If you thought the Steam Deck was big, let alone Acer’s Nitro Blaze 11, take a load of the Frankenstein’s monster of a PC gaming rig I’ve put together. This is a pre-production version of Asus’ upcoming ROG Flow Z13 tablet, paired with a GameSir G8 Plus handheld mobile controller; The Z13’s AMD Strix Halo processor makes it possibly the most powerful gaming handheld you can play. That is, of course, until your hands go numb under its weight.
It’s totally ridiculous, I love it and I’m starting to think big screens are the future.
I’m not the first to try this strange experiment, as I got the idea from Redditors who did something similar with an earlier version of the same tablet. But after trying it myself, I’m starting to rethink what gaming handhelds can do. The just-announced Nintendo Switch 2 reportedly stretches its screen to eight inches, and Acer’s handheld turns it up to 11; maybe portability isn’t as important as a lethal dose of pixels straight into my eyes?
Let’s get one thing out of the way: you probably shouldn’t pair this specific controller and tablet like I did. The Z13 isn’t really designed to be hooked by a pair of controllers and I had to stretch the GameSir G8 Plus a lot to get it to fit – it’s not designed to work with anything bigger than an iPad Mini and springs extended can be closed aggressively if you accidentally remove the gamepad in use. The one time it happened to me, I lost my fingers, but it was a surprisingly close call. Consider yourself warned.
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Why risk my soft, bruised lighter-than-peach hands with a texture like that? When I got my hands on the Acer Nitro Blaze 11 at CES and compared it to the Steam Deck, I was immediately ambivalent. The angel on my shoulder said “This is totally too big and, frankly, a bit immature” while the devil on my other shoulder thought “Hell yeah! Stick me on the couch like I always do with my Steam Deck and let me burn my retinas with as many screens as I can handle!”
After some of you fine commenters seemed to agree with my sense of wide-eyed identification of the latter, I realized that the ROG Flow Z13 I was walking around the show floor might fulfill my fiendish desire.
This is definitely NO a review – since the Flow Z13 is a pre-production unit – but the AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 “Strix Halo” chip, with its whopping 40 graphics cores, circled today’s gaming rigs. I was able to play Helldivers 2 AND Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with a mix of low and medium settings at the tablet’s native 2560 x 1600 resolution and easily maintained 50+ or 60+ fps at each, respectively. Can you do this with a laptop? of course! But I just did it with an entire computer sandwiched between two gamepad halves.
I have spread a fair amount of “Managed Democracy” on Helldivers 2 on Steam Deck, and while it’s certainly playable, you shouldn’t mind this game looking like it’s from the era of the PlayStation 3. It sings on the Z13 in comparison – at least until it’s drowned out by low battery warnings. I can’t sit too far from the power cable, as the Z13’s battery drained from 100 to 10 percent in about 90 minutes. But honestly, that’s not terrible compared to an original Steam Deck, and maybe downscaling to a more modest 1920 x 1200 resolution or lowering the chip’s TDP might help.
But what surprised me the most was how good it felt using Windows on this “hand”. The large screen makes touch targets in Windows 11 actually tolerable. For the first time in the PC handheld space, it didn’t immediately complain, “Boy this thing needs SteamOS or Bazzite.” I may still prefer them, but in this format I can live with Windows, especially since a tablet that doubles as a laptop AND or The handheld is an intriguing triple threat. (It’s something I currently only see OneXPlayer attempting with its weird X1 line.)
As for portability, well… this combo is definitely an acquired taste, as it weighs 3.6 pounds on my kitchen scale, about 1.3 pounds heavier than Acer’s hefty Blaze 11 and a full 2.2 pounds more than a Steam Deck. It’s like having two Steam Decks and a Nintendo Switch with Joy-Cons attached all in one package.
Don’t even dream of playing this way in bed, unless you intend to slip into dreamland via a concussion if the heavy tablet slips from its controller books. You don’t even need gravity working against you to risk the tablet slipping, as the extra-stretchy GameSir controllers can twist and turn around the Z13’s side bars while in use.
The Z13’s large, stable kickstand helps a lot with all that weight, allowing you to prop it up on your lap or on a table for support. But if you plan to take this device anywhere but the couch, the clip-on controllers aren’t entirely convenient; you’ll have to decide whether your definition of “portability” includes a setup and teardown process every time you move locations.
I’ll admit that no matter how fun it was to try out the Z13 this way, it makes a lot more sense to put the tablet on a desk or table and play with a traditional controller. The GameSir isn’t meant to hold that much weight, and after playing for several hours straight I had some soreness in both hands that likely wouldn’t happen with a larger gamepad designed for this setup.
But this funny little experiment showed me that there is definitely something to redundant handhelds. Perhaps Acer’s Blaze 11 will just be the first foot in the door of a larger trend of handheld devices that stay at home, a market where Sony’s PlayStation Portal has already found its footing. If Asus ever came up with the right controller add-ons for its Z13, sized and equipped to balance its weight, perhaps the company could even sell it as a 13-inch gaming PC.
I used to think that the Switch or Steam Deck were the ideal size, but after trying this large size experiment and seeing that the Switch 2 will also be larger than before, I’m comfortable saying that there is no perfect size for these devices. I’m excited to see all sizes of handsets enter the space, even if they are gigantic.
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
