Zotac Zone Dock

Zotac offers an official dock you can buy for the Zone (MSRP of €79), which features the usual assortment of handheld PC dock features such as an Ethernet port, HDMI port for a secondary monitor, multiple USB-A and USB-C ports for connecting peripherals and a power source. You're also getting an M.2 SSD slot, a nice bonus not found on many handheld PC docks.

Packaging and Contents

The dock is packed inside a regular-looking box you can open by lifting the two flaps keeping it closed and then simply lifting the top cover. The dock specs, along with a detailed listing of the included ports, can be found at the bottom of the box, with the sides promoting the most important features, such as the M.2 SSD slot, Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports.


Lifting the top lid reveals a foam insert that houses and protects the dock. Below it is a carrying pouch packed inside a plastic bag, along with a bunch of thermal pads for the M.2 SSD, two silicone pegs for securing the SSD in the M.2 slot, and a user manual.

Closer Look

The official dock is mostly made of metal, with the only plastic part being the topside along with the adjustable top cover that provides support for the Zone while docked.


Ports are located on each side of the dock, notwithstanding the front, and the M.2 slot can be accessed by unscrewing the single Phillips-head screw that keeps the bottom lid secure.


Design-wise, the dock follows the gentle curve design philosophy of the Zone as well as the ash-like color choice, with only the cream-colored top cover, used to support the handheld when docked, departing from the gray color flavor.

Ports found on the dock include one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, One USB-A 3.0, one HDMI, a gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port, and a USB-C power input. Overall, not bad but we'd also like to see a couple of USB-A 2.0 ports for connecting the mouse and the keyboard.

Most of the body is made of metal aside from the top, which is plastic. The build quality is generally pretty solid, but we don't like that the cable used to connect to the Zone isn't detachable.

During our testing, the dock worked rather well, but it did manage to somehow disable Wi-Fi a couple of times a few minutes after we connected the Zone to it. Regarding power, we experienced no problems using the first-party charger with the dock. The Zone had no issues running at the 30 W power profile while gradually charging, with the entire setup consuming about 65 W. Wired internet via Ethernet worked exceptionally well, reaching well over 400 Mbit/s, which is in line with what we're getting on our desktop PC.

When we hooked the dock to our 3440x1440 monitor, we ran it at its native resolution but only at 60 Hz. The 100 Hz refresh rate option was listed, but activating it would always lead to a black screen, so it looks like that 3440x1440 at 100 Hz is too much bandwidth for the official dock. In fact, selecting 100 Hz refresh rate would lead to black screen no matter which resolution we used, which is unfortunate. The issue wasn't with the HDMI cable used, since the cable delivered a 3440x1440 at 100 Hz video signal to the monitor when connected to our desktop PC.

M.2 Slot Performance

CrystalDiskMark, Default Settings, 500 GB Samsung 980 Pro SSD.



The dock's M.2 slot performance numbers (we used a Samsung 980 Pro 500 GB SSD for testing) are fine since the total bandwidth coming to the Zone when docked should be 10 Gb/s. 1,000 MB/s should be plenty fast for gaming and accessing files stored on the external SSD, making the M.2 slot quite handy, especially because the Zone only has 512 GB of internal storage.

In general, the official Zotac Zone dock has solid build quality and works fine; its M.2 slot allows you to easily expand storage with an SSD, with the only major ding being the fact that the cable used to connect to the console is not detachable, which may lead to connection stability issues further down the line.