ASUS has entered the CES 2019 fray with what is arguably one of the strangest gaming laptops yet: the ROG Mothership. Taking a page out of Microsoft' playbook, the PC sports a detachable keyboard and a kickstand on its rear side. But ASUS has melded that form factor with the aesthetics of a beefy gaming laptop, as RGB lights and prominent logos and design details abound.
It's definitely not understated.
ASUS is promoting the ROG Mothership as a desktop replacement, and it's not hard to see why with its massive 17-inch screen and NVIDIA's RTX 20 Series graphics. But it's just as likely that you won't want to take it outside of your home anyway, depending on how tolerant you are of inquisitive looks from strangers.
The display stands upright with the help of the rear kickstand, a feature which ASUS says should increase airflow for the powerful components inside. When you're sitting down for a long gaming session, you can detach the keyboard, which can be folded up and connected to the PC portion either over 2.4GHz wireless or via a USB-C cable.
Inside, you'll find Intel's Core i9-8950HK processor, along with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 chip, up to 64GB of RAM, and three 512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD drives for storage. The Mothership is also one of the first devices out there to feature 802.11ax Wi-Fi, the latest Wi-Fi standard otherwise known as Wi-Fi 6.
As for ports, you're looking at a full array of options peppered around the sides of the display. In all, there are two USB Type-C ports (one with Thunderbolt 3), four USB-A ports, one HDMI 2.0, an SD card reader, and one Ethernet port.
ASUS isn't talking pricing or availability for the ROG Mothership just yet, but you can likely expect it to set you back quite a bit when it arrives.
