Back during Computex 2024, there were quiet a few companies showing off their own handheld gaming device – and ZOTAC was one of them. And this is the ZOTAC Gaming Zone. I’ve been using it quite extensively for the past week or so, and here are my full thoughts about it.
Most things shown in this article is not conveyed properly since it is best to be shown via video. We highly recommend you watch the review instead of reading.
Specs and performance
I think we’ll have to talk about the specs first. The ZOTAC Gaming Zone comes with the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U with the AMD Raden 780M integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM at 7500MT/s, and also a 512GB SSD. If you haven’t already know, this Ryzen 7 8840U is practically a rebadged version of the Ryzen 7 7840U, which is just the Ryzen Z1 Extreme with an NPU.
- AMD Ryzen 7 7840U: Z1 extreme with NPU
- AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme: 7840U without NPU
- AMD Ryzen 7 8840U: rebadged 7840U
And when we did test it out, the performance is practically identical with the ROG Ally and the Ally X with the Z1 Extreme. Even our benchmarks show the same thing too, so nothing is unusual here.
Battery life
Of course, we have to talk about the battery life now. The ZOTAC Gaming Zone is equipped with a 48.51Wh battery – not the biggest since it’s only 8.51Wh bigger than the ROG Ally, but it only lasts 5 minutes longer when compared to the Ally.
That’s mostly due to the OLED display technology and also the fan used – and we’ll talk about later.
Charging speed is rather interesting since ZOTAC kinda charges at around 45W consistently until it reaches 80%, then slowly ramps down the charging speed until it completes the charging cycle. It takes around 70 minutes to complete the entire charging, and I think that’s actually quite fast.
Hardware
Let’s talk about the hardware first now. The design of the ZOTAC Gaming Zone is very different from what we had before. The first biggest highlight is the magnificent screen. It’s an OLED screen and it covers about 100% of both sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts – and the maximum brightness is also at around 850 nits. The colors just pop and it looks super magnificent.
The two sides are curved inwards at the bottom, so the way to grip this device is to bend the wrist inwards compared to having it straight on the ROG Ally or the Xbox controller for that matter.
The analog sticks are symmetrical, the D-pad is actually quite clicky – and the face buttons are actually smaller compared to other handhelds or controllers. Even the gaps between the buttons are huge.
And we also have some other buttons here – a webcam, surprisingly – and also two trackpads. Below those trackpads are where we can find more buttons.
At the top, we have the power button with triple LED lights to tell us the battery level while charging, volume rocker, a USB 4 port, and a combo audio jack.
We also have a kickstand at the back, M1 and M2 keys, trigger locks to change how the Hall Effect analog triggers function. It changes the extremely long travel distance to become as short as possible, great for shooter games and such that requires quick response – but I honestly don’t like it. It feels very mushy after I’ve locked the triggers. It should be a hard stop and not have that much leeway.
We also have another USB 4 port at the bottom alongside a microSD card reader and two bottom-firing speakers.
I just have to say – the bottom-firing speakers are quite bad. The sound is muffled and I just don’t think that the speakers are that good.
Let’s talk about the cooling system a bit. The ZOTAC Gaming Zone has cutouts behind for air intake and the exhaust is at the top. If we open it up to have a look inside – which I was told to not open it – we can see that the fan is quite big. There is no heatpipe and from what I can deduce, it seems like there is a vapor chamber directly on the SoC and the heatsink is connected directly next to it.
From our tests, the ZOTAC Gaming Zone is indeed cooler than the ROG Ally by quite a huge margin – and that is seriously impressive. However, there are two big issues. Number one, the fan noise is super loud. I’m not joking.
Secondly, and I’m not sure how to show it – is that the entire device will feel like it’s vibrating constantly because of the fan. If I just launch a game – which will already make the fan spin up – and hold the device, I can feel the device rotating anti-clockwise. I really don’t know how to show it to show but it is really happening.
Since we have the device opened, we’ll have to now talk about the vibration motors. They’re located here, so we’re practically grabbing on the vibration motors. And these vibration motors are really aggressive. I play a lot of Zenless Zone Zero on this device and when I used Miyabi’s 6 stack charge attack, the entire device vibrates violently.
And it’s here that we can access the M.2 2280 SSD. It sits directly above the RAM and there’s a tiny gap between the two.
Software
Now, let’s talk about the software. It’s running on Windows 11 and it has the ONE Launcher software pre-installed, and this is going to be the one utility we use to control everything – and I do think that a lot of improvement is needed.
We’re going to only show this in the video as there are way too many little things to show in motion.
Official accessories
I do want to highlight that there are two official accessories for the ZOTAC Gaming Zone. The first one is this hardshell carrying case. It’s very functional, has lots of compartments to put stuff in – especially this little gap to actually fit in the charger – and also has slots for microSD cards and SD cards? There is no SD card slot on this ZOTAC Gaming Zone.
The second official accessory is the dock. This dock is rather weird. I thought since we have a USB-C port at the bottom of the console, there will be a port at the bottom of the dock too – like how the Nintendo Switch dock works. But no, we have to connect the dock to the top of the ZOTAC Gaming Zone, and the bottom port is basically unusable.
We do have a few more ports and also an M.2 2280 SSD slot integrated into the dock and that’s great to further expand the game library.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion – the ZOTAC Gaming Zone is a rather interesting handheld console. For the price of RM3,899 – the accessories are sold separately – then I do think that the price is a bit too high for what it offers. Yes, that beautiful OLED screen on a handheld gaming device like this is really great, but I think it needs a lot more refinement.
As for the software, I think that ZOTAC needs to further improve the ONE Launcher. Oh – let’s not forget that there is no FPS meter or any other easy way to monitor the battery life while gaming because those features just don’t exist yet.
At this price point, it is competitive since the original ROG Ally is already EOL – and the Zotac Gaming Zone is the next best thing. You can fork out even more to get the ROG Ally X – but much more expensive, though it has a larger 80Wh battery or get the original ROG Ally and mod it with a larger battery instead. Just don’t do what we did and you should be fine.
So, that’s all we have to share with you in today’s video. Do let us know, are you using a handheld gaming device like this? Are you going to get one yourself? And let us know what you think about the ZOTAC Gaming Zone. I’d love to know your thoughts – remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you guys in the next video.
