Acer is entering the handheld gaming PC market! Much like other devices in this segment, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 uses AMD hardware, though it is the first one to use a chip from the AMD Ryzen 8040 family.

More specifically, the Nitro Blaze 7 is powered by the Ryzen 7 8840HS chip with integrated AMD Radeon 780M GPU; this is actually the very same GPU used in the Ryzen Z1 Extreme that powers ROG’s handheld. However, unlike the Z1 Extreme, the Ryzen 7 8840HS – aside from the fact that it’s a newer chip – comes with Ryzen AI technology that’s capable of 39 AI TOPS for generative AI.

According to Acer, the handheld makes use of AI to “optimise performance and responsiveness across a wide range of games and applications.”

Beyond that, the Nitro Blaze 7 is also touted to be a lightweight, compact handheld gaming PC. Tipping the scales at 670g, it comes with a 50Wh battery, which is on the smaller side of things. For the sake of comparison, even the MSI Claw A1M features a slightly larger 53Wh cell, while the ROG Ally X has an even bigger 80Wh battery.

Nonetheless, other specifications of the Blaze 7 include a 7-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS display with 144Hz refresh rate – it has 100% sRGB colour coverage and AMD FreeSync Premium support too – 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, up to 2TB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, two USB-C 4.0 ports, and Windows 11 Home out of the box.

Curiously, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 does not have any pricing details or release date yet. But given the Taiwanese company’s prominent presence in Malaysia, we reckon its handheld gaming PC will be offered locally in due time.