Zotac Zone review: Display galore with class-leading inputs

The Zone is about on par with other Windows competitors like the previously mentioned Ally X or the MSI Claw when it comes to its overall shape, size, and weight. Zotac nailed it in the ergonomics department right away, and this one is very comfortable to hold, with deep enough grips and well-laid-out controls. We especially enjoyed the chassis's rounded lower edges, which allowed for very natural hand positioning even during longer gameplay sessions. 

The Zone also comes with a small stand which is not the sturdiest but is definitely very handy if you simply want to watch something on your shiny new OLED handheld. 

The small handheld's overall feel is quite good. Of course, it's plastic all over, but it feels dense and premium enough, even though I would say the Ally X has a slight edge.
The dark grey colour might not be for everyone, but with the lighter, almost silverish accents, Zotac managed to create a unique appearance that stood apart from the mostly plain black competitors.

When it comes to I/O, the Zotac Zone features a pair of USB-C 4 ports, which offer a fair amount of flexibility for charging and connecting peripherals. Additionally, the Zone comes with a headphone jack and a microSD card reader, which is pretty standard for this class of device. 

Should you want to use the handheld as your main computing device, Zotac also sells a dock at a very reasonable price (79 Euros). This dock adds even more functionality, including an additional USB-C port, a pair of USB-As, HDMI, networking capabilities, and an NVMe slot. This makes the setup ideal for productivity and can also serve as a new home for your games library.

Zotac definitely did their homework with the inputs on the zone, not only regarding the overall quality and placement, but also considering the sheer number of options you have at your disposal.
The D-pad is amongst the best you can find on a handheld right now. With super tactile, almost mouselike clicks, it's both incredibly satisfying and precise. 

The hall-effect joysticks also feel smooth, with just the right amount of resistance for nuanced control. An additional feature is the rings around the joysticks, which act as radial inputs that can be mapped to different functions in Zotac's software. By default, these rings control display brightness, RGB intensity, or system volume, which worked all right during our testing, even though it did not feel particularly direct. 

With the triggers (also hall-effect), Zotac also added a little party trick. As a first for handhelds, you can choose between the classic analogue travel, which allows for precise control, for example, in racing games, or, with a flick of a little switch, you can change them into a sort of rapid-fire trigger mode, which is great for when you need instant inputs, in shooters or something like Black Myth: Wukong.

Again, the actuation feels almost mouselike and has the same tactile feel as the d-pad.

The Zotac Zone does include a pair of touchpads, similar to Valve's Steam Deck or Lenovo's Legion Go. These touchpads are designed to mimic mouse inputs—a feature that is a godsend for the Windows desktop or strategy games. Unfortunately, the clicks feel a bit cheap, and movement has been tough to control. But Zotac told us they are working on improvements for the final release.

We would assume Zotac opted for the relatively conservative standard setting to keep both temperatures and fan noise in check, basically trying to find the sweetspot between wattage and the resulting performance. 
But since you do get the option to tweak everything in Zotac's management application, we created three additional profiles at 10 Watt increments to see how performance scales up to the Zone's maximum 30W.

When it comes to pure CPU grunt, which is arguably not that important for a gaming handheld, Zotac's first handheld either trails behind the competition or lands somewhere in the middle between its competitors.

While we are on the subject of software, Zotac's overlay and management solution does come with everything you would expect, but it definitely lacks the polish and snappiness of Asus’ Armory Crate SE, for example, and things that are standard by now are missing, like an FPS counter or basic telemetry.
Sure, you can easily get third-party software for it, but it's not a very streamlined experience. 

The control overlay is also a bit cumbersome to use, and some inputs do not work right away, or you get kicked out of your game when adjusting settings. So, while the hardware is great, I would say Zotac still has a bit of homework to do regarding the software side of things. But to be fair, that is something all manufacturers struggled with at first, and with enough user feedback and a little bit of time, we will hopefully see some improvements here.  

That said, FSR and frame gen on AMD made quite a bit of improvements in the last few months and just as one example, while Black Myth: Wukong gets you pretty choppy framerates, rendered natively at low settings, you can easily get beyond or around 60fps with upscaling and frame generation, and its a great experience, playing on of the most demanding games you can get right now on this one, especially with the OLED.
I am also playing a lot of DIABLO IV right now to prepare for the upcoming expansion, and with FSR I was hovering just a smidge below 60fps, and again, with the gorgeous screen and super tactile inputs, this is peak handheld gaming if you ask me.