Zotac Zone

[AusWolf]

Personally, I feel that the strengths of handhelds aren't AAA game releases, I hate playing them at reduced quality on a tiny screen with a gamepad. AAA gaming is (again, just my opinion) the realm of high-quality, high-resolution, gaming sessions where I can sit down for multiple hours without interruption. Handhelds are where I fire up low-fi indie games like Brotato, DRG, or Slay the Spire where I can play a round of something in under 30 minutes. They're good for killing time during travel, brief downtime in the day between obligations, and a way to be present with a partner even if I have zero interest in what they're doing/watching/reading.

Exactly my thoughts! That's why I'm happy with the Steam Deck and don't feel the need for anything more powerful. Not to mention, I would never spend the price of an entry-level PC on a handheld that I only need during my travels and occasionally when the living room couch feels more comfortable than my chair.

Testing a handheld at 25W mode is absurd, I can't see why that is even worth testing let alone using. Testing in the 10-15W range make sense though (keep in mind Switch OLED Tegra SoC uses about 6W) and nice to see AMD has improved their perf/watt SoC performance. When the eventual Steam Deck OLED 2 comes I'll be interested, maybe with TSMC 2nm by then to be a bigger more worthwhile jump.

If you test at 15 W, then you might as well buy a Steam Deck for way less money instead.

 

[GreiverBlade]

not bad, if it weren't for the unergonomic layout ... (which is also the reason i could never get a steamdeck ) soft, cooling and battery are also a downside, indeed.

the D-pad should always be under the left thumbstick for easier shortcut, this is one thing the Xbox layout get right the most used inputs should be above the less used one
i kinda like the trackpads but they also push the main controls a bit too high for my taste (tho it's still better than the steamdeck)

the main improvement tho, would be the trigger course shortening, which is my only cons with my Ally, by not having them (rumble is a nice thing to have but does not feel missing too much )

due to getting my Ally second hand, giving it a nice 4 tb 2280 upgrade and the next upgrade being a 74Wh battery, make it perfect for me. (total end cost would still end up cheaper than a ROG Ally X or that Zotac Zone )

nonetheless nice to see more options in the "gaming laptop in a handeld formfactor"

nice review as always, keep it up.

 

[trsttte]

Yeah this doesn't look any good against either z1 handhelds or the z2 that will be announced at CES in 2 weeks. The OLED screen might seem impressive but 1080p is just not a good resolution for these type of devices, performance and battery sucks! Lenovo was the smartest on this front, they went for 1600p that can be integer scaled to 800p at will getting the best of both worlds - no OLED but does HDR on such a small screen really make a difference?

not sure why ASUS stuck with one 3.2 Gen 2 on the Ally X

The Ally X refresh has USB4, the original Ally is the one that doesn't becau they were still trying to make their dumb proprietary eGPU solution a thing.

 

[Beer4Myself]

Man the Zone sounds like almost the perfect Handheld for me ... if it just had a bigger SSD, bigger battery even though at 12w it should ve able to stretch out over 2h. I had the Deck for a while and i love the concept, but i'm a cheapskate and ~700€ is quite pricey for this package. Maybe if the dock was included it would be a more fair price.

 

[MCJAxolotl7]

Hopefully AMD will replace that 7840U soon it will be 2 years old.

Nintendo made the switch with the same Tegra X1 chip, for 8 years, as the chip was getting upgraded in the Shield TV. 2 years is slightly old, but decent.

Man the Zone sounds like almost the perfect Handheld for me ... if it just had a bigger SSD, bigger battery even though at 12w it should ve able to stretch out over 2h. I had the Deck for a while and i love the concept, but i'm a cheapskate and ~700€ is quite pricey for this package. Maybe if the dock was included it would be a more fair price.

Upgrade the SSD?

 

[bruhmoment01]

I seriously caution anybody interested in one of these handhelds against buying a 16GB device. It is not a good experience.

Especially under Windows 11, 16GB is not enough memory to run current titles. Once the 3-4GB video memory allocation and the 3-5GB idle usage of Windows are accounted for, you realistically have 8GB of memory. If you’ve got Discord or a browser open as well, it will be even less.

On my Legion Go I experienced consistent stuttering and crashes due to running out of memory in current titles like BlackOps 6 and Marvel Rivals, but even in older games like Overwatch and emulators like RPCS3 and Ryujinx.

I replaced my 16GB Legion Go with a 32GB Ayaneo Slide, and the difference in performance and stability is night and day.

