packs in dual USB 4 ports, each Type-C capable of 40Gbps, and a microSD card reader. Both USB-C ports work for charging, and you should be able to connect accessories like an external GPU to the spare port. Wirelessly, you can connect with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
On the software side, Acer is unsurprisingly using Windows 11. Despite the progress on SteamOS in other handhelds, Valve has yet to release the operating system the Steam Deck uses widely. Instead, Acer is sticking with Windows 11 and using its new Game Space app for easy handheld navigation. For these Windows handhelds, software can make or break the experience — just read our MSI Claw review for an example — so that will be important aspect for Acer to nail.
Acer hasn’t shared any performance numbers or shown the Nitro Blaze 7 in action yet. The company also hasn’t shared what Game Space looks like or what it’s capable of. We’re on the ground in Berlin for IFA 2024, so we’ll be on the lookout for the Nitro Blaze 7 to get a better sense of how it will compete with the growing list of handheld gaming PCs.
Although we should be able to see the Nitro Blaze 7 in the flesh, Acer is still keeping some details under wraps. The company hasn’t shared configuration details, for example, which will be important considering you can pack up to 2TB of storage in the device. It also hasn’t announced pricing, which is a vital aspect of getting any new handheld gaming PC off the ground.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.