Earlier today, ASUS held its own press conference in conjunction with this year’s CES 2021. Unsurprisingly, the brand had several new gaming laptops to share with the world, but one product that certainly stood out from the crowd was the brand new ROG Flow X13 convertible gaming laptop.
Without sounding overly dramatic, the Flow X13 is the first of its kind and also genuinely surprising. Again, it’s a gaming laptop, but it’s got a slim form factor and design with a thickness of just 15.8mm and weighing in at just 1.3kg. Then, like all convertible laptops, its display has the ability to flip a full 360° and transforming either into a tablet, tent or just a laptop.
Naturally, we have to talk about the display too. It’s a 13.4-inch panel with an aspect ratio of 16:10. As for its resolution, ASUS is, unsurprisingly, offering a choice between a 120Hz Full HD display or a 60Hz 4K panel. Regardless pixel count, ASUS says that both panels are Pantone validated and touch enabled.
There’s also magic underneath the hood too. Specs-wise, the Flow X13 has the option of being fitted with one of three of AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 Mobile series CPUs: a Ryzen 7 5800HS, Ryzen 9 5900HS, or a 59080HS. ASUS is offering between 8GB and 16GB LPDDR4X RAM, running in dual-channel mode, at a frequency of 4266MHz. As for the GPU, you’re looking at an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 discrete GPU, which is undeniably weak, given the rest of the premium hardware inside the Flow X13.
That’s where the ROG XG Mobile external GPU (eGPU) enclosure comes into play. This accessory – and I use that word very loosely in this scenario – connects itself via a proprietary cable that enables PCIe 3.0 x8 speeds, and can house an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Mobile or an RTX 3080 Mobile. In addition to access to a more powerful GPU, the cable also has a built-in USB-C 3.2 Gen2 port, giving the Flow X13 access to the lovely array of I/O ports. Including 4 USB-A 3.2 Gen1, a HDMI 2.0a port, DisplayPort 1.4, an SD Card reader, one RJ45 LAN port, and a DC input jack. Oh, and keeping the eGPU enclosure powered in a 280W power adapter.
At the moment, ASUS hasn’t spoken about local availability and pricing for the ROG Flow X13 and ROG XG Mobile. However, it’s obvious that neither product is going to run cheap; it is rumoured that the products should cost around the price of a Zephyrus G14, each. But, we’ll just have to wait and see.
