Acer Nitro Blaze 7 hands-on review: laptop-tier performance, but at what cost?

The Nitro Blaze 7 is Acer's story — eight months in the making. You see, I predicted they'd launch this back in January, and look where we are now! I'll take that crown thank you very much.

But then as I held it and played the Blaze 7, I realize Acer's put some real thought into the ergonomics and design of the system. Real controller grips that don't feel flat and slippery accompany clicky buttons and nice, deep triggers to pop off those headshots.

And on top of that, Acer took the interesting decision to just whack an AMD laptop chip in this thing, even though the Ryzen Z1 Exteme powering a lot of the best gaming handhelds is right there! Why? AI of course. It could also be a master stroke though, as support for AI-aided frame generation will come to this first before any AMD Ryzen Z2 machines come to market.

But a 50 Whr battery capacity? Has Acer not learned from all of us grumbling about gaming handheld battery life lasting until the end of this sentence?

Acer's entering a tough spot with a powerful product and a ton of competition. Let's see how the Blaze 7 fares.

Acer Nitro Blaze 7: Specs

Acer Nitro Blaze 7: What we like

While there is indeed a lot going for the MSI Claw 8 AI+ in the performance department, the AMD chip found in the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 gives it a clear advantage in support and potential future-proofing — while all being contained in a rather nice handheld shape.

Extreme just ain't extreme enough

So let's cut to brass tacks here. The AMD Ryzen 7 8840Hs is a relatively old laptop chip — similar to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme with the added benefit of Ryzen AI support over its handheld-suited brethren.

In fact, the only real difference on paper is the increased TDP of this chip, as AMD expected companies to stick this in a far bigger device than a 7-inch handheld. But the end result is stellar performance with frame rates in Shadow of The Tomb Raider (1080p High settings with FSR turned onto balanced) coming in at 70 FPS. That absolutely smokes the Steam Deck OLED (40 FPS at a lower resolution).

Pair that with lightning fast DDR5 RAM at 5,700 mega transfers per second (MT/s) and a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, and you've got a proper performer here. How will it fend with Ryzen Z2 in early 2025, with its aim being pivoted towards providing that AI base for the key gaming tasks like frame generation? That remains to be seen. But I'm confident we're about to see this thing light up some benchmarks.

Thoughtful design for gaming

This is Acer we're talking about after all. One of the things I've always enjoyed about this company is the attention paid to the smaller details, which you can clearly see on offer here.

From the Hall Effect triggers and tactile buttons (though I would've loved to see Hall Effect joysticks too for longevity), to the sleekly shaped rear end that gives your hands some generous grips to hold onto, this evenly-weighted system feels good to hold and play on.

Pair that with a nicely bright 500-nits panel with 1080p resolution and a buttery smooth 144Hz refresh rate (and support for AMD Free Sync), and you'll realise this is quite the quality system. Now if only we could get OLED!

Oh, and shout-out in particular to the dual USB-4 ports — not for their existence, but the fact one is on the top and one on the bottom. I hope this pre-empts a potential Switch dock for this thing!

Acer Nitro Blaze 7: What we don't like

Outside of the price being unconfirmed (personally, hoping Acer aims for a $500 base model), there's one element of the spec sheet that makes me incredibly nervous.

That battery is a big old "yikes"

You already know how I feel about Windows gaming handhelds, and in terms of the user interface, Acer is doing just as good of a job as Asus to workaround that mess. But one of the unavoidable problems has been the weight it places upon battery consumption.

Now, there has been a fix — simply up the battery capacity. The ROG Ally X and MSI Claw AI 8+ pack 80 Whr cells that keep the party going for a couple hours. Acer's gone a different direction with 50. Now, think about that for a second. A tiny battery...with a laptop CPU!? As you can probably guess, I'm a little nervous about this.

Just make sure you keep a charger close by for when it does cut out!

Acer Nitro Blaze 7: Early verdict

Part of me is nervous about the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 — popping a laptop chip into something this small is surely going to take a toll on battery life. But the other part of me is rather happy about the decision made here.

You see, with that Ryzen AI-supported chip, you're getting the new FSR AI frame generation standards when they drop, and with a base TDP that is significantly higher than anything packing a Ryzen Z1 Extreme, I'm confident this will be a screamer.

So long as you have a source of power nearby, this could be one of my favorite gaming handhelds.