CES 2021 | Asus ROG Flow X13 ultraportable gaming laptop unveiled with an external GPU

Asus spearheads the list of innovations in mobile PC gaming. The company has been responsible for devising innovative gaming laptops, whether it's putting the components behind the screen in the ROG Mothership or offering two screens with the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15. At CES 2021, Asus has unveiled yet another innovation in laptop gaming with the Asus ROG Flow X13.

The ROG Flow X13 is being touted as an ultraportable gaming laptop that connects to an external graphics card for dramatically improving gaming performance. The ROG Flow X13 is divided into two halves, with the first featuring an ultra-slim and convertible 13-inch laptop.

The laptop half is equipped with an 8-core AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU and an Nvidia GTX 1650 GPU. It can be equipped with up to 1TB of NVMe SSD storage and up to 32GB of LPDDR4X RAM. Asus also claims that the battery can last for around 10 hours with 100W Type-C charger included in the box.

The other half of the ROG Flow X13 is an external GPU, titled ROG XG Mobile, which houses a mobile version of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. The eGPU of the ROG Flow X13 is only 6 percent of the size of traditional GPU boxes that uses desktop graphics cards. The laptop measures 15.8mm thick and weighs a meagre 2.9 pounds, while the eGPU weighs around 2.2 pounds.

The ROG Flow X13 is a convertible notebook with a 360-degree hinge that lets users flip the screen and use it in tablet orientation. The notebook sports a touchscreen with a 16:10 aspect ratio and can be configured with two panel options, including a 4K 60Hz or a Full HD 120Hz screen. Asus has also developed a custom PCIe 3.0 x8 interface that it claims is faster than Thunderbolt 3 or 4.

The external GPU box also has a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0a port to connect it to a gaming monitor. It also acts as a 280W AC adapter for the notebook and an I/O hub. The Asus ROG Flow X13 operates as an ultraportable notebook, while simultaneously operating as a versatile gaming machine. Asus is yet to reveal the price and availability of the ROG Flow X13.