Random Tech Review: ROG Flow X 13 and XG mobile eGPU

When you think of Gaming Laptops you usually think of a machine that has some substantial size to it and although a lot of the machines we look at are relatively portable there is still nothing that comes close to the hybrid styles of the ROG Flow X13.

I say hybrid because this machine is like a transformer, it’s “more than meets the eye” and has the ability to undock from an external XG Mobile eGPU device and become what you would think is a standard laptop device that surprisingly still has some grunt. 

Let’s start at the base machine,

This is a very portable machine with its ultra-slim design sporting a 13” screen on a 360 hinge making it feel more like a business device for presentations and the like. The big difference though is this one has been enhanced with the style of a typical ROG machine to give it that ultra gaming edge. 

It has to be the only gaming machine I’ve seen that would easily slip into your bag and leave room for.. Everything else. 

I’ve said it before and it proves me right every time but I just prefer it when ASUS uses Ryzen processors in their gaming machines. The ROG Flow is complete with an AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS 8-core, 16 threaded beauty, so it’s built for high performance even when it's undocked from the XG mobile GPU.

So it's powerful enough to use as a production machine and other work on, even play some games.

But then you plug it into the XG Mobile eGPU and the game literally changes.

This external graphics unit harnesses the power of a GeForce RTX™ 3080 GPU. the purpose build connection does away with the typical issues of bottleneck that you get from an external GPU and gives you up to 64 Gbps of bandwidth, with another 10Gbps reserved for USB link, allowing the external GPU to perform at its highest capacity. 

A real technical marvel.