Intel's G3 Extreme is a mighty impressive chip, and easily the headline feature of Acer's Predator Atlas 8. If you're looking to get the best handheld Panther Lake chip right now, Acer has swooped in at pretty much the cheapest price point on the market.

And if that's all you want, the Atlas 8 has my blessing. It's a solid device that makes use of the chip and offers compromises in memory and storage capacity (in the American market) to bring that cost down. Not only that, but if you buy one right now, you get a heaping of goodies with it.

But if you don't need top-of-the-line specs to have a good time, the Atlas 8 instead becomes just one of many very, very solid, yet very, very expensive handhelds on offer in a time that has become worse and worse thanks to the memory crisis.

✅ You want the G3 Extreme but cheaper: The Atlas 8 undercuts both MSI and OneXPlayer in pricing for a G3 Extreme handheld.

❌ You play fighters or platformers primarily: The D-pad is mushy and lacks distinction, making it unsatisfying and a tad unruly.

8-inch WUXGA 1920 x 1200 (120 Hz refresh rate and 500 nits peak brightness)

The memory capacity is around average (Though lower than the high-end G3 Extreme offerings from MSI and OneXPlayer), and the storage is below average for a high-end handheld if you buy it in America.

Though 512 GB of storage isn't awful in a device you only want for gaming, the G3 Extreme is strong enough to take on even beefy, big-budget games, so it's a shame that the Atlas 8 can't hold all that many at once.

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