Sure, here’s a revised version of your article:
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Alright, so here’s the thing. Zotac’s booth at Computex 2025? Total eye-catcher. They’ve got this handheld gaming device, and it’s kind of, well, interesting. Imagine a 7-inch screen with a mind-blowingly good AMOLED display, paired with AMD’s Ryzen AI HX 370 APU from the, uh, Strix Point series. Trust me, it’s not your everyday gadget. And guess what? They ditched Windows and SteamOS for Manjaro Linux. Yeah, I know, right? Bold move.
Right now, they’re calling it Zone 2. Sounds kinda futuristic. But don’t get too attached to that name; it might change. Price and when you can actually get your hands on one? Still a mystery.
Remember last year when Zotac launched the Zone 1? Yup, it was September, and it ran on AMD’s Ryzen 7 8840U. Quite the heck of a chip when it came out in December 2023. Anyway, Zotac’s pacing seems slow. Or maybe they just like to keep us waiting. This new gizmo, unofficially Zone 2, made its first appearance at CES in January. Now, here it is again at Computex. Someone from Zotac hinted it’s probably sticking with the Zone 2 name. Expected to hit stores, err, “later this year.”
The tech inside? It’s juicy. We’re talking about the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 APU with 12 cores—some Zen 5 and Zen 5c action. Add in the Radeon 890M iGPU, which has 12 CUs, whatever that really means. And there’s a 50 TOPS NPU, too. Not your average joe kind of stuff. While others stick to the Ryzen Z2 Extreme for handhelds, Zotac’s like, “Nah, let’s go big,” with their fancier option. You can get it with 24 or 32 gigs of LPDDR5x RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD you can swap out yourself.
Oh, and there’s this part where it says, “You may like.” Seriously, who knows why they put that there? Just go with it, I guess.
But back to the point—let’s focus on that crazy-beautiful 7-inch 1080p AMOLED touch screen that hits 120 Hz. The brightness tops at 800 nits, and HDR is in the game. It feels sorta Nintendo Switch-ish with a kickstand for tabletop play. Think of it as something akin to gaming fortresses with touchpads, hall-effect joysticks, dual-stage triggers, and oh yeah, a radial dial right under the joysticks.
Powered by Manjaro Linux, with KDE Plasma 6. It’s like SteamOS’s edgy cousin. Game-wise, it’ll probably use Proton, meaning it’ll hit the same bumps with anti-cheat in multiplayer. But hey, it’ll nail single-player titles without any fuss. Want something else? Just toss a different OS on it.
A hefty 48.5Wh Li-ion battery keeps it alive, about the same runtime as the Zone 1, I’d say. Connectivity-wise, there’s a UHS-II microSD slot, 3.5mm jack, multiple USB4 ports, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. Flip it over, and you’ll find two extra buttons and toggles for the triggers, all wrapped up in a mesh-designed back for cooling.
Anyway — oh, have you followed Tom’s Hardware on Google News yet? Seriously, hit that follow button for the latest tech gossip.
There, that’s the scoop. What’s next for Zotac? We’ll see, I guess.