These APUs are perfectly capable of playing the latest AAA games at 720p with FSR, which still looks great on a tiny screen, but are seriously limited at 16GB.

 

[Chaitanya]

Nintendo made the switch with the same Tegra X1 chip, for 8 years, as the chip was getting upgraded in the Shield TV. 2 years is slightly old, but decent.

Difference is Nintendo is a walled garden ecosystem with total top-down control(similar to Apple) vs these X86 based handhelds where we have quite a bit of fragmentations(form factors, CPUs, and OS).

 

[cfenton]

Do the Windows handhelds allow you to quickly change to arbitrary screen refresh rates? For more demanding games, I'll cap my OLED Deck to 45fps in a 90hz container, or 40fps in an 80hz container. It's not as good as a VRR display, but it beats the inconsistency of a 40-50 variable frame rate with the screen stuck at 60hz.

 

[Cheeseball]

Yeah this doesn't look any good against either z1 handhelds or the z2 that will be announced at CES in 2 weeks. The OLED screen might seem impressive but 1080p is just not a good resolution for these type of devices, performance and battery sucks! Lenovo was the smartest on this front, they went for 1600p that can be integer scaled to 800p at will getting the best of both worlds - no OLED but does HDR on such a small screen really make a difference?



The Ally X refresh has USB4, the original Ally is the one that doesn't becau they were still trying to make their dumb proprietary eGPU solution a thing.

Ah what I mean is that the Ally X only has one USB4 Type-C port and the other one is still USB 3.2 Gen 2. Not sure why ASUS skimped out on going with two USB4 ports as Lenovo did it properly with the Legion Go. The Phoenix/Hawk Point APU has enough available PCI-E lanes to handle two USB4 ports.

Then again, this is ASUS who also skimped out on adding USB4 on their laptops (e.g. Flow X13 2022) with the older Rembrandt (6000-series) APUs as well even though it had a proper USB4v1 controller built-in. I'm guessing because there are extra costs to add a redriver, but that should not be a reason when these were premium laptops that should have covered those costs.

 

[AusWolf]

I seriously caution anybody interested in one of these handhelds against buying a 16GB device. It is not a good experience.

Especially under Windows 11, 16GB is not enough memory to run current titles. Once the 3-4GB video memory allocation and the 3-5GB idle usage of Windows are accounted for, you realistically have 8GB of memory. If you’ve got Discord or a browser open as well, it will be even less.

On my Legion Go I experienced consistent stuttering and crashes due to running out of memory in current titles like BlackOps 6 and Marvel Rivals, but even in older games like Overwatch and emulators like RPCS3 and Ryujinx.

I replaced my 16GB Legion Go with a 32GB Ayaneo Slide, and the difference in performance and stability is night and day.

These APUs are perfectly capable of playing the latest AAA games at 720p with FSR, which still looks great on a tiny screen, but are seriously limited at 16GB.

I would caution everybody against running the latest AAA titles on a handheld. They are travel companions, not hardcore gaming devices.

 

[watzupken]

It’s silly to release another handheld PC with just 16GB of memory. It’s a waste of money for people buying it as well because it just cannot keep up with memory demands from the OS and newer game titles. Performance consistency is going to suffer big time .

 

[AusWolf]

It’s silly to release another handheld PC with just 16GB of memory. It’s a waste of money for people buying it as well because it just cannot keep up with memory demands from the OS and newer game titles. Performance consistency is going to suffer big time .

If you think of your device as a desktop replacement, sure. But you shouldn't.

 

[Random_User]

If you think of your device as a desktop replacement, sure. But you shouldn't.

But it is a handheld, with desktop abilities, and desktop OS. Or desktop with handheld options. It runs x86_64 programs out of the box, as any desktop does, with all the consequences, including browsing and OS tax.
Yes this might have reduced overhead during gaming, as it is mostly limited to 720/800p. But when the user goes down to the desktop computing, one gets pretty quickly capped by the resource hog OS, and it's sluggish performance.
Yes, windows might be great to run DX games, with much better out of the box support, especially legacy games. But it's nowhere a good gaming os, snd heck, W11 is not a good OS in the first place.
This is rather a question, which is "less-worse":
1. to run games natively, even legacy ones with minimum resourse penalty, but with huge W11 background crap load.
2. Or, to have a much snappier OS, but be restricted by capabilities and compatibility issues of different layers and emulators, like anti-cheat, proken legacy game support, etc. Even with sometimes greater performance of DXVK, rather than native Windows DX.

My English is atrocious. But I hope you csn get the idea.

