- Hey guys, this is Austin,
and this is one of the coolest
gaming laptops I've ever seen.
So this might not look like anything
all that special, right?
It's just like a fairly chunky, big gaming laptop,
but, if I flip it over,
eh, this one's just a little bit different.
And by little, I mean a lot different.
This is the ROG Mothership.
If you saw a video we did last year of the ROG G703,
you'll know that that was hands down
the most ridiculous overkill
gaming laptop we've ever taken a look at.
Well take a lot of what I said about that,
and put it into this form factor,
and we've got some fun stuff.
So this is a bit thinner than the G703.
What's interesting about it is
that they've really rearranged all the components.
So I flip it around, what you'll see is that
all main stuff like the CPU and the GPU,
they're all around back.
So as opposed to a normal laptop,
where you pretty much have the keyboard that's blocking it,
instead we have full airflow here as well as on the top,
and this has some serious specs.
We're talking like the Core i9 and RTX 2080,
I mean, this has got a lot of stuff
and is able to keep cool with a slightly unusual design.
There's even RGB underneath the kickstand
so that everyone can see just how cool you are.
Now I get that this is not a standard laptop form factor,
but honestly that's kind of okay, right?
I mean, you're talking about a very high-end
gaming laptop which is a little bit more portable,
but it definitely does not stop there.
So if you want, you could use the keyboard
and touchpad like a standard laptop,
or you can actually detach the entire panel
and then it will flip over to wireless mode.
So what's cool about this is
that you still have your keyboard,
you still have your touchpad, and of course,
if you want to, you could just put this away and you know,
use another set of peripherals
or you can even use this wire
because it does have a USCB port to charge
as well to use it wirelessly, or wiredly, wiredly?
Wired, wired.
This is a really good example of why this design
actually makes some sense right?
I mean of course, you could do a standard laptop
and have all the components on the bottom,
but because of this, I mean,
it's kinda like the most overkill two on one ever.
This is a big laptop.
It has a 17.3 inch panel that is a full 144 Hertz
with a three millisecond response time,
and on top of that, what's kinda cool about the keyboard
design is that we actually have
a ton of room for the speakers.
So I start cranking this up
and it's loud, it's super loud,
so it has four 4 watt speakers
that are all blasting directly at you,
and it even does have RGB,
because of course it does.
Of course it does.
Surprising exactly no one, this thing has ridiculous specs.
So it has an overclocked Core i9 processor,
64 gigs of RAM, three 1 terabyte SSDs in RAID,
because obviously that's important,
and we of course do have that brand new RTX 2080 GPU.
Now this is as good as it gets for laptop GPUs right now,
but unfortunately, I'm not at liberty
to show you gaming on this particular system,
so, you'll just have to take my word
that it can definitely, definitely play Fortnite,
and like Crysis I guess,
or whatever the kids play.
Can we all just pause for one second?
This thing is ridiculous.
Like straight up, I've seen a lot of two on one designs,
and usually it's much more on the ultra portable side,
which is great right?
I mean, it's nice to have something that's super thin,
super light, but this is so like, it's cool right?
I mean look at this, so we have a kickstand.
You also have all the ports,
I haven't even gone over that yet.
So we have not only 2.5 gigabyte ethernet,
we also have Wi-Fi6, you've got Thunderbolt,
you've got USBA, you've got HDMI,
I mean, this thing is loaded with cool specs,
but I really appreciate that that's all loaded
into a chassis which is legitimately different, right?
I mean, of course I wanna actually get my hands on it
and spend some proper time to see how well
it thermal throttles, or anything like that.
But, you can look at just how much space you've got.
We were able to do a little bit of a once-over
on some of the components that are on the outside
to see kinda like the CNC aluminum, and the heat sinks,
and stuff, but I just really appreciate
that this is a gaming laptop,
which is obviously very powerful,
but it's actually really cool.
You might be familiar with the ROG Zephyrus S,
which came out a few months ago.
While this is a super cool 15 inch design,
they now have an updated 17 inch version.
So with it closed,
it's incredibly thin at only 18.7 millimeters,
but with the active aerodynamic system,
which is a very Asus name,
we do get a little bit of extra cooling,
thanks to the bottom panel opening up.
Now this is similar to the last generation model,
however, it has even more power inside,
with a full RTX 2080 Max-Q inside.
Like the other Zephyrus models,
it is a fairly understated design,
and that's something I appreciate in a gaming laptop.
Now sure, you've got all the RGB you want,
You've got per-key RGB lighting on the keyboard,
you've got the logo, the underglow,
but if you want, you can turn all the stuff off,
and you get yourself,
what's actually a fairly subdued laptop.
Especially considering that it does
have that full 17 inch screen.
As a laptop, with a Core i7 and an RTX 2080 inside,
it does come with a fairly beefy power brick.
What's cool is, it does also support USBC charging.
Now mind you, you won't be able to use
a brick like this for say, gaming,
but if you wanna get a little bit of juice on the go,
if you're not doing anything
all that intensive, this does work.
What's interesting about the Zephyrus is,
is that it does come with an external webcam.
As opposed to cramming a very small camera in the bezel,
instead this is something that is a full 1080p60 fps,
which you can not only mount to the laptop itself,
or if you wanted to, you can use the included stand
and put it off to the side.
Now RG was telling me a little bit about the idea that,
obviously, a lot of people are buying this
for something like say, Twitch streaming, or whatever.
So the idea is that you have a better webcam
that you can place off to the side
and it still comes with the laptop,
is a nice tough, although,
I don't know, nose cams are cool, right?
The 17 inch version of the Zephyrus
will be going on sale later this month,
and the refreshed 15 inch will go on sale
just a little bit after that.
I don't have a price for you,
but as you might imagine,
RTX is not gonna be particularly cheap.
Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed.
Definitely be sure to stayed tuned to the channel.
For lots more other CES 2019 coverage,
and most of 2018, 2019.