The ZONE is Zotac's first handheld, but having spent some time with it at Gamescom, this might be one to watch.
Officially available for pre-order since yesterday, we went hands-on with a preproduction sample of the Zotac Zone at Gamescom 2024.
This new handheld is Zotac's first entry into the space, and after having spent some time with the device, this one feels like a pretty complete package. Not only is it the first Windows handheld PC with two trackpads (similar to the Steam Deck), but it has many more tricks up its sleeve. (You can find the full spec sheet here.)
For one, it comes with a 7" Full-HD AMOLED screen, and it looks great. We've played Horizon: Forbidden West on the device, and typical for these screens, the colours pop, the blacks are true blacks, and at 800 nits brightness, the screen didn't even suffer under the harsh expo lighting conditions.
Controller-wise, the Zone has hall-sensing analogue sticks. But surrounding them are unique 'radial dials' that you will be able to map to different functions, like changing your screen brightness, adjusting the volume, and more. Also, as I've mentioned previously, the Zone has two trackpads, and on an operating system like Windows, they are a game-changer. In my limited testing, they felt both precise and snappy, and made navigating through Windows a much better experience.
During the hands-on, we also had the chance to talk to Senior Industrial Designer Surf Wong, the person working on the Zone. According to him, one of his inspirations was the Xbox Elite Controller, which you can see in the design of the trigger buttons. With the flip of a switch, you can adjust between a short and long distance, immediately changing the feel of the triggers. And as is by now standard on handhelds, you find two adjustable buttons at the back of the device.
As for ergonomics, the device felt comfortable to hold, not too big despite the two trackpads and not too heavy either. It comes with an AMD Ryzen 8840, WiFi 6E, two USB4 ports of which one is at the bottom (you love to see it!), a full-sized 512 GB NVMe, both a fingerprint sensor and a Windows Hello camera, a microSD slot and a 48.5Wh battery. It even has a built-in kickstand.
As mentioned, the Zone we tested is still an early preproduction sample. While the hardware is now final, the software for the product is still in development. We saw a beta version of the One Launcher Zotac is working on, and so far it looks like it'll allow you to change all the settings you care about, be it TDP settings, mapping the controllers, changing the RGB backlighting and more. It is also here that you will be able to quickly launch games, but as Zotac's Surf Wong assured us, it'll still take a few weeks to finalize this product before the release later this year.
While we only had limited time with a preproduction unit running beta software, and we naturally couldn't fully benchmark it, so far the Zotac Zone feels like one of the most feature-complete Windows handheld PCs I've tested so far. The addition of two trackpads alone makes Windows on this system so much more usable.
This is definitely one to watch, and I can't wait to get my hands on a device to fully review it. You can preorder it now for $799.
