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Zotac ready with Steam Deck competitor

zotac-zone-gaming-handheld
Translate from : Zotac klar med Steam Deck konkurrent
The market for handheld gaming is growing and this means that more manufacturers are joining the scene to get a piece of the pie. One of the latest offers is Zotac, which is ready with their Zone, which in many ways resembles the Steam Deck.
By Kenneth Johansen
5 jun. 2024 09:11 am
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ZOTAC, better known for its high-end graphics cards and Mini-PCs, is now entering the market for handheld gaming devices. It will be a few months before gamers get their hands on the ZONE, the company's first handheld device.

The new handheld is officially announced with a Ryzen 7 8840U APU (Hawk Point), which is an 8-core Zen4 processor with 12 RDNA3 Compute Units. ZOTAC has not confirmed what TDP the device will run at, but sources in the market have revealed that the standard TDP is 15W and the maximum is 28W.

Zotac Zone.jpg

The new handheld has a 7-inch AMOLED screen and a 120Hz refresh rate. It is now confirmed to be a native portrait display, which some gamers don't like due to the lack of support in Windows and games for this type of panel. Some say it only affects a small number of monitors and gamers, but during tests of handheld devices, reviewers and users have often encountered issues with games being displayed in the wrong orientation. It's definitely something to be aware of. It has also been revealed that the handheld does not have VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) support as it uses a MIPI display.

Zotac Zone handheld gaming.jpg

The handheld is also quite large, officially measuring 31.0 × 13.5 × 4.0 cm, which is larger than the Steam Deck. The screen is only 7 inches, but it has a relatively large bezel. The handheld is even larger than the new ROG Ally X, which has a 64% larger battery.

According to reports, ZOTAC plans to launch its gaming handheld in September, with a price largely confirmed to be around $800 USD/EUR (Geeknetic reports). This is a high price for a device that won't even have the latest APU at that time (Ryzen AI 300 will be released at that time). It looks like ZOTAC is making the same mistake as MSI with the Claw handheld, pricing their device at a premium when there are better alternatives.

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