Acer has had gaming handhelds before, but its upcoming Predator Atlas 8 is the first to fall under the company’s ‘serious’ gaming banner. The previous outings were filed under ‘Nitro’, the more affordable range from Acer. So what’s the big deal about this upcoming gaming hardware?
Well, it’s supposedly the first hardware to use Intel’s dedicated handheld gaming chipset, the Arc G3 Extreme. Acer does point out (sort of) that this is an “up to” situation and not the default. Expect to pay more for Intel’s newest hardware and the performance it supplies.
Predator Atlas 8 *shrug*?
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 announcement took place at this year’s Computex, and most of the details about the console are known. The upcoming hardware will see players roaming around an 8in 120Hz IPS screen, with Intel’s Arc G3 in the back. The basic version drops the Extreme processor and will support Arc B370 graphics. The beefier chipset scales that up to the B390.
Storage goes up to 1TB and RAM options scale up to 24GB, but Acer hasn’t yet said which configurations there will actually be. South Africans, likely, will have limited options to choose from. The country will probably get one basic and one Extreme console, with a set amount of RAM/storage. We hardly ever get to pick and choose.
There’s either a 60Wh or 80Wh battery installed in the Atlas 8. The larger battery is probably for the bigger chipset. The PC’s design looks suitably gamer-y, with offset thumbsticks, a smidge of backlighting, and an interesting take on the D-pad.
What’s missing, so far, is pricing. We’ve got no idea what any edition will cost, but the Atlas 8 goes on sale from October this year. Acer reckons that “North America, EMEA, and Australia” are included in this launch window. South Africa technically falls under EMEA, but it might be delayed here.
