All of us within the PC Gamer {Hardware} tower-of-tech love handheld gaming PC. Whether or not it is the luscious display screen and sensible software program ecosystem of the OLED Steam Deck or the uncooked energy of the ROG Ally X, the market is awash with all types of gadgets. And now Zotac, purveyor of GeForce RTX graphics playing cards and mini PCs, is throwing its gauntlet into the ring with its Zone handheld, replete with a 7-inch AMOLED display screen.
The show might be the most important promoting characteristic of the Zotac Gaming Zone and we first laid our eyes (and sticky mitts) on it again in January, on the annual Computex occasion. When it comes to measurement, decision, and refresh price, it is par course for the market (7 inches, 1080p, 120 Hz) however it makes use of an AMOLED touch-sensitive panel, with a claimed color gamut of greater than 100% DCI-P3 and 150% sRGB.
With a peak brightness of 800 nits, it must be excellent for gaming open air, though it isn’t clear what that may drop to when it is displaying HDR content material. In line with fellow employees Chris, “…in a brightly lit surroundings, [it] actually impressed with the brightness, distinction, and coloration replica.”
Zotac has additionally given the Zone (or how about ZGZ, for brief?) a good set of management choices, with twin Corridor Impact thumbsticks and two-stage adjustable triggers, radial dials across the sticks, two trackpads, plus two buttons across the again. After all, we do not understand how nicely these all work till we get our fingers on a ZGZ and correctly check it, however there isn’t any scarcity of management choices, no less than.
The remainder of the {hardware} is pretty normal fare for a contemporary handheld gaming PC—an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U, with 8 CPU cores, 16 threads, and 768 RDNA 3 shaders that deal with all of the gaming duties. That will get backed up with 16 GB of LPDDR5-7500 RAM, which is good and quick, however having spent quite a lot of time utilizing the ROG Ally X with its 24 GB of RAM, I feel 16 GB is maybe just a little missing.
It is a comparable story for the storage, because it’s simply 512 GB. Given the scale of many video games as of late, that is actually not sufficient, although the Zone does use a typical PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 interface which ought to make it simple sufficient to increase the capability with a speedy gaming SSD.
However you do get a built-in kickstand, WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wi-fi connectivity, a UHS-II microSD slot, and two USB4 ports for dealing with exterior shows and peripherals. There’s even a fingerprint scanner and a 720p front-facing digital camera, so it isn’t brief on the additional goodies. Zotac additionally makes a devoted dock and carry case.
Weighing in at 692 g (1.53 lbs), I anticipated the Zone to have a big battery however it’s solely rated to 43 Wh. That was acceptable a 12 months or two in the past however with the ROG Ally X sporting an 80 Wh battery with an analogous weight, I do suppose Zotac has missed a trick right here.
As with all handheld gaming PCs, the specs solely inform you half a narrative. The way it feels in a single’s fingers, how thermals and noise are managed, and the software program ecosystem play a extremely vital function in how satisfying such gadgets are. If we get a Zotac Gaming Zone in for assessment, we’ll remember to let .