 

[trsttte]

But it is a handheld, with desktop abilities, and desktop OS. Or desktop with handheld options. It runs x86_64 programs out of the box, as any desktop does, with all the consequences, including browsing and OS tax.
Yes this might have reduced overhead during gaming, as it is mostly limited to 720/800p. But when the user goes down to the desktop computing, one gets pretty quickly capped by the resource hog OS, and it's sluggish performance.
Yes, windows might be great to run DX games, with much better out of the box support, especially legacy games. But it's nowhere a good gaming os, snd heck, W11 is not a good OS in the first place.
This is rather a question, which is "less-worse":
1. to run games natively, even legacy ones with minimum resourse penalty, but with huge W11 background crap load.
2. Or, to have a much snappier OS, but be restricted by capabilities and compatibility issues of different layers and emulators, like anti-cheat, proken legacy game support, etc. Even with sometimes greater performance of DXVK, rather than native Windows DX.

My English is atrocious. But I hope you csn get the idea.

If someone thinks they're going to replace their workstation with this that's a user problem, not a device problem. Sure it can do desktop stuff like any desktop would, and the 16gb of ram will be fine for that. It might become slugish when you load 100 tabs on your browser but again, that's a user problem.

For this generation it's ok, next generation should bump things to at least 24gb (since that's a thing now) and 32gb can become more common - so everyone can demand that it must have 64gb!

 

[AusWolf]

But it is a handheld, with desktop abilities, and desktop OS. Or desktop with handheld options. It runs x86_64 programs out of the box, as any desktop does, with all the consequences, including browsing and OS tax.
Yes this might have reduced overhead during gaming, as it is mostly limited to 720/800p. But when the user goes down to the desktop computing, one gets pretty quickly capped by the resource hog OS, and it's sluggish performance.
Yes, windows might be great to run DX games, with much better out of the box support, especially legacy games. But it's nowhere a good gaming os, snd heck, W11 is not a good OS in the first place.
This is rather a question, which is "less-worse":
1. to run games natively, even legacy ones with minimum resourse penalty, but with huge W11 background crap load.
2. Or, to have a much snappier OS, but be restricted by capabilities and compatibility issues of different layers and emulators, like anti-cheat, proken legacy game support, etc. Even with sometimes greater performance of DXVK, rather than native Windows DX.

My English is atrocious. But I hope you csn get the idea.

That is exactly why you shouldn't expect the performance of a $2000, 300+ W desktop from a $800, 45 W handheld.

 

[Random_User]

That is exactly why you shouldn't expect the performance of a $2000, 300+ W desktop from a $800, 45 W handheld.

I don't expect anything. My input meant, that if the W11 os and chromium/discord garbage is already pretty taxing for full fledged desktop, this all pretty much applies to the any AMD/Intel x86_64 based handheld, as they are basically the small form factor desktops.
The only few significant Pros of this Zotac Zone, are the metal chassis, good ergonimics, and good built quality.
And the other, it's not limited by the stupid Steam restrictions, so anybody outside "first grade" coutries can potentially buy it legally, with full varanty applied. Steam Deck is a toy for cool guys.

If someone thinks they're going to replace their workstation with this that's a user problem, not a device problem. Sure it can do desktop stuff like any desktop would, and the 16gb of ram will be fine for that. It might become slugish when you load 100 tabs on your browser but again, that's a user problem.

For this generation it's ok, next generation should bump things to at least 24gb (since that's a thing now) and 32gb can become more common - so everyone can demand that it must have 64gb!

32GB was already Ok-ish, and pretty affordable in the days of X470. The DDR5 started with 32GB, and 64 is pretty minimum, for the system, tha us built to stand for at least five, or so years. Heck, the phones have more RAM.
And again. The Windows OS and apps, are equally taxing on either desktop, or these handhelds, regardles, of their way of use.
16GB, was fine in 2015-2018. For 2024-2025, this just unacceptable. I'm not mentioning, that these Z1, Strix-Point APUs, are miles more performant and powerful, than any ancient "14nm++++ lakes" of that era. The low RAM amount is an obvious restriction, even in handheld mode, with low resolution.

 

[AusWolf]

I don't expect anything. My input meant, that if the W11 os and chromium/discord garbage is already pretty taxing for full fledged desktop, this all pretty much applies to the any AMD/Intel x86_64 based handheld, as they are basically the small form factor desktops.
The only few significant Pros of this Zotac Zone, are the metal chassis, good ergonimics, and good built quality.
And the other, it's not limited by the stupid Steam restrictions, so anybody outside "first grade" coutries can potentially buy it legally, with full varanty applied. Steam Deck is a toy for cool guys.

