Guess What? Streaming-Solely Gaming Handhelds Are Nonetheless a Factor

Some of our favourite gaming handhelds, just like the Lenovo Legion Go 2 and Steam Deck, now price near 50% greater than they did a yr in the past. Hardware costs are sufficient to make recreation streaming appear extra like a viable answer. Acer, with its Nitro Blaze Link handheld, imagines you’d fairly stream your content material from a PC than play it natively.

The Acer Nitro Blaze Link is being billed as a streaming-first handheld, akin to Sony’s PlayStation Portal however as an alternative constructed particularly with PC gaming in thoughts. You could keep in mind the $350 Logitech G Cloud, during which case you’ll have a greater thought what Acer’s system is attempting to perform. It’s a light-weight, 7-inch handheld that helps Wi-Fi 6. Acer expects customers to make use of streaming software program like Sunshine and Moonlight, which is what’s utilized in device-to-device streaming companies like Razer Cortex. What’s extra, the Nitro Blaze Link runs Linux, particularly the Debian distro. It’s solely packing 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, so it’s virtually ineffective for something however streaming.

The Linux limitation means it might not even be appropriate with Xbox Cloud Gaming at launch. Acer just isn’t advertising and marketing the Nitro Blaze Link as an precise handheld PC like its upcoming Predator Atlas 8. That being mentioned, anticipate it to price far lower than one other handheld constructed for taking part in video games natively. Acer says we’ll see it in This fall this yr, although it doesn’t have any phrase on pricing simply but.

In truth, Acer isn’t revealing any pricing particulars for any of its different gaming units that you’d have to make the Nitro Blaze Link work. Like different gaming laptops from this yr, such because the 2026 Alienware 16 Area-51, the brand new Acer Predator Helios 18 is packing Intel’s newest Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus processor. The 290Hx Plus is Intel’s up to date Arrow Lake chip that enhances gaming efficiency to a marginal diploma. You also can pack this laptop computer with an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU.

You can already guess this laptop computer prioritizes efficiency. For the sake of seeing your video games in the perfect gentle, the Predator Helios 18 has an 18-inch mini LED show that helps two resolutions and refresh charges. You can run it at 4K and 120Hz or 1080p on the full 240Hz. Like final yr’s laptop computer, the keyboard features a swappable key system known as MagKey 3.0. This means if you would like mechanical switches for additional “thock” in your WASD keys, you don’t should exit and purchase a unique, costly laptop computer.

Of these Acer laptops that I went hands-on with earlier than Computex 2026, maybe my largest shock was the corporate’s new TravelMate P6 14 AI. It’s a black torpedo of a laptop computer that felt like a stealth bomber in my arms. The 14-inch laptop computer is comprised of a carbon fiber chassis that in some way weighs simply 2.2 kilos. It’s packing as much as an Intel Core Ultra X7 368H CPU, so it’s technically able to gaming round 1080p decision because of Intel’s Arc B390 built-in GPU.

The TravelMate P6 14 AI additionally sports activities an OLED show with a max decision of two,880 x 1,800, so it’s not a slouch within the seems division regardless of its dimension. Again, Acer hasn’t revealed pricing for any of its upcoming merchandise. That’s regarding, for the reason that TravelMate must be accessible in North America beginning in August. If you need a gaming-capable PC, you’ll should spend a piece of change to get it.