• ASUS unveils a gaming laptop that acts like the Microsoft Surface Pro at this year’s CES
• The ROG Mothership (or GZ700) weighs only 10-pounds, despite it sitting on the 17-inch category.
• There is no price yet and scheduled availability date as of this writing

ASUS has unveiled a gaming laptop that just acts like the Microsoft Surface Pro, and it’s really a show-stealer.

The new ROG Mothership (or GZ700) is a 17.3-inch gaming laptop that sports a vertical design just like the Surface – with a kickstand, and a detachable keyboard. If you think a design like the ones you found on the Surface couldn’t handle gaming well, think again.

But to think of it, this design does really make sense. Heat dissipation and management could be made easier by just venting out all the heat vertically instead of being trapped on a keyboard and a desk or your lap. Effectively, this would be perfect as this sports godlike gaming hardware inside.

Although you might not want to put this on your lap, as it will not sit pretty well with its weight being on the middle, vertical side only.

When it comes to specs, the ROG Mothership sports the latest Nvidia RTX 2080 GPU, as well as Intel’s top-of-the-line Core i9-8950HK CPU, both overclocked since the cooling is better made possible by the vertical design. Not to forget the RAID 0 array of three NVMe SSDs and up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM.

There’s also support for Windows Hello for its built-in webcam (yay!), and ports such as two USB-C (Thunderbolt and Standard) ports, four USB Type-A ports, HDMI, Ethernet and SD Card slot.

In case you’ll wonder, the laptop comes in with a dual 280w charging ports, to supply the juice needed by this super-powered laptop.

For the Surface-like features, ASUS has done some impressive things to make it unique. The kickstand, according to them, pops out auto-magically when the computer touches down on a surface, enabling you to set it up with only one-hand (but it’s a bit heavy at 10.36lbs / 4.69kg so honestly holding it with one-hand could be a no-no).

The keyboard, on the other hand, could be attached magnetically and also be detached to be used as a wireless keyboard (you don’t need the keyboard for the laptop to stand vertically). You can also connect it wired thru USB-C, if you’re that worried on latency when it comes to gaming.

The ASUS ROG Mothership will be available sometime later in Q1 2019, with prices set to be announced at launch.

Check out our special coverage of CES 2019 here.