Zotac has showcased its upcoming Zone Pro gaming handheld running on Manjaro Linux. Taking inspiration from its predecessor, the Zone (non-Pro), it once more features a layout somewhat resembling the beloved Steam Deck, but this time housing more powerful hardware to boost performance. The Zone Pro doesn’t aim for top-of-the-line specs, it opts for a reasonable compromise between performance, playtime, and hopefully, price.
The Zotac Zone Pro measures 310mm x 135mm x 40mm and weighs 692g. It houses a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor rocking four Zen 5 plus eight Zen 5c cores for a total of 12, clocked up to 5.1GHz. The graphics side is covered by the integrated Radeon 890M GPU, featuring 16 RDNA 3.5 compute units clocked up to 2.9GHz. As for memory, Zotac opts for 32GB LPDDR5X-7500, which should suffice for most, if not all, tasks and games. Lastly, storage is managed by a 1TB Gen 4 NVMe SSD. To put it simply, this chip is very similar to the Ryzen Z2 Extreme powering the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld, mainly rocking a stronger CPU and more RAM.
One of the Zone Pro’s strong aspects will surely be its 7in FHD AMOLED display, which should offer great and smooth visuals thanks to its deep blacks and higher 120Hz refresh rate. Zotac claims that it can get quite bright too, reaching up to 800nits, making it usable outside even when the sun is shining. Talking of which, based on its specs and the built-in 48.5Wh battery, you can expect about an hour or two of untethered playtime, which is about what many competitors target. At least Manjaro Linux shouldn’t drain a lot of power, as it is said to be more efficient than Windows 11.
Regarding design and controls, the Zone Pro boasts Hall-Effect sticks and shoulder buttons alongside two trackpads, back buttons, and a 6-axis gyroscope – in other words, all you need to play old and modern games. You can even play strategy titles, which is not a given on some competitors’ machines due to their lack of touchpads. That said, this design may change a bit in the final release version set to launch around October.
Moving to connectivity, you will find two USB 4 ports, a microSD card reader, one 3.5mm audio jack, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. There is even a built-in 720p webcam.
While Zotac didn’t reveal pricing, considering the non-Pro’s £499 tag, we can expect between £600 and £800 for the Zone Pro. Above that would put it uncomfortably closer to the much stronger GPD Win 5.
