Once again, ASUS has kindly invited us to their launch event that details their new line-up of desktop and computers that will be hitting the stores soon in Singapore. The launch event, hosted at Scape Singapore, has given us a peek at the pricing and specific model details that will be launching for the Southeast Asian market.

From the event, we were able to try out the many different sets of laptops that they have on display including the very impressive second-generation ASUS ROG Mothership that features an interesting hybrid all-in-one design in a laptop form factor complete with a detachable keyboard.

Some units were also set up to run high fidelity games such as Metro: Exodus and Battlefield V; Unfortunately, none of their machines are running any benchmarking tools that would allow us to take a look at their performance figures.

Below we will detail the pricing, availability and model that we got to try out during the event.

Pricing and availability

Since some product ranges will vary from SKU to SKU, we will only provide the latest confirmed pricing based on either the slides shown or the product description on display.All product line-ups are set to launch here by the end of next month with the following specs and prices:

Note: all prices reflected are inclusive of GST and are shown in SGD

Laptop ASUS ROG Mothership GZ700 ASUS GX 502 GW ASUS GX502 GV
CPU I9-9980HK I7-9750H I7-9750H
GPU RTX 2080 RTX 2070 RTX 2060
Memory 64 Gb 16Gb 16Gb
Storage 3x 512Gb M.2 1Tb M.2 SSD 1Tb M.2 SSD
Display 17.3” UHD 4k IPS Display 15.6” 144Hz IPS HD Display 15.6” 144Hz IPS HD Display
Pricing $9,999 $3,998 $3,398
Availability June 2019 June 2019 June 2019
Laptop ASUS GL 531 ASUS GX 731GU
CPU I7- 9750H I7-9750H
GPU RTX 2070 RTX 1660Ti
Memory 16Gb 16Gb
Storage 1Tb M.2 SSD 1Tb M.2 SSD
Display 15.6” HD 240Hz Display 17.3” HD IPS Display
Pricing $ 3,598 $2,298
Availability June 2019 June 2019

Laptops

ROG Mothership

The highlight of the presentation was definitely the ROG Mothership, Asus is one of the few hardware OEMs who has the financial resources and ability to manufacture top-of-the-line products that let their product engineers build something without any concerns for the cost-to-consumer side of things. The ROG Mothership is definitely one of those products.

Retailing at $9,999 SGD, this hybrid design laptop is certainly something that is very niche to market. Featuring an RTX 2080 with a desktop Intel CPU, this is a Desktop-replacement class of laptop that is certain to impress. Due to the standing design of the chassis, nearly the entire housing of the laptop is used for ventilation for the 8 beefy heatpipe design of the cooling.

The laptop comes with a detachable magnetic keyboard that is designed to allow the extra space to be used for a full-sized keyboard if the user desires. Due to the nature of the design, the keyboard is also a tad bit raised much like a regular desktop keyboard would be; though I think that they should include another keyboard with a more traditional layout closer to the center of the deck.

Expect this to be only available in limited quantities so don’t be surprised if this model sells out soon, despite the price.

GX531

Next up we have the affordable series of laptops. Starting off the batch we have the ASUS GX531 that I initially thought was the prime candidate for replacing my current Clevo driver with a thin and light chassis. Turns out, the chassis design was more akin to a traditional form factor that we see with the GL531 (Scar III) with some design aspects taken from the Zephyrus series of laptops.

The lid and top portion of the laptop now resembles the Zephyrus GX531GX that we reviewed; a forward-mounted design with front-firing speakers hidden in the front of the chassis. The bottom design and weight however, is still more akin to something you would see for a traditional gaming laptop.

The model on display features a 10-keyless keyboard with some dedicated function and macro key on the right side; a bit of an awkward placement in my opinion but this should be a subjective thing.

Although, we do indeed see the dedicated MUX switch as advertised earlier in their press release in a mid-range laptop; props to ASUS in providing a handy feature that is mostly seen in High-end models and desktop replacements in a mid-range setup.

GL531 (Scar III)

The Asus GL531 can be considered as the higher-end revision of the GX531, featuring a more powerful configuration in addition to one neat feature; the keystone lock. It is basically a hardware key that allows users to encrypt data on a drive via a key that can be pulled from the right side of the chassis. While we were unable to test this functionality in the show, it is safe to assume that it works like it says in the tin.

While most do not need something like this, it is a neat little feature that ASUS can consider to put in their Zenbook design instead as I’m sure business users will appreciate the additional physical security when using it as their office machine.

GX502

The Zephyrus S GX502 was actually the chassis I hoped that the GX531 would be shipped in; a proper keyboard placement for better ergonomics complete with the good cooling solution of the Zephyrus brand of products all packed neatly in their sleekly designed thin and light chassis.

While ASUS engineers seem to agree with my own intuition that the cooling would be worse than the GX531GX by only including up to till RTX 2070 in this chassis, it should still be enough to drive modern games comfortably which I think is a small price to pay as the sacrifices in raw horsepower is well worth it.

Desktops

In other slightly-less-exiciting news, we also got to check out the new desktop line-ups that features a mATX form factor complete with, of course, ROG branded motherboards and GPUs.

The details can be seen below:

Desktop GL12GX
CPU I9-9900K
GPU RTX 2080Ti
Memory 32Gb
Storage 2Tb HDD + 512Gb SSD
Pricing $4,698
Warranty 3 Year International
Availability End-May 2019

Insights

No ASUS Zephyrus C for the SEA market

Coincidentally, I had the chance to speak to the product manager of ASUS Singapore while enquiring about their products and he had confirmed with me some new info about product availability for the SEA market.

Unfortunately for us, it looks like the very affordable model of the ASUS Zephyrus C is not going to be launched here; The Zephyrus C features a Ryzen 3000 series mobile CPU that is backed up by the affordable mid-range 1660ti which actually looks to be a killer combination in terms of price to performance all in a “thin and light” form factor of the Zephyrus models.

Chia is the horse-author from the far flung year of 2153. While not grazing on grass pastures or reviewing old time-y games and technology from the early 21st century pretending to not know what comes next (as to not disturb the space-time continuum), he can be seen exchanging vast quantities of Earth currency for parts needed to fix his damaged space ship.