Acer teased a bold gamble in handheld gaming — a surfboard-sized Nitro Blaze 11 and smaller Nitro Blaze siblings that promised to shake up the market. A year after the big CES reveal, though, those devices are nowhere to be found. At CES 2026, Acer quietly shifted the conversation to monitors and laptops instead, and company reps told journalists the Nitro Blaze series isn’t canceled so much as deprioritized.
Lisa Emard of Acer America told reporters that the handsets were announced “just ahead of the tariffs situation,” and that the company “wound up just focusing on our core products, on laptops, because we needed to find manufacturing options outside of China.” In short: the Blaze family exists on paper and in prototypes, but there are no imminent U.S. launch plans.
Tariffs, supply pain and a cautious play
Acer’s choice isn’t surprising when you look at the broader pressures. New tariffs and a scramble to diversify manufacturing footprints add cost and complexity to any hardware rollout. Combine that with rising memory prices and a constrained GPU market, and suddenly an experimental device — especially one as niche as an 11-inch handheld — looks riskier.
For a company that ships laptops and monitors by the millions, committing to production runs for a product that still needs to prove demand would be a gamble. That explains why Acer told attendees to treat past demos as just that: demonstrations, not firm ship dates.
The device itself still matters — but so does the field it’s entering
When Acer first showed the Nitro Blaze line (starting with a Nitro Blaze 7 prototype at IFA 2024 and later the 8 and 11 at CES 2025), the 11-inch model stood out for sheer ambition. It wasn’t trying to be a pocket device — it was a statement piece: big-screen portable PC gaming without a dock. Visually and ergonomically it looked different from the Steam Deck clones and compact Windows handhelds that populate the market.
But standing out on size alone won’t be enough. Valve’s Steam Deck remains the gravitational center of handheld PC gaming, with steady software support and a clear value proposition; it even recently gained a practical low-power download mode that makes managing large libraries less painful. Acer would need pricing, battery life, and a clear ecosystem advantage to pull buyers away from established options like Valve’s hardware or other Windows handhelds that emphasize power and compatibility.
At the same time, not every contender runs games locally; Sony’s approach with the PlayStation Portal demonstrates how streaming can be a viable alternative, leaning on a different kind of convenience and ecosystem lock-in. Acer would have to decide whether the Blaze is a local-performance win, a streaming device, or some hybrid — and each choice shifts the supply and manufacturing calculus.
Why this pause matters to buyers and the market
For consumers, the message is simple: don’t hold out on a hypothetical Nitro Blaze if you want a handheld today. Acer hasn’t abandoned handhelds, but it also hasn’t committed to dates or regions. That leaves room for existing devices — handheld PCs, Valve’s Steam Deck, Nintendo hardware — to keep defining expectations about price, ergonomics, and battery life.
For the industry, Acer’s retreat (even if temporary) is a reminder that hardware rollouts are still vulnerable to global trade shifts and component bottlenecks. Big, attention-grabbing prototypes at trade shows are only the first chapter; turning them into scalable products requires steady supply, a predictable cost structure, and a clear reason for customers to switch.
If the Nitro Blaze ever reemerges, the key questions won’t be about screen size. They’ll be about price, regional availability, and why a buyer should pick Acer over entrenched choices. Until Acer nails those three elements — or until tariffs and component costs settle — expect the Blaze to remain a possibility rather than a purchase.
Related reading: if you’re tracking how handhelds are evolving, Valve’s improvements to the Steam Deck and Sony’s streaming-focused PlayStation Portal approach are useful reference points. And Nintendo’s continuing momentum with the Switch family keeps the portable market competitive in ways that influence every new entrant (/news/nintendo-switch-2-sales-surge).