One of the cheapest handhelds is "a toy for cool guys"? That's a pretty weird opinion. Other than that, I agree.

32GB was already Ok-ish, and pretty affordable in the days of X470. The DDR5 started with 32GB, and 64 is pretty minimum, for the system, tha us built to stand for at least five, or so years. Heck, the phones have more RAM.
And again. The Windows OS and apps, are equally taxing on either desktop, or these handhelds, regardles, of their way of use.
16GB, was fine in 2015-2018. For 2024-2025, this just unacceptable. I'm not mentioning, that these Z1, Strix-Point APUs, are miles more performant and powerful, than any ancient "14nm++++ lakes" of that era. The low RAM amount is an obvious restriction, even in handheld mode, with low resolution.

32 GB is more than enough. No game running on Windows even gets near 20 GB in usage. The problem with these handhelds is that they need the system RAM for both CPU and GPU usage - which I don't think is a real problem considering that the most demanding games don't run that well and/or drain the battery too quickly anyway, so you shouldn't be playing them in the first place.

 

[bruhmoment01]

I would caution everybody against running the latest AAA titles on a handheld. They are travel companions, not hardcore gaming devices.

Why? The 7840U runs a constant 60FPS in the titles I mentioned when it isn’t fighting for its life with 16GB of memory

16GB devices with an APU of this class are artificially handicapped. I can only assume manufacturers do it so they can sell you next year’s model (that comes with enough memory).

 

[AusWolf]

Why? The 7840U runs a constant 60FPS in the titles I mentioned when it isn’t fighting for its life with 16GB of memory

16GB devices with an APU of this class are artificially handicapped. I can only assume manufacturers do it so they can sell you next year’s model (that comes with enough memory).

The less than 1-hour battery life is handicap enough. The 7840U needs at least 2-3x the battery capacity to be able to game properly, but that would make the device heavy as heck. There's no winning here, something's got to give.

 

[Gooigi's Ex]

If I just don’t want a Steam Deck(so any handheld) but for some reason I have a RAGING HAR…I mean “requirement” for the trackpad…sure this is an option. Lovely OLED and 120hz screen, sad that’s it a 7 inch screen and not 8, although it’s a 16:9 which will always be a plus in my books and priority over other handhelds. Nice that it has a m.2280(unlike a Steam Deck AND MSI CLAW with its 2230) but a massive dealbreaker of a battery.



Awesome performance especially at 15watts(better than the Steam Deck) but tad slow RAM Speed and unacceptable amount of VRAM. 24GB at the minimum and 32GB NEEDS to be the standard for handheld from now on. Awesome it has 2 USB4 ports as well as amazing triggers for racing games(my fav genre of games lol). For $799, I would chose the ROG ALLY X still because it’s has most of the things that the Zotac is missing and it has better availability and support. Plus, since the new Z2 chips comes out soon, the ROG ALLY X will be cheaper.



Next gen update(or refresh) for the device: get rid of the useless, dumbass, trackpads(or provide a stylus) and replace them with better, high quality, front facing speakers(and use those downward facing speakers as subwoofers), 80+whr battery is the standard now(I need you to get with the program Gabe…), 24GB of VRAM is standard now so no more 16GB, 8 inch screen but keep that OLED AND 120hz(or bump it to 144hz) and add VRR. TB5/USB4v2 would be amazing but highly doubt it would make it so USB4 I guess.



And…imma say this nicely as I possibly can, but be compatible with Steam OS or talk to Valve to possibly make it compatible to bring in more sales and just for sales only. Be like Android(not the spying and selling of data and privacy side of LINUX that’s more popular ) and provide options to customers.

The less than 1-hour battery life is handicap enough. The 7840U needs at least 2-3x the battery capacity to be able to game properly, but that would make the device heavy as heck. There's no winning here, something's got to give.

And the ROG ALLY X solves that while being lighter than the Steam Deck. So the ROG ALLY X wins. Big Picture mode(and Armory Crate) mostly solves the ease of use to play games(for me at least) so we have a stopgap until A) Whatever Valve has cooking for making Steam OS available to all handhelds which yipee…I do not care only except the competition aspect of it or B) Microsoft decides to get off of their lazy ass and either make a shell of Windows for gaming(Xbox OS IS ALREADY THAT) or make Xbox OS compatible for Windows since they don’t care about consoles anymore(and again since Xbox OS is a Windows 10 Shell).

