Hong Kong PC hardware maker Zotac has an announcement coming to Computex in Taipei next week but since you’re supposed to want to hear about it, we already know what it is. The brand is bringing its very own portable PC gaming handheld to market to stand alongside the Nintendo Switch, the RoG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and… okay, maybe not the MSI Claw.
The hardware is known as the Zone but there’s little concrete information about it besides the name and a vague outline seen in teaser images. The company is happy to confirm the existence of the product but goes long on the marketing and short on the details.
Zotac of the Titans
The Zotac Zone is “a high-performance portable PC designed from the ground up with quality controls and top-end specs”, which suggests that it’s an internal development at the company. Of course, Zotac doesn’t say where it was designed from the ground up so it’s also possible that it’s a rebadged product from one of its competitors.
Thanks to @prudis06 for brightening this image up.
Looks like @ZOTAC is getting into the handheld game.
I wonder if this is just a re-badge. pic.twitter.com/5gkgnPdzPQ
— Cary Golomb (@carygolomb) May 29, 2024
If it’s a rebadge, it may be the Asus RoG Ally in a different livery. If it’s all Zotac’s own work, then all we know right now is that there’s a 7in display and dual-stage triggers included with the handheld. The brand’s own GPUs will power the hardware, of course, but we’re not sure of any specifics yet.
GPUs, Zotac’s own designs of Nvidia’s newest RTX 40-series graphics cards, are on the menu at Computex this year. So are the company’s range of external GPUs, a range of mini PCs (including the brand’s own ZBox hardware), and something called a GPU server. This last one is for “AI training and fine-tuning” and will feature between two and ten GPUS and multiple Intel Xeon processors. You know, so you can have AI at home.
Yes, also coming to Comptex 2024 from Zotac is the obligatory AI announcement. It looks unlikely that it’ll announce its own artificial intelligence companion but all announcements set for Taipei will focus on how effective its hardware is at supporting the Hot New Thing™. We expect more concrete details from the event when everything starts on 4 June.
