Zotac Zone OLED Gaming Handheld Arrives To Battle Steam Deck And ROG Ally
After teasing its entry into the handheld game console space at Computex earlier this year, Zotac is now officially a player, having chosen Gamescom 2024 as the launchpad for its first Zone system (ZGC-G1A1W). Zotac also chose to target the higher end of the handheld market with upper-tier specifications and reported premium price tag to match.
Interestingly enough, Zotac proclaims in no uncertain terms that its Zone is "ready for preorder now on exclusive e-tailer platforms in select regions," but doesn't mention an actual price. Several sites are claiming it carries a $799 MSRP. If so, that would put it on equal footing with the ASUS ROG Ally X (not to confused with the non-X variant). We'll have to wait and see, though, as we don't see the Zone listed at any of the usual US retail suspects such as Amazon or Newegg.
As to those premium specs, the Zone boasts a 7-inch AMOLED display with a 1920x1080 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 800 nits brightness that Zotac claims is "crystal clear, even under direct sunlight." It's also a multi-touch display with HDR support and 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space (150% sRGB).
It's powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U, which is a Zen 4 based APU wielding an 8C/16T configuration, a 3.3GHz base clock and up to a 5.1GHz max boost clock, 8MB of L2 cache and 16MB of L3 cache, and a configurable 15-30W TPD. And on the graphics side of the APU equation, the 8840U is equipped with a Radeon 780M GPU featuring a dozen cores clocked at up to 2.7GHz.
Other notable specs include 16GB of LPDDR5X-7500 RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD (M.2 2280 form factor) expandable via microSD, two USB4 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, built-in microphone, 10MP front camera, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 for wireless connectivity, and a 48.5Whr battery.
Overall, it's similar in specs to the ROG Ally X, though ASUS can claim advantages in RAM (24GB), storage (1TB), and battery capacity (80Whr). Meanwhile, Zotac is hyping up the "suite of elite controls" on the Zone, which include hall effect sensors, two-stage adjustable triggers, radial dials, and dual trackpads.
The other interesting thing to note is that Zotac chose the Ryzen 7 8840U over the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which in theory means users will be able to download drivers direct from AMD rather, versus Z1 Extreme handheld owners having to wait on the manufacturer. The 8840U also retains a dedicated NPU with 16 TOPS of performance, for whatever that's worth (in a gaming handheld).
All things considered, Zotac's Zone handheld is an intriguing entry into a growing but not-yet-crowded field. It will be interesting to see how street pricing lands in the US, as well as its reception.
