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Earlier this year, we learned that Zotac was set to be the latest company to release its own PC gaming handheld, following in the footsteps of the Ayaneo, ROG Ally and the MSI Claw. Now, the Zotac Zone is officially hitting the market.
The Zotac Zone is the latest gaming handheld to by powered by an AMD Ryzen APU. In this case, we're looking at a Ryzen 7 8840U, which uses Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA 3 graphics. The APU is paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory and a 512GB NVMe SSD for speedy storage – an SD Card slot is also present so you can easily add more storage. For cooling, there is a small fan under the hood, as well as a large vent, surrounded by an ARGB LED on the back of the device, in the middle of your two additional paddle buttons, which can be customised for quicker access to shortcuts or in-game button presses.
Setting itself apart from the crowd, the Zotac Zone uses Hall Effect joysticks and triggers, as well as a large 120Hz AMOLED display with better brightness than the screens currently found on the ROG Ally and MSI Claw.
The Zotac Zone will hit the US market at around $800 and we expect to learn more about EU pricing and availability during Gamescom this week. The system ships with a free 1 month trial for Xbox Game Pass, which you'll readily be able to use out of the box thanks to the Zotac Zone's use of Windows, rather than Linux or Android.
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KitGuru Says: The Zotac Zone has some good features, specifically for the integrated controllers, with drift-resistant joy sticks, a pair of touch pads for any situation where a mouse is required, and dual-stage triggers for those who prefer a shorter actuation distance. Now we'll have to see if Zotac can carve out a space for itself in this rapidly growing market.
