It’s handheld season, and nan Asus ROG Ally X and MSI Claw 8 AI Plus aren’t nan only second-gen Windows gaming handhelds successful municipality — GPU shaper Zotac has officially revealed its Zone astatine Computex, and it does a fewer things otherwise than nan competition.
Zotac already teased that nan Zone would person an OLED screen, thing that only nan Steam Deck OLED has managed successful PC handhelds earlier — arsenic good arsenic two-stage adjustable triggers for illustration an Xbox Elite gamepad and drift resistant Hall effect joysticks. But did you cognize it’ll besides person symmetrical PlayStation-esque joysticks, programmable dials astir each one, copy Steam Deck-like trackpads, a mini built-in kickstand, a Windows Hello camera alternatively of a fingerprint reader, and some apical and bottommost USB4 ports?
Thanks to journalists who descended connected Taipei this week, we do — immoderate of whom took good photos, including the full spec sheet. PCWorld moreover filmed a 20-minute agelong video tour:
The handheld’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U chip, and you shouldn’t needfully expect a batch from it — it’s mostly nan aforesaid arsenic nan 7840U that powered anterior handhelds, pinch nan aforesaid Radeon 780M iGPU inside. But for illustration nan ROG Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go, it does upgrade to LPDDR5X-7500 memory, which seemingly gave nan Legion a flimsy capacity bump complete nan original Ally — and astatine a much humble 1080p resolution.
Less pleasingly, Zotac appears to person outfitted it pinch a humble 48.5 watt-hour artillery battalion arsenic well, smaller than that of nan Steam Deck OLED and vastly smaller than nan 80Wh packs that Asus and MSI conscionable announced — and its 7-inch 120Hz OLED surface doesn’t support adaptable refresh rate immoderate much than nan Steam Deck’s 1 did. It does sound bully and agleam astatine 800 nits, however, and I’m intrigued by nan programmable jog dials.
Image: Zotac
As you whitethorn know, Zotac was 1 of nan first companies to effort AirJet’s intriguing solid-state cooling tech successful a mini-PC, and PCWorld’s Adam Murray took nan opportunity to inquire if Zotac was readying to usage nan tech successful a handheld, too. But while AirJet shaper Frore Systems seems to deliberation it’d work, Zotac suggested nan existent AirJet isn’t yet designed to cool chips arsenic precocious wattage arsenic nan 8840U — and that costs mightiness besides beryllium a concern. For now, nan Zone has a azygous accepted instrumentality and a mates of smallish vents to thief support it cool.
According to Geeknetic, nan Zone should costs astir $800 successful September of this year. That’s connected nan precocious extremity of user gaming handhelds, though nan Ally X, pinch its dramatically bigger battery, is besides launching astatine that price.
Zotac, if you’re reference this: we’re happy to get nan specifications from you adjacent time!