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Zotac Zone review: want a faster Steam Deck OLED? It’ll cost yaThe priciest Deck rival yet, albeit one with loads of hardware tricks
The priciest Deck rival yet, albeit one with loads of hardware tricks
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Zotac are one of the bettergraphics cardmakers of thepost-EVGAera, so even as the early pangs of handheld gaming PC fatigue start to creep in, I’ve been keeping a hopeful eye on theZotac Zone. This is their take on aSteam Deckrival, or more specifically, theSteam Deck OLED, as this is the first real competitor to go for a similarly star-bright, colour-erupting AMOLED display. Cor, phwoar, and indeed, wowzers.
Much like a Zotac GPU, the Zone is chunkier than you might like but ultimately well-crafted. It successfully combines that rich screen with oodles of input features and Deck-thrashing performance, though between its high price and a downright vampiric thirst for battery juice, it’s definitely more of a specialist tool than a crowd-pleasing portable.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Building a handheld around a laptop processor like this, as opposed to a purpose-built mobile APU, can be a tricky business. MSI tried it withthe Claw, and despite an excellent product name (the Clawwwww),its Intel CPU proved so mismatched for the task that they stopped sending around review kits and quicklyannounced a reworked successor. Where games performance is concerned, however, the Zone appears to have got it right, its integrated Radeon 780M graphics pulling the best benchmark results in its class.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Even comparing the Zone’s 1080p results to those of the 800p Steam Deck, it either outpaces or practically matches the latter, and at a lowered 720p, Zotac simply has the fastest handheld of the whole bunch. Even the ROG Ally X, with its jacked-up 24GB memory supply, can’t keep up.
This extra power also enables games that can only just keep above 30fps on the Steam Deck to either run smoother on the Zone, or to remain playable with higher quality settings.Metaphor: ReFantazio, to name one, needs almost every setting on its lowest for the Deck to handle 30fps at 800fps; on the Zone, it typically stays above 35fps on Intermediate quality, despite the added strain of 1080p. This resolution is a bit too much for the demands ofHorizon Forbidden West, but at 720p, it can still keep above 30fps with a mix of Low quality and FSR 3.1 on Performance mode – or 45-60fps with frame generation enabled on top. The Steam Deck OLED needs FSR on its considerably uglier Ultra Performance setting to even have a hope of 30fps.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Sadly, the Zone isn’t so much of a performance upgrade that it will run absolutely anything. PC-brutalisers likeWarhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2and theSilent Hill 2 remakewon’t reliably meet the 30fps minimum at 720p, regardless of how much fuzzy upscaling you throw at them. Perhaps games like these are the next frontier for handhelds; the mountains that Valve arewaiting for a “generational leap"to clear. In the meantime, though, there is value in simply being able to run light and middleweight games are tangibly quicker speeds, especially when the Zone’s 120Hz refresh rates makes it easier to appreciate the enhanced slickness.
Speaking of screens, the Zone’s display isn’t just sharper and faster than the Deck OLED’s, but bolder too. If only marginally: I recorded it covering 100% of the sRGB gamut, basically meaning it can show more colours than with the 93.8% coverage of Valve’s handheld. Balancing this out is the Deck OLED’s slightly higher peak brightness, of 984cd/m2 to the Zone’s 916cd/m2, while both get the Infinity:1 contrast ratio inherent to OLED displays.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
The Deck OLED does software better in general, really. That’s not to discount how Windows will natively work with all game launchers and anti-cheat systems, a minority of which the Deck family still has trouble with, but the overall SteamOS experience remains more pleasant and painless than using Windows on a handheld. Yes, even with the extra trackpads. Those do help with clicking and scrolling, but you’re still ultimately trying to wrestle an OS built for desktop monitors into a dinky 7in device, and that’s never going to be feel as intuitive or even responsive as the totally bespoke, gamepad-tuned SteamOS.
The Zone gets a little help from Zotac’s ONE utility, which – similarly to Armory Crate on the ROG Ally – pulls in both a combined launcher for games and game platforms, and a Zone-specific set of tools, settings, and overlays. Some of it is useful, such as the easy-to-use input rebind menu, but it also offers nothing that SteamOS (or indeed, Armory Crate) does. Quite a bit less, in fact. Hit the overlay button while playing a game, and the sparseness of switches and toggles will make the SteamOS equivalent look like the Large Hadron Collider’s control room.
What’s worse are the bugs. The Zone isn’t as much of a misbehaving software safari as the ROG Ally X was at launch, but I did suffer a recurring problem where the display would simply neglect to.. display certain games. This started from launch withHorizon Zero Dawn, and inSilent Hill 2, everything worked fine until I tried swapping the resolution to 720p – for which I was punished with an unbudging black screen and some mocking menu music that confirmed the game was otherwise still running. Hopefully this can be fixed on Zotac’s end, as restarting and reinstalling graphics drivers didn’t help a jot.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
This has become a common theme with Steam Deck alternatives: they’re usually faster, and come packing a wider range of hardware features, and yet they rarely end up feeling as practical to use. That goes for battery life too, unfortunately. Unlike both the original and OLED Steam Decks, the Zone evidently doesn’t know to stretch its lifespan when running less demanding games: with the speakers and screen brightness both on 50%, I got 1h 44m out ofForza Horizon 5, 1h 49m out ofElden Ring, and 1h 47m out of Portal 2. Points for consistency, but I’d much rather take a Steam Deck OLED on a long flight, as that managed 5h 48m inPortal 2, as well as 2h 14m in the hungrier Elden Ring. The ROG Ally X can handily outlast the Zone too, scoring 2h 55m in Forza.
I don’t wish to sound like I’m boiling a handheld’s entire appeal down to solely its battery life, but these are meant to be portable machines, so we can’t really understate the importance of endurance either. And the Zone isn’t even especially good for wired use, as the bundled USB-C charging cable is so short that the only way you could play it while topping up is if your chair is right next to a power outlet. Which makes HDR an even less likely proposition, too.
You also don’t get acase, which for a package costing £850 a pop – £50 more than the ROG Ally X, and nearly £400 more than a base Steam Deck OLED – is just mean. The Zone’s chart-topping game performance and premium inputs do mean it will beat any allegations of daylight robbery, but also, uh, oof? £850 is crème de la crème money, and on software and battery life, the Zone is more like a semi-skimmed Cravendale.
Its performance and controls, on the other hand, really are top-notch, and despite some HDR woes the AMOLED panel still makes a superb screen for general purpose play. So what to make of it?
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
The Steam Deck OLED, meanwhile, is the more balanced option. It’s not that fast, no, but it is close to half the price of the Zone while being easier to use, and for far longer periods. And while that’s probably the most tepid conclusion I’ve ever written for anything, this is like the fourth “pricier than a Steam Deck but faster and fancier” handheld PC review I’ve done, and there are only so many different ways of saying that. Maybe that’s where the fatigue comes from?
