Asus' ROG Flow X13, Z13, and X16 are powerful laptops with some of the top hardware on the market. But they rely on ROG XG Mobile GPUs for high-end gaming performance, making them an enticing option for those who want a slim laptop on the go, but a powerful gaming rig when you plug into the eGPU at home.
However, the latest 2023 installment of the ROG XG Mobile won't come cheap, as it features Nvidia's flagship GeForce RTX 4090 (in its mobile form), one of the best graphics cards for gamers.
The ROG XG Mobile is an external graphics dock that Asus introduced back in 2021 for the company's premium ROG Flow X13 (GV301/GV302), ROG Flow Z13 (GZ301), and ROG Flow X16 (GV601) laptops. It connects to the host device via a proprietary PCIe connector, so the ROG XG Mobile isn't compatible with notebooks outside of the aforementioned ROG Flow units. However, the most significant benefit of the connector is that it provides a PCIe 3.0 x8 highway for communication between the ROG XG Mobile and the host. The theoretical bandwidth for a PCIe 3.0 x8 connection is 63 Gb/s, around 57% higher than Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gb/s).
