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R.I.P. Steam Deck?
Ok, one more thing to mention and then we’ll take a break from Asus, alright? Well, the company has finally officially announced the ROG Ally X. This will take up the mantle from last year’s decent but not class-leading handheld and hope to give Valve’s Steam Deck a run for its money.
Asus has decided to stick with the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor of its predecessor, but the the Windows 11-powered ROG Ally X boasts some new tricks, including a Full HD screen with a refresh rate of 120Hz that’s capable of reaching 500 nits of brightness; a new 80wh battery that offers a claimed 200% battery boost and a few more goodies we’ve covered here.
It’s available to buy right now in the U.S. and will set fans of the best PC games back $799. If you’re reading this in the U.K. you’re going to have to be a little more patient, it’s not launching here until June 22, when it will launch at £799.
Game time with Asus’ new laptops
As well as the creator-focused ProArt laptops, Asus has also unveiled three new gaming laptops and each one will come packing the new AMD Ryzen AI 3000 NPU chipset — capable of handling 50 million TOPS per second.
Top billing goes to the ROG Zephyrus G16, which offers an OLED display with 2.5K resolution and a 240Hz refresh rate backed by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. Bringing up the rear are the TUF Gaming A14 and A16 laptops, complete with 2.5K resolution displays, 165Hz refresh rates, RTX 4070 graphics cards and up to 32GB of RAM.
We’ll know more about these devices once we’ve gone hands-on at the show, so stay tuned for our thoughts later this week.
Asus steps into the arena
Asus has used Computex as the launchpad to announce a new line of ProArt laptops, utilizing both the AMD Ryzen AI 300 and the Snapdragon X Elite chipsets to make them full-featured Copilot+ PCs.
The lineup consists of two 13.3-inch devices and a 16-inch one, the PX13, PZ13 and P16 respectively. All three come with over 40 TOPS of NPU performance for turboboosting those AI tasks and, crucially, all three come with a ton of free software.
These computers are aimed at creators, which is why Asus is bundling in a 6-month free subscription to CapCut and three months of Adobe Creative Suite. You can read more about these laptops (and get a breakdown of the specs) right here. All we’ll say is: watch out Surface Pro 11!
The chips are down
A lot of the talk at Computex is going to be focused around AI computing. The question of what’s powering the new slate of Copilot+ PCs is a a big one for anyone thinking of making a purchase.
We’ve already seen Qualcomm take the wraps off the Snapdragon X Elite and now AMD has stepped up on the eve of Computex to announce its new laptop-focused Ryzen AI 3000 Series chip. The company claims it’s the “world’s best processor for Copilot+ PCs,” and it will sit alongside the Ryzen 9000 series of desktop CPUs offering, you guessed it, a focus on executing AI workloads.
You can read the full story on the Ryzen AI 3000 Series right here but rest assured we’ll be doing our best to get hands on with anything AMD can offer us at this year’s show.
It’s all coming together
The show floor at Computex won’t officially open until tomorrow in Taipei but we got to take an early look at some of the booths. Asus, MSI, Intel and all of the other big players were out in full force but we also got a chance to see the booths of some of our favorite accessory makers like UGREEN and NuPhy.
As we were walking around the show floor at Computex, many of the displays were still being built. There were even trucks, cranes and a few bicycles whizzing past us as we got the lay of the land. Besides new PCs and laptops, we also saw quite a few SIM racing rigs as well as some impressive multi monitor setups. We’ll be back on the show floor first thing tomorrow, so stay tuned for our latest on the ground coverage from Computex 2024.
Not your typical laptop
Before we even had a chance to go check out the show floor at Computex, we came across a unique laptop with a very interesting design. While other laptops use some recycled components, this one at the registration desk has a chassis made entirely from post consumer recycled plastic. Apparently it’s an Acer Aspire Vero with an Intel Evo chip under the hood.
I had a chance to test it out while we were waiting for our press badges and unlike the aluminum frames you find on other laptops, the recycled plastic felt really soft on the palms of my hands. However, the laptop’s bezels were quite large and the E and R keys were reversed. It turns out these eco-themed R and E keys on the 50% post consumer recycled plastic keycaps reinforce the call to Reduce, Reuse & Recycle according to Acer. What I liked most about this Acer Aspire Vevo laptop is how the bits of white really stand out on its recycled blue chassis.
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We’ve made it to Taipei
Tom’s Guide is on the ground in Taipei and ready to check out all of the latest tech at Computex this year. Even though things don’t actually kick off until tomorrow, it’s clear that AI and specifically AI laptops will be a big focus of this year’s show. We’re heading inside now to get our press badges and to see what’s been set up so far.
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