Asus has unleashed its new range of Republic of Gamers (ROG) products at CES 2022, revealing some intriguing new ideas alongside updated componentry for a few of its existing gaming mainstays.
The star of the show may well be the brand-new ROG Flow Z13, an entirely new product in the company's portable, 2-in-1 gaming lineup. Unlike its Flow X13 sibling (which also saw a new iteration with updated specs), the Z13 is fully detachable from its keyboard, making it much closer in style to Microsoft's Surface Pro range.
The tablet itself is ultra thin, measuring only 12mm, and manages to cram in some rather absurd specs for its size – configurations are available with a 14-core Intel Core i9-12900H CPU and RTX 3050 Ti graphics card.
The 16:10 touchscreen arrives in two flavors, with the faster 120Hz refresh rate option offering Full HD resolution while the 4K option comes with a slower 60Hz rate. Both promise 500 nits of peak brightness.
As with the Flow X13, the Z13 is able to be paired with Asus' external GPU product, the XG Mobile, which is now capable of housing up to an RTX 3080 or the newly announced AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT.
No availability or pricing information has been revealed for any of the latest Asus products, but we dare say the Flow Z13 will be superbly expensive, especially when specced up and/or paired with the XG Mobile.
Two screens, one mortgage
The apex of Asus' ROG gaming laptop range can be found in its Zephyrus machines, with most packing specs that outclass desktop machines, and housing it all in sleek, ultrabook stylings.
The dual-screen Zephyrus Duo lineup has been given a new member in the Duo 16, which is truly an exercise in excess. It houses an AMD Ryzen 9 6980HX processor, up to 64GB RAM, 4TB of PCIe 4.0 SSD storage, and (of course) the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.
The ROG ScreenPad Plus is a touchscreen that, according to Asus, offers "extra productivity real estate, streaming gameplay, or even controlling supported games". It sits below the primary 16-inch display, tilting as you open the laptop's lid and sitting flush when closed.
Compared to its 15-inch predecessor, the Duo 16 is actually a smidge smaller, with its larger display making less of an impact due to reduced bezels. This main display comes in two options – either the new QHD, 165Hz ROG Nebula HDR panel with impressive contrast claims, or the 'Dual Spec' panel that can switch between 4K 120Hz or FHD 240Hz on a whim.
Much of Asus' other announcements are in the form of updates to its existing ROG Strix and Zephyrus products, with configurations now featuring the 12th-gen Intel Core processors, AMD's Ryzen 6000 series, the latest Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 and 3080 Ti laptop GPUs and AMD's Radeon RX 6000S series.
Some of the 2022 models feature the new Liquid Metal Conductonaut Extreme technology coupled with ROG Intelligent Cooling, which Asus claims can reduce the CPU temperatures by 15°C compared with previous thermal paste technology. No doubt this helps a great deal when trying to cram these ultra powerful components into sleek machines.
There's no doubt these fresh products and updated models from Asus are going to have a heavy price to go with them, but we'll have to wait until official pricing is announced in the coming weeks to find out exactly what the damage is.
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