SCHENKER's premium ultrabook series VISION upgrades to Intel's Core i7-13700H and also receives a graphics card update. Aside from the VISION 16 Pro with a GeForce RTX 4070 or 4060, the VISION 16 is only available with an Intel Iris Xe GPU. On the other hand, the VISION 14 with a 99 Wh battery and 3K display offers a choice between a model with Iris Xe and GeForce RTX 3050 Refresh. Thus, the slim laptops are among the lightest and thinnest ultrabooks in their respective performance or equipment classes. Nevertheless, the model series is defined by good connectivity as well as plugged-in RAM and SSDs. All laptops are available in black or silver.

Schenker Technologies updates the 16-inch premium ultrabook SCHENKER VISION 16 Pro in the model version M23 (Mid 2023) to the latest level of technology - with a fast Intel Core i7-13700H featuring 6 performance and 8 efficiency cores as well as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 or 4060 as freely configurable options, each with a GPU performance of up to 95 watts (70 watts plus 25 watts Dynamic Boost 2.0).

ASUS is keeping the hype up for its upcoming ROG Ally handheld console, and now it has confirmed the worldwide release and teased that it could come sooner than anyone expected, which is pretty impressive. Announced on April 1st, the ASUS ROG Ally has impressive specifications, running on yet to be detailed AMD 4 nm custom APU based on Zen 4 CPU and RDNA 3 GPU architecture.

The ASUS ROG Ally measures at 280 x 133 x 39 mm and weighs 608 grams, making it shorter, narrower, thinner, and lighter than its competitor, Valve's Steam Deck. It has a 7-inch display with 1920x1080 resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate, 5 ms response time, and 500 nits of brightness. According to earlier hands-on previews of the prototype from Dave2D and LinusTechTips, ASUS did a great job with the dual-fan cooling solution, making it very quite. It will also have a dedicated PCIE Gen 3 x8 XG connector, which allows it to connect to the recently launched XG Mobile GPU, an external RTX 4090 GPU which retails at $1999.99 in the US. Linus also noted that the ROG Ally will offer 50 percent higher performance at 15 W and twice the performance at 35 W, compared to the Steam Deck. As noted, ASUS has now confirmed that the ROG Ally will launch worldwide, and that it might be sooner that we expect, linking to Best Buy for those that live in North America.

As it turned out that ASUS ROG Ally handheld console is not actually an April Fools' Day prank, more details have started to appear about this Steam Deck competitor, and these first details look pretty promising. According to the Dave2D video, showing the prototype unit in full details, the ASUS ROG Ally will indeed be based on a 4 nm custom AMD APU, featuring Zen 4 CPU and RDNA3 iGPU, so we are most likely looking at a custom AMD Phoenix APU.

The video had a few nice pictures of the pre-production PCB as well as the cooling setup as well as details on the screen, and some performance of the ASUS ROG Ally. The ROG Ally measures at 280 x 133 x 39 mm and weighing 608 grams. This makes it shorter, narrower, thinner, as well as lighter, compared to the Steam Deck. It also comes with 7-inch display, but this time around, it is a 500 nits, 1920x1080 resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio, display with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 5 ms response time, which makes it much better compared to the Steam Deck.

Update: LinusTechTips is the second one to get access to ASUS ROG Ally prototype and has provided a bit more details on specifications, performance, and other things about the upcoming handheld console.

ASUS ROG has started selling its RTX 4090 XG Mobile external graphics card in China and Japan this week. Japanese customers are being charged a cool $3000 for the pint-sized powerhouse external GPU, and Chinese buyers are getting a slightly better deal at $2700. It should be noted that this eGPU is the (GN21-X11) mobile variant of the GeForce RTX 4090, and not the full fat desktop version. The newly updated XG Mobile enclosure can only be connected to an ASUS Flow laptop, which limits the scope of compatibility to an already very expensive range of devices. The proprietary connection standard will keep customers in the ASUS ROG mobile hardware ecosystem - but their higher end laptop models can be configured with the very capable GeForce RTX 4070 mobile GPU, so the RTX 4090 XG Mobile seems to appeal to a very small buying niche.

The XG Mobile interface uses the PCIE Gen 3 x8 standard of connection, and the GPU has access to a dedicated 63 GB/s of bandwidth. This beats the Thunderbolt 4 standard of 40 Gb/s, by a 57% margin. The enclosure acts as a docking station - its features include an up to 2.5 Gbit Ethernet, a single HDMI 2.1 port, one DisplayPort 1.4 with G-Sync support and three USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (3x Type-A + 1x Type-C). ASUS ROG has engineered the docking station/enclosure to be as compact as possible (21.7 cm x 16.5 cm x 3.26 cm), when compared to competing products from other manufacturers. The whole package weighs in at 1.3 kg, which will ensure decent portability for gamers on the move.