Acer Nitro Blaze 11 hands-on review: Large and (sort of) in charge

I should have seen the Acer Nitro Blaze 11 coming. When I went hands-on with the Acer Nitro Blaze 7, I spoke about how the use of AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS was an interesting choice because the expectation was for a laptop chip to be used in bigger devices. Turns out the company took that literally.

And be honest — you laughed, just like I chuckled at the monstrous size of this handheld in the press shots. It looks like someone just took this Steam Deck competitor and enlarged it in Photoshop. But it is indeed real, and in many ways, bigger is indeed better.

The gigantic screen is bright and colorful, showing your games in their best light on-the-go, the Nintendo Switch-esque detachable controllers and kickstand make this nice and versatile for any gameplay scenario, the Hall Effect joysticks are a welcome upgrade over the Blaze 7, and given its massive size, this is a lot lighter in the hand than you’d think.

But there are two big alarm bells ringing ahead of properly reviewing. First, with a 55 Whr battery (only 5 more than Acer’s 7-inch), I’m a little nervous about how long this 11-incher will last. And second, this thing is $1,099. That is steep — especially when similarly-priced (or cheaper) RTX 4060 gaming laptops are right there with vastly superior performance.

Is this a case of gaming handhelds going one step too far? Or is there something legit here? Let’s talk about it.

Acer Nitro Blaze 11: Video review

Acer Nitro Blaze 11 Hands-on: The BIGGEST Gaming Handheld You Can Buy Right Now - YouTube

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Acer Nitro Blaze 11: Specs

Acer Nitro Blaze 11: What we like

In some ways, Acer Nitro Blaze 11 is a mighty gaming handheld. Even though the size may seem way too large on paper, it’s actually one of the strengths here.

Big screen gaming on-the-go

You saw the dimensions in the table above. The Blaze 11 is a beast in the hand that can take a while to get used to, but it’s really not as bad as you may think. In fact, it’s actually a rather nice gaming experience.

It all starts with that gorgeous WQXGA display, which with a 120Hz refresh rate is bright, vivid with color and buttery smooth. Psychonauts 2 ran with a nice fluidity and a flash flood of color. The RDNA 3 integrated graphics on-board here may struggle with running games at that full resolution, but a quick downgrade to 1080p still looks good on this panel.

Next is the design of this hardware. At 2.3 pounds, this is a lot lighter in the hand than I expected — reducing any of that fatigue that I feared over longer play periods. All the controls are in the right place you’d expect them to be, and the hall effect joysticks are guaranteed to last you a good long while.

And finally, the fact these controllers are detachable and there’s a kickstand on the back does lend itself to some good couch-based multiplayer or popping the display on a tray table while you play. Turns out in the wrong of PC gaming handhelds, bigger can indeed be better in some ways.

An AMD choice that could turn out to be the right one power-wise

The AMD Ryzen 7 8840Hs is a relatively old laptop chip — similar to the Ryzen Z2 Extreme with the added benefit of Ryzen AI support over its handheld-suited brethren. While the Z2 does support the updated RDNA 3.5 graphics capabilities, the TDP of the 8840HS does go to a higher 55 watts, which could translate into more raw horsepower for games.

The end result should be impressive, delivering stellar performance with frame rates in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (1080p on High settings with FSR set to balanced) reaching 70 FPS—blowing the Steam Deck OLED out of the water, which manages just 40 FPS at a lower resolution.

Combine that with blazing-fast DDR5 RAM running at 5,700 MT/s and a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, and you’ve got a true powerhouse on your hands.

Acer Nitro Blaze 11: What we don’t like

So we’re off to a strong start, but with both of these come a couple big downsides too. It’s a tricky purchasing decision when you take into account two key things for a gaming handheld — battery life and affordability.

The battery is another big old “yikes”

We already had this issue with the 50 Whr cell in the Blaze 7, especially given how hard that CPU can go on the total wattage. However, the Blaze 11 only goes up to 55 Whr, which makes it an even bigger potential red flag.

That is a huge display to try and run with a smaller battery like this. I don’t want to say anything definite until I can properly test this system for myself, but in my time using it, I did see the battery life playing Psychonauts 2 go down from 100% to 92% after a 10 minute burst.

Like I said, yikes.

This is a pricey investment

Let’s talk about that $1,099 price tag. That is a steep investment in this handheld, especially given what you can get elsewhere in the PC gaming handheld space. For example, the beastly Asus ROG Ally X with a far larger battery is $300 less.

In fact, you could get an RTX 4060-armed Dell G15 for $100 less, which is guaranteed to be far more performant in gaming. You’ve got to be seriously committed to gaming handhelds to consider this.

Acer Nitro Blaze 11: Early verdict

In many ways, Acer has proven that a larger handheld can hang amongst its 7 and 8-inch brethren. But in other ways, parts of me are nervous about this.

The Blaze 11 is a fundamentally enjoyable gaming experience with versatility at its heart, thanks to the detachable controllers and kickstand, while also being surprisingly lightweight in the hand. Plus that Ryzen 7 APU should pack enough power for some solid 1080p gaming.

But with a rather small battery for its stature and a high price, this is a tough purchasing decision to make.