ASUS Republic of Gamers has been teasing us as early as last month of what they’re going to do for 2019. Honestly, I didn’t expect for them to announce anything spectacular in CES 2019, but boy I am so glad to be wrong about it. The announcement of ROG products in CES made me excited not only about the event, but what these gaming machines will offer for us this year. One of the exciting announcements made during the event is the ROG Mothership GZ700, the first gaming machine of its kind.
The trend in gaming laptops in recent years is to make it as slim and light. ASUS ROG was able to make that happen with their Zephyrus line lead by the GX501, Zephyrus M GM501, and most recently the Zephyrus S which is currently the world’s slimmest gaming laptop (and my current laptop of choice!) With the ROG Mothership GZ700, they want something better for a gaming desktop replacement.
The way I see it, there are a lot of benefits of the ROG Mothership GZ700’s 2-in-1 design. First is the airflow. Laptops have less or no airflow whenever it is placed on a table. The Mothership instead stands tall giving it all the airflow it can get. Just like Microsoft’s Surface Pro, it has a kickstand, but unlike the Surface Pro the Mothership automatically opens the kickstand whenever it is being used. Awesome!
The keyboard reminiscent of the Zephyrus line can be detached to give you flexibility to work or game with the Mothership from a certain distance. Also, detaching the keyboard will reveal a soundbar beneath the display.
The ROG Mothership GZ700 comes with a 17.3″ Full HD Display with 144 Mhz refresh rate and 3ms response time. It is powered by an Intel Core i9 processor with the latest RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU. I am still unsure whether it will eventually support Pen input and there was no information provided about its pricing and availability. Nevertheless, this is really an exciting development and I can’t wait to see it in person, hopefully during COMPUTEX 2019.
