ASUS puts portability, power and design at heart of new range

TUF Gaming A15/17 and A17/F15

ROG Zephyrus G14

• Taiwanese tech giant unveils lightest, most powerful, and seamlessly designed products to drive growth in the new decade 

By Uditha Jayasinghe in Taipei 

ASUS is betting high on innovation with their latest range featuring the lightest laptops, and the best designed gaming computers to conquer markets in the coming decade. 

The company previewed its latest PC and gaming products at its headquarters in Taipei in January, which was the first time ASUS combined recently-announced products that included the world’s most compact and powerful business and gaming laptops, as well as desktop PCs ahead of their country launches.

The products were broadly divided into three categories, those that were designed with the demanding, often mobile professional in mind, the dedicated gamer or graphic designer and the individualistic teenager who wants to make a mark on what they own.     

ASUS ExpertBook B9450

“The ExpertBook B9450 is the world’s lightest 14-inch business notebook, while the flagship of the ProArt Studiobook series is the 15-inch ProArt StudioBook One that is the first, and to date, only laptop powered by NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 graphics. It also comes with Alexa, a great sound system and is durable,” said APAC – Business Technical Marketing Senior Manager Andrew Chan. 

As with all ASUS products extensive consumer studies were done to understand what users wanted in the highly completive PC world. This laptop skipped on a touch screen but would still give an iPad a good run for its money simply based on lightness and user experience. With a thickness of just 14.8 mm the laptop has an aspirational touch to it. 

The other StudioBook displayed was the 17-inch ProArt StudioBook Pro X – the first Quadro laptop with a four-sided NanoEdge display, Quadro RTX 5000 graphics and 9th Generation Intel Xeon or Core i7 processors. Lastly, ASUS also previewed the ProArt Station D940MX small-form-factor desktop workstation that packs an Intel Core i9-9900K paired with either an NVidia Quadro RTX 4000 or RTX 2080Ti GPU. 

Most gamers will find their jaws dropping at the new ROG Gaming Laptops and PCs. ASUS’ insistence on keeping their design in house really comes to the forefront here. Highlights of the event included the ROG Zephyrus G14, the most compact and powerful 14-inch gaming PC in the world. This laptop bears a refreshing new minimalist industrial design and has variants that feature a customisable LED matrix panel on the lid. Also introduced was the new generation of ASUS’ bestselling TUF series of mainstream gaming laptops, the TUF Gaming A15 and A17, which offer new industrial designs and other user-friendly features. Finally for ROG, new desktops were also unveiled. These were the ROG Strix GA35 and GA15 with multi-chamber design for better ventilation and cooling. 

The cases comes with an EMI-shielded glass panels that let you look inside to see the powerful components illuminated by RGB lighting. Customisable lighting also cuts across the front of the chassis with an evenly diffused glow. The design is so cohesive that the entire unit including headphones can create an ambience chosen by the user, which can be regulated from a mobile app as well.  

But the real jaw dropper of the entire event could have well been the ROG Zephyrus G14, which is billed as the world’s most compact and powerful 14-inch gaming laptop and also the first Zephyrus with that display size. 

Featuring a chassis that is under 20 mm thin, the Zephyrus G14 has carefully customised cooling that brings out the best of its new AMD Ryzen 4000 Series Mobile Processors built on the ground-breaking ‘Zen 2’ core architecture combined with industry leading 7 mm process technology and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU. 

Users can optimise for gaming or creative pursuits with a choice between high refresh and high resolution displays, both with PANTONE Validated colours and adaptive sync technology. It also offers over 10 hours of battery life and the ability to charge from compatible Type-C power packs, making the G14 extra portable.

Even people who are not gamers will be drawn to the new clean and professional industrial design with White or Eclipse Gray colour options. Undoubtedly the variants with the optional AniMe Matrix display enables users to show custom graphics, animations, and other effects across over a thousand mini LEDs embedded in the lid effective cooling. This could be something as simple as the owner’s name or something more complex and creative, ASUS officials told the Daily FT.   

ROG Strix GA35/GT35 and GA15/GT15

“Widened vents in the exterior panels guide more air into the chassis, assisting in heat dissipation and allowing the desktops to produce stealthy noise levels under 35 dB even while playing the most demanding games.” 

“The new VivoBook series, namely VivoBook S333, S433 and S533, introduced new colours such as green that are not typical in the laptop world. These products are targeted at young users, typically high school students or university goers that want to integrate their laptops into their individual styles,” Chan added. 

The laptops even come with sticker packs that partner the youthful outlook of the VivoBook. “Around the world young people are taking the lead. Whether it is talking about climate change or starting new social projects young people want to make their mark on the world and they do not want to wait to do it. This is the spirit that the VivoBook enhances.”   

TUF Gaming A15/17 and A17/F15 – The 15-inch TUF Gaming A15 and F15, along with the 17-inch A17 and F17 laptops are the latest models in ASUS’ highly successful TUF series of gaming laptops. These new laptops come in two new industrial design options: a Fortress Gray version with a sandblasted metal lid, or a Bonfire Black version with an aggressive hexagonal pattern moulded into its polycarbonate lid. 

The A15 and A17 feature latest AMD Ryzen 4000 Series Mobile Processors while the F15 and F17 use the upcoming 10th Gen Intel processors. Display options include up to 144Hz high refresh rates on 15-inch models and 120Hz on 17-inch ones; and GPUs can be configured up a GeForce RTX 2060.

Despite being smaller than their predecessors, the TUF Gaming laptops offer a bigger 90Wh battery option. When combined with their power efficient AMD and NVIDIA hardware, the TUF Gaming A15 and A17 deliver up to 8.7 hours of web browsing and 12.3 hours of video playback.

The new design of the TUF Gaming laptops makes them easy to upgrade. For easy access, the bottom is secured with standard Phillips screws, along with one special pop-open screw that helps separate the panel without a prying tool. Inside, two SO-DIMM slots can accommodate up to 32 GB of RAM. Dual M.2 slots provide an easy upgrade. 

Configurations are available with up to a 1TB NVMe SSD with lightning-fast load times and responsive all-around performance. The second slot stands ready for more solid-state storage tied to the same speedy PCI Express interface. 

A honeycomb pattern on the bottom doubles as an expansive array of intake vents for the fans and heatsinks inside, wrapping around the rear exhaust outlets to protect the heatsink fins without obstructing airflow. 

Finally, a self-cleaning cooling system directs debris into anti-dust tunnels before it can build up on fan blades and heatsink fins and reduce their effectiveness over time. Airflow moving through these channels naturally clears dust from the system, keeping the laptops performing at its best for the long haul. As with the previous TUF series, the new ones are also certified to meet MIL-STD-810H standards for vibration, short drops, and extreme temperatures and humidity.