This one-two punch of a convertible 13-inch gaming notebook and its super-compact ”XG Mobile” external graphics box is all about portability paired with power. Asus gave us a detailed tour of this unique duo.
Read more about it right here!
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[Music] Like most things this year Ces 2021 is all virtual happening in People’s homes Around the globe but that doesn’t mean That there isn’t a ton Of cool new tech to check out including A really snazzy new Thin light gaming laptop from asus that Has an external graphics card I’m tom brandt from pc mag in america And with me is sasha crone from asus In taiwan here to tell us all about this Sasha take it away all right so yeah i Got it right here in front of me the x13 Is really taking things to a whole new Level when it comes to gaming laptops It’s only a 13-inch laptop so it’s super Small and compact It’s only 1.3 kilos has really long Battery life And really powerful components as well So it’s really you know taking gaming Laptops to a smaller more compact form Factor than ever So this is a 13 inch screen size right Correct and it’s a 16 by 10 display so We try to still make the display as Big as possible in this 13 inch form Factor So you see that bezel-wise it’s as slim As possible And what’s interesting about it is you Have two options you have either full hd
120 hertz or 4k 60 hertz and they’re both touch Display So now when you are gaming on the on the X13 you have the option of using it as a Regular laptop Or you can also i understand have an Optional egpu Uh that plugs into it tell us a little Bit more about that Correct so the idea is it’s basically a Two-in-one solution you can either get The extra team by itself or you can get It bundled together With our external graphics adapter we Call it the xg mobile Um and the xg mobile is really a whole New thing in itself Um and takes the extra team to another Step To another level because it makes the X13 as powerful as a desktop replacement Laptop so those are like the really big Chunky 15-inch or usually 17-inch Laptops that have really high power Uh components in them because in this One we have well we can’t really Tell you about the detailed specs but It’s the next generation Top of the line nvidia mobile gpu the Fastest one The top one and it’s configured to the Highest wattage as well so you’re really Getting
A whole lot of performance in this one And what’s really cool about it is You can see i’m holding it in my hand Right now it’s incredibly small and Compact It’s only one kilo in weight and just to Give you an idea um A regular 280 watt laptop adapter gaming Laptop adapter is around 800 grams And it’s not much smaller than this one So it’s barely Bigger and heavier than a 280 watt Gaming laptop adapter And this one has a 280 watt adapter Built in Plus that top of the line mobile gpu and It has Io hub with a ton of different i o ports As well That you can plug into the laptop so you Can actually plug this in and basically This is the only thing that you will Need to plug into the laptop it delivers The power You can plug peripherals into it is that Correct Right so you have two monitor ports you Have gigabit lan Internet you have a high speed sd card Reader and four usb ports And all of that you can plug into the Laptop and then powers and charge the Laptop And yeah you can connect all the i o at
The same time so One of the things that um one of the Things that we’ve seen from other External gpus that connect via Thunderbolt 3 Is that sometimes they don’t work very Well you need both the hardware to work Properly and you need The games to make sure that they Recognize it um what have you guys done To kind of You know have you have you worked out Those problems or is How is this going to work better yeah That’s a very good point and i mean That’s essentially why we created our Own External graphics standard for this our Own connector Um we wanted to go direct pci express so Essentially what we’re doing is we have Eight pci express lanes conventional External graphics solutions use only Four lanes And we go direct pci express connect the Gpu to the cpu So for the system it’s essentially as if This gpu is inside The laptop itself it’s recognized as if It was a part of the laptop itself so You don’t need to fuss around with Different drivers and And you know tweak around different Settings make sure it works properly and
You also get the full performance So besides being eight piece express Lanes versus usually four It doesn’t have to translate from one Protocol to another like pc express to Thunderbolt and thunderbolt back to pci Express That actually gives you a big Performance a lot so you lose a lot of Performance going that way You go direct pc express like us you Don’t have any of that overhead so you Get much more bandwidth So with a conventional solution what Most people don’t know they think oh i Just buy a desktop graphics card Put it in this little box and plug it Into my laptop and boom i got Full performance in reality what happens Is you get like one tier Sometimes two-tier lower performance Graphics wise Which is quite disappointing and then The more you use all the extra i o The more performance you lose on top of That because it’s all Shared all the bandwidth is shared for Our solution we keep it separate so There’s eight Pci express lanes for the gpu only and We have a separate usb type c Port for all the i o so let’s go ahead And check out that um That that port if you can and then talk
About some of the other physical Features on the laptop itself can you Can you show us those Right so here on the side i don’t know If it’s in focus right now i Set it up earlier so it should be in Focus you can see the port right here And i got the connector of the xg mobile Right here so that should be in focus Now as well and as you can see Um the connector is pretty cool because It uses a standard Usb type-c port and that’s intentional So we could have actually made the Connector Much smaller if we had combined Everything together but we didn’t want To do that We wanted to have this standard usb type C port why Well here you can see it actually has a Standard usb port Built into this egbu connector and that Means you can still use this part of the Port Even when you don’t have the xq mobile With you so let’s say the whole point of This is i don’t have to take this with Me all the time i only take it when i Really need the performance on the go or Wherever i’m going Um so when i don’t have it with me i can Still use this port to power the laptop Charge the laptop connect external
Monitors and usb peripherals and all of This At the same time so that’s a really cool Universal port And like i said we bundle this together Or you can get the x13 by itself And in that case you can still use that Type c port for all of this Functionality on top So when you’re not using with egpu give Us a quick overview of the components Inside the laptop itself And uh you know how’s the keyboard Things like that So yeah um the keyboard is a very good Thing to talk about because It’s uh probably the best keyboard You’ll find in any 13-inch laptop It’s the same keyboard it’s slightly Smaller than the g14 keyboard but it’s Essentially the same keyboard With a very generous 1.7 millimeters of Key travel So in a 14-inch laptop you know in 2020 And the g14 that was a very nice Keyboard already Bringing this to a 13-inch laptop is Really uh you know like i said there’s Nothing like this on the market so Anybody who is really into keyboards and This is the only 13-inch laptop with a Really awesome keyboard And then component wise we have a really High-end
Next-generation mobile amd cpu in here And we have when we’re launching it now A 1650 gpu in here Which is actually good enough to play Most games in Full hd resolution not at ultra settings But you can play pretty much anything Maybe except for cyberpunk 2077 you can Pretty much Game at full hd uh anything you want So we’re looking forward to checking out The rog Flow x13 which which comes with an Optional uh egpu which is called what Sasha I forgot the xg mobile so we have our Desktop graphics Uh external adapter um the xg2 The xg1 the xg2 and we also have our xg Mobile now So the xg mobile works with the new rog Flow x13 which is a Super thin and light gaming laptop with A 13 13-inch display Launching at ces we’re very much looking Forward to checking that out in more Detail once we get it in for review So uh stay tuned and thanks very much For watching You
