The beautiful Asus ROG Flow X13 will be over $ 1,000 cheaper without its eGPU

The Asus ROG Flow X13 was one of the most enjoyable announcements of CES 2021, with good reason – how often do you see a 13-inch convertible laptop, especially one that looks so cool? – but there was a catch. In Asus’ store, the ROG Flow X13 is only listed in a $ 3,000 bundle with an XG Mobile eGPU. (It was also the only pre-order link given to media during the announcement of the Flow X13.) This is a bit of a change and it has led most Flow X13 reviewers (myself included) to have reservations about the steep price.

But a new explanation from Asus could change the game. On the latest installment of the ROG Pulse Podcast, Sascha Krohn, marketing manager of Asus, indicated that the company intends to sell the ROG Flow X13 alone in the future.

“There was a misconception that we only sold it as a bundle, so the XG Mobile and the X13,” Krohn said. “So we sell it as a bundle, but we also sell it separately, and that’s important.”

Asus marketing specialist Ryan Nesbit gave a rough starting price of ‘$ 1,200-ish’. Nesbit and Krohn have not announced a timeline or release date for this X13 setup. We asked Asus about this and will update this article when we hear it.

Priced at $ 1,200, if Asus follows suit, it will be a game changer for the ROG Flow X13. Many reviews have pointed out that the X13’s value proposition as a $ 3,000 laptop is beyond a reasonable niche audience. The internal GPU is entry level compared to the chips you will find in other ultra-portable games, and external GPUs usually result in a performance penalty. (After all, they are outside the laptop.)

But as a $ 1,200 general-purpose laptop, I would comfortably consider the Flow X13 an absolute steal. Not only is it amazing in almost every way – it’s a unique and sturdy design, an excellent keyboard and an excellent 16:10 touchscreen with stylus support – but it includes an eight-core processor (starting with AMD see Ryzen 5900HS). This is without a doubt the most powerful chip you can currently find in a 13-inch chassis. At $ 1,200, this laptop will be a problem for anyone who needs a 13.4-inch laptop for CPU-intensive work.

The other side of this: this means that the GeForce RTX 3080 XG Mobile (in the bundle listed on Asus’ website and also the one sent to reviewers) is quite expensive. Krohn and Nesbit have also indicated that an RTX 3070 version of the XG Mobile will be available in the future, with an estimated price of ‘around eight to nine hundred’. Basic math suggests that it will make the RTX 3070 XG Mobile as much as $ 1,000 cheaper than the RTX 3080 configuration in the current package. It’s quite a big delta, but I think we’ll see.

From the podcast, it’s not clear if Asus intends to sell the XG Mobile alone and if this eGPU will be sold in a cheaper Flow X13 bundle. We also asked Asus for an explanation here.

You can watch the full episode below. The price discussion starts just over 15 minutes.

Photography by Monica Chin / The Verge