The inaugural Malaysia Handheld Gamers Gathering 1.0, a community-event organized by my friend Joshua Zen, brought together handheld gamers from the region but also brought together multiple hardware in the handheld gaming space including the just-released ROG Ally X but making its public debut since COMPUTEX 2024 was the ZOTAC ZONE.
EDIT: August 20, 2024 2:00 AM Taipei/Manila time, ZOTAC just officially launched the ZONE’s pre-order availability at Gamescom 2024.
Confirmed to be a final production unit, this near-retail model could be the final form of ZOTAC’s handheld once it release in a few months. ZOTAC hasn’t made much noise on it since COMPUTEX 2024 but its been said that the demo unit in Taipei back in June was still a production prototype but was public ready.
Unlike the ROG Ally, Ally X and the Legion Go, the ZOTAC ZONE is powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840U featuring a Radeon 780M graphics processor. The ZONE’ SOC will be complimented with 16GB of DDR5 memory with final configuration for storage yet to be revealed.
ZOTAC’s implementation features some improvements over competitors including a wider kickstand and a trigger modifier as shown in the photo above. This allows switching between longer travel and faster actuation.
The unit has not changed much its public reveal. ZOTAC seems to be on-track with their target release date which should be announced this August.
