Acer Nitro Blaze 7 gaming handheld with Ryzen 8040 revealed at IFA

Acer brought a brand new Nitro lineup to IFA, including its first attempt at a PC gaming handheld (an increasingly crowded field) and two new laptops — one each with Intel and AMD  processors.

The Acer Nitro Blaze 7 differs from the best PC gaming handhelds we've seen so far in a number of ways. For starters, it's using an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS, rather than a Ryzen Z1 Extreme like the Asus ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go . But the chips are pretty similar, as both chips have 8 cores on AMD's Zen 4 process and a max boost clock of 5.1 GHz, as well as 12 RDNA 3 compute units.

With a 7-inch, 1920 x 1080p screen, Acer is going with the same resolution as Asus, but with a higher refresh rate of 144 Hz.

As other OEMs have done with their Windows 11-based gaming handhelds, Acer is putting its own handheld-friendly UI over the desktop. Acer's is called Game Space, which the company describes as a one-stop launcher that can interact with most gaming platforms.

The general hardware appears pretty similar in spirit to other Windows handhelds. The controls are in an Xbox-style layout, with the joysticks offset. Acer has some options buttons near the display, but others are down below the D-Pad and lower joysticks, which may be a bit of a reach. There's a microSD card reader to expand the 2TB of storage, and two USB 4 ports for charging and peripherals.

The 50.04 WHr battery is about the same size as the cell in the Steam Deck OLED and ever-so-slightly larger than what you'll find in the Legion Go , but it pales in comparison to the 80 WHr unit in the more expensive Asus ROG Ally X.

Acer hasn't yet set a price or release date, but we hope to find out about that soon.

Nitro V Laptops

Acer's got two mid-priced gaming laptops as well. The two new Nitro V machines come in a 14-inch size and a 16-inch size. They have some pretty big differences beyond their screens.

The V 14 is an AMD system, pairing either the Ryzen 5 8645 HS or Ryzen 7 8845HS with Nvidia graphics. The options are pretty low-end, ranging from an RTX 2050 up through an RTX 4050. In contrast, the V 16 uses 14th Gen Intel CPUs (either a Core i5-14450HX or Core i7-14650HX), with GPU's ranging from an RTX 3050 up through an RTX 4060. The Nitro V 14 comes in a stylish white, while the V 16 is in a more standard black. And while the Ryzen-based laptop uses Wi-Fi 6E, the Intel-based V16 is on the older Wi-Fi 6 standard.

The two systems do share a number of specs. Both go up to 2TB of storage (though the Nitro does it in RAID0), and they use the same 57 WHr battery.

The Nitro V 16 will launch in October starting at $1,299.99, while the Nitro V 14 will come in September, starting at $1,099.99.