How many Steam Deck-style PC gaming handhelds is too many? We still don’t know because there are plenty still to come, apparently.
The Zotac Zone looks mighty familiar from the outside, but it’s bringing a few features that might turn heads in this highly competitive market segment — like an AMOLED screen, no upgrade required.
The Zone’s display isn’t any bigger than the competition at 7 inches, but it is a bit sharper than usual with its 1080p resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. The OLED panel is the highlight, though, offering more vivid colors and perfect contrast alongside 800 nits of brightness. (The Steam Deck comes in an OLED model, but only at the most expensive tier.)
There are a couple of other aspects to the Zone’s design that might be of interest, and which weren’t obvious at the Zone’s preview at Computex, though at this point it kind of feels like all of these handhelds are remixing the same elements. For example, the Zone has a very similar control scheme to the Steam Deck, including the front-mounted dual touchpads that are omitted on devices like the ROG Ally.
But it does have one of my favorite design elements of any handheld gadget: a built-in, wide-hinged kickstand a la the Switch OLED. There’s an RGB lighting strip around the back, too, because I guess you can’t build one of these without injecting some bling.
Zotac also decided to go with a “clicky” D-pad — especially nice for fighting game fans — and the triggers and thumbsticks are Hall effect, no need to upgrade them to avoid stick drift. They’re surrounded by radial dials for a little more fine-grained control for things like volume and brightness. The triggers can be swapped between clicky or long travel, like the Xbox Elite controller.
Inside, the specs are a little disappointing. The Zone is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U, one of the newer APU chips on the market, but it’s paired to 16GB of RAM and just 512GB of storage. The spec sheet says that’s an M.2 2280 drive, so it could be upgraded with the same Gen4 drives you can pick up on the cheap for your desktop. The RAM isn’t so easy to upgrade, and along with the rather ho-hum 48.5 watt-hour battery, it’s lagging behind newer designs like the ROG Ally X.
Officially revealed back at Computex, the Zotac Zone is getting its social debut at Gamescom in Germany with an apparently final design. There’s no official word on a final release date or price, but “September” and “around $800” seem to be the rumors.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.