Asus is kicking 2024 off with a ROG keynote. That means it’s time for gaming laptops, monitors, and much more. You can watch Asus’ keynote below, starting at 3PM PT / 6PM ET / 11PM GMT. Stay tuned to The Verge for all the announcements from Asus at CES.
Asus’ ROG phones are about gaming, never really about cameras. But now Asus just released a shadowy teaser pic of its new ROG Phone 8, and it’s got a thick camera plateau that I can’t imagine is comfortable to hold horizontally for playing.
Judging by what’s visible, it looks like it might be a bit more subdued in its design compared to the loud and fun previous models.
It started as an April Fool’s tease, but the very real handheld gaming PC is now six months old. Along with gyro controls, a new Armoury Crate update is adding a new Feedback Hub, the ability to turn CPU Boost off, new AMD Advanced Graphics Options, and direct sharing of images and video to Discord and TikTok.
Windows Central highlights this Asus video tracking everything added since launch (we revisited our review over the summer), or you can read the changelog here.
The new Razer BlackWidow V4 75% and Asus ROG Azoth play to traditional gaming strengths, while feeling and sounding significantly nicer to type on.
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Google’s midrange ‘Chromebook Plus’ cohort is off to an excellent start.
First shown at Computex in May, the ROG Matrix Platinum comes with the “industry’s first” liquid metal thermal material on the GPU’s die, which should allow for cooler temperatures and better performance when compared to using thermal paste.
It also comes with a pretty sleek design that creates a sort of lighted frame around the card. As you might’ve imagined, this GPU doesn’t come cheap — it costs $3,199.99.
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It’s not quite as powerful as the gargantuan Strix Scar X3D, but it’s also not quite as expensive.
Asus says that the rumors it would discontinue the Zenfone series aren’t true. The company put out a statement in response to a report from TechNews Taiwan indicating that the Zenfone 10 would be the last device in the series. Not so, says Asus — the Zenfone and gaming-focused ROG lines are alive and well, according to its statement. That’s a little bit of good news for all my fellow small-phone-fans.
[ASUS Pressroom]
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AMD proclaimed that its Ryzen 9 7945HX3D would be the world’s fastest mobile gaming chip. It was right.
Asus’s 14-inch powerhouse is currently our top pick for best gaming laptop, and all kinds of different of models are currently on sale for Prime Day.
Here’s an all-AMD configuration (with a Radeon RX 6800S) currently listed at $1,199.99, $700 down from its original price of $1,899.99. This RTX 3060 SKU is down to $799.
A note from Asus in late June mentioned issues with failing SD cards and said a future update would boost fan speed as a precaution. Now that update is here, labeled BIOS 322. It raises the fan curve when using it in Turbo mode, both on battery power and plugged in (via Windows Central).
Our updated review of the ROG Ally showed that, like the Steam Deck before it, software updates could go a long way to improving the handheld PC gaming experience.
If you’re relying on the original May reviews of the ROG Ally for your purchasing decision, you should know that those reviewers didn’t get final hardware and software. I’m still seeing lower performance today with my retail unit than I did with my original review unit, despite Asus’ new statement and AMD’s graphic driver hotfix.
Could be a bad unit. But I’m not the only one who saw the dip.
We’re about to see one in the wild. Asus has launched its Chromebook CM34 Flip, one of the first models that will include AMD’s new Ryzen 7020 C-Series processors (which are basically the same chips that AMD released for budget laptops last September, but nevertheless).
The CM34 has Wi-Fi 6, a 16:10 screen, a full-sized backlit keyboard, a physical webcam cover, and a starting price of $499. Asus is claiming 13 hours of battery life, rather than 17, so there’s that.
This is the Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 on display at Computex, and it’s the world’s first quad-band Wi-Fi 7 gaming router, boosting speeds of up to 25,000Mbps. It is also the largest and scariest-looking router I have ever seen in my life.
(Asus representatives confirmed to me that there is no technical reason it needs to look like a giant RGB spider. That was just a design choice.)
As the Computex 2023 show gets rolling, WCCF Tech highlights this “Megalodon” Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU and motherboard combo. It ditches the troublesome power cables found on today’s massive GPUs for a new slot that sits next to the standard PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 connection and delivers up to 600W of power, similar to the MPX Module in Apple’s Mac Pro.
Asus plans to release this tech globally later this year, and said devices with it will cost slightly more than the regular SKUs.
If you’re looking for a Windows-based alternative to Apple’s MacBook Air, the Zenbook S 13 is what you want. It’s even thinner and lighter than last year’s version, too.
Asus’ upcoming ROG Ally handheld gaming PC is powered by AMD’s new Z1 Extreme chip. It’s powerful and can deliver 8.6 teraflops of performance, which is closer to a PS5 (10.28 teraflops) than the Steam Deck (1.6 teraflops). But what about the price? In an interview with PC Gamer, Asus says the ROG Ally will be “below $1,000.” We’ll know a lot more on May 11th, but check out our hands-on until then.
After an odd April Fools’ Day tease, Asus confirmed the ROG Ally is coming out someday. Dave2D got hands-on time with a prototype and reports it will be a global release, but with no word on the battery or price.
But the most important element is the custom-designed AMD Ryzen APU inside, which is a major strength of Valve’s Steam Deck that other portable PC gaming machines haven’t been able to match until now.
Asus’s ROG Flow Z13, a collaboration with Acronym, has hit shelves, and I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Just take a look for yourself.
Bett UK, one of the world’s biggest EdTech conferences, begins tomorrow, and you can expect all kinds of announcements related to students, student laptops, student gadgets, and student everything.
Asus is kicking us off with a new BR1402 series — rugged student laptops with replacable mainboards, webcam shutters, AI-powered noise cancelation, and military-grade certification. Because who doesn’t want to bring their 2-in-1 laptop to war?