 

[hummus]

Where are the other reviews for gaming handhelds? I like this format...

 

[MCJAxolotl7]

If I just don’t want a Steam Deck(so any handheld) but for some reason I have a RAGING HAR…I mean “requirement” for the trackpad…sure this is an option. Lovely OLED and 120hz screen, sad that’s it a 7 inch screen and not 8, although it’s a 16:9 which will always be a plus in my books and priority over other handhelds. Nice that it has a m.2280(unlike a Steam Deck AND MSI CLAW with its 2230) but a massive dealbreaker of a battery.



Awesome performance especially at 15watts(better than the Steam Deck) but tad slow RAM Speed and unacceptable amount of VRAM. 24GB at the minimum and 32GB NEEDS to be the standard for handheld from now on. Awesome it has 2 USB4 ports as well as amazing triggers for racing games(my fav genre of games lol). For $799, I would chose the ROG ALLY X still because it’s has most of the things that the Zotac is missing and it has better availability and support. Plus, since the new Z2 chips comes out soon, the ROG ALLY X will be cheaper.



Next gen update(or refresh) for the device: get rid of the useless, dumbass, trackpads(or provide a stylus) and replace them with better, high quality, front facing speakers(and use those downward facing speakers as subwoofers), 80+whr battery is the standard now(I need you to get with the program Gabe…), 24GB of VRAM is standard now so no more 16GB, 8 inch screen but keep that OLED AND 120hz(or bump it to 144hz) and add VRR. TB5/USB4v2 would be amazing but highly doubt it would make it so USB4 I guess.



And…imma say this nicely as I possibly can, but be compatible with Steam OS or talk to Valve to possibly make it compatible to bring in more sales and just for sales only. Be like Android(not the spying and selling of data and privacy side of LINUX that’s more popular ) and provide options to customers.


And the ROG ALLY X solves that while being lighter than the Steam Deck. So the ROG ALLY X wins. Big Picture mode(and Armory Crate) mostly solves the ease of use to play games(for me at least) so we have a stopgap until A) Whatever Valve has cooking for making Steam OS available to all handhelds which yipee…I do not care only except the competition aspect of it or B) Microsoft decides to get off of their lazy ass and either make a shell of Windows for gaming(Xbox OS IS ALREADY THAT) or make Xbox OS compatible for Windows since they don’t care about consoles anymore(and again since Xbox OS is a Windows 10 Shell).

Why 16:9? Over what other Aspect Ratio? And, most of those things are unreasonable. Most people don't have 32gbs of RAM or 24gbs of vram on their desktop, let alone a handheld

 

[BSim500]

Most people don't have 32gbs of RAM or 24gbs of vram on their desktop, let alone a handheld

You can get away with 16GB RAM on a desktop with plenty of games when you have a dGPU that has its own VRAM pool. With APU's though, only 16GB RAM = if you fire up a game that uses 8GB VRAM, you've only got 8GB RAM left to be shared between Windows, NVMe Host Memory Buffer, system file cache, game utilities (eg, MSI Afterburner, AntiMicroX), whatever OEM bloatware the device comes with, the game client / launcher and after all that, there's barely 4-6GB RAM leftover for the actual game itself. 24GB would probably be a better minimum these days if the device is supposed to last +5 years.

 

[AusWolf]

You can get away with 16GB RAM on a desktop with plenty of games when you have a dGPU that has its own VRAM pool. With APU's though, only 16GB RAM = if you fire up a game that uses 8GB VRAM, you've only got 8GB RAM left to be shared between Windows, NVMe Host Memory Buffer, system file cache, game utilities (eg, MSI Afterburner, AntiMicroX), whatever OEM bloatware the device comes with, the game client / launcher and after all that, there's barely 4-6GB RAM leftover for the actual game itself. 24GB would probably be a better minimum these days if the device is supposed to last +5 years.

You still shouldn't play games that need more (V)RAM on a handheld because even the APU and/or battery isn't enough to handle those.

 

[HOkay]

You still shouldn't play games that need more (V)RAM on a handheld because even the APU and/or battery isn't enough to handle those.

I guess you've never owned one then? Whilst they can't hit high frame rates at high resolutions in the latest AAA games, you can usually get away with 720p/800p Low or even Medium on even the most demanding games. The RAM limitations are real, there's a few games where I'm hitting that limit & getting stutters which seems to be due to that only. I can't say for sure without testing more RAM ofc.