A
sus’ ROG lineup regularly
features impressive
specifications, RGB lights
aplenty, and price tags that you’ll
have to do a double-take over.
The Asus ROG Mothership
follows in these footsteps, and
might be the company’s most
ambitious device ever. Part laptop,
part desktop, it features some
insane specifications, and an
equally eye-watering price tag to
go along with it. And while it clearly
has its sights set on gamers, it’s
actually built like an entry-level
workstation, so those looking for
sheer power for intense
applications like 3D rendering or
AutoCAD may actually benefit from
owning one of these.
This is a machine that pretty
much sticks with you once you’ve
bought it – upgrading a few
internal components is possible
(more on that later), but whatever
configuration you get should
hopefully be good enough tolast you for at least the next four to
five years.Design and display
It’s entertaining to refer to the
Mothership as a laptop, because
the only time it looks like one is
when it’s closed and lying flat on a
table. Prop it up, and an automatic
kickstand deploys at the back to
provide support. You can then
lower the bottom lip to reveal the
keyboard and trackpad, similar to a
Microsoft Surface.
Should you want a bit more
flexibility when using the
Mothership, you can quickly detach
the keyboard and fold it in half,
turning it into a wireless keyboard,
or even tether it via the included
USB-C cable. Asus says this was
done to make the Mothership more
adaptive to different use scenarios.
There are ports aplenty on the
Mothership, so connectivity is not
going to be an issue. There’s a
decent number of USB Type-Aports, as well as Thunderbolt 3 /
DisplayPort 1.4 and an HDMI 2.0
port for driving external displays.
An unfortunate side effect of
having this much power available is
that you actually need two power
bricks to drive the Mothership,
which makes it a little less effective
if you decide to take it anywhere.
The machine itself is heavy, so if
you’re adding two power bricks to
your backpack, you’re not going to
be carrying this for very long.
Despite sporting just a Full HD
display, you’ll still get enjoy 144Hz
refresh rates and Nvidia G-sync
technologies, so gaming on the
Mothership is an absolute dream
when it comes to response times.
While the Full HD panel only
provides sRGB support, it’s still
quite decent for multimedia work
such as video or photo editing.
Viewing angles are also fairly
decent, though we imagine that
most of your time will be spent
looking at the Mothership head-on,Asus ROG Mothership
£5,457 | $6,800 http://www.asus.com
This mother of all PCs is going to turn heads wherever it’s set up
Images : Future80 |^ |^ December 2019