Is Steam Deck too small for you? Have you always wished you could buy a portable gaming PC capable of hiding your entire head? Then Acer might have the answer. The company has unveiled its new Nitro Blaze 11, with a 10.95-inch display and chunky form factor that tests the limits of what could reasonably be considered a “portable” gaming device.
Acer's Nitro Blaze 11 is, it's fair to say, something of a beast, measuring 36.4cm x 17.1cm x 1.59cm and weighing 1050g – roughly the equivalent of 1.5 Steam Decks. It's unclear whether those figures include the machine's two chunky detachable controllers (Acer's press release is vague on that point), but it's certainly not what you'd call a discrete device. Judging by the promotional images, it could also comfortably be used to serve snacks between gaming sessions.
On the plus side, its sturdy build has some decent innards. That 10.95-inch display, for example, is a WQXGA 2560 x 1600 120Hz touchscreen capable of up to 500 nits of brightness, and it also includes an AMD Ryzen 8040HS processor, 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and up to 2TB of NVMe. SSD storage. That's in addition to a built-in kickstand and the aforementioned detachable controllers, which now feature back buttons. And if that appeals to you, you'll see a minimum price of $1,099.99, depending on your storage requirements.
But if you're looking for something a little more discreet, and a little cheaper, there's also Acer's new Nitro Blaze 8, which features an 8.8-inch, 144Hz display and weighs a modest 720g. This one measures 30.5cm x 13.4cm x 2.2cm (the controllers are definitely included here as they are not detachable) and costs $899.99. Both machines include three months of Xbox Game Pass and are scheduled to launch in the second quarter of this year.
Acer's expanded Nitro Blaze line won't use AMD's recently announced trio of next-generation Ryzen Z series APUs designed for gaming laptop PCs, but Digital Foundry has a little more to say about those found elsewhere from Eurogamer if you are curious.