ASUS - ROG XG Mobile eGPU Dock - AMD Radeon RX 6850 XT Laptop GPU - Black

I got it for $500 open box and tried with Ally Rog. Performance wise - no complaints, 4k F1 22 at ultra setting with medium ray tracing gives 60fps. Cyberpunk 4k RT 25fps. Completely playable. But there is no joy without a pain - it is just unbearably loud, phone app measures 70db a feet away! As a hub it also lacks USB C connection type. I ended selling it on eBay, along with Rog Ally and bought a proper gaming Legion for much less money. But will revisit future Mobile XG versions since it has potential.

I got this to use with the Asus Ally. The good It performs well The bad Advertised to have 8 pcie lanes. It only has 4 pcie lanes when using it with the Asua Ally. This causes micro stutters when playing games like call of duty and gives less performance. The software used to connect it can be good. However i have already been unable to use it on two different occasions due to the software being updated and breaking compatibility or causing huge bugs. Its loud! Due to these things i can not in good faith recommend it especially if you are considering on using it with the Asus ROG Ally

When it works, it works well enough. When it doesnt want to connect, it makes you regret even buying it. Not as seamless using the less powerful docking method. When using it with more demanding games, the fan is LOUD— reminds me of my old PS4, to be honest.

Love it!. I use it with my Asus ROG ally, I was able to find one open box and it was in excellent condition as new and with that I saved some money. No issues as other people has reported with the connection, it works every time. The only thing is that every time I switch the Ally on it has to install the external graphics card and restart (2 times), that’s it. When I am at home my Ally is a beast, when I am on the go my Ally is an excellent portable gaming PC. I LOVE this combination.

Turned my ally into a great 1440p gaming desktop. Picked up for 280 no box or instructions and it was an amazing deal.

Loving the extra boost on my rog ally. It runs high graphic games on ultra settings everything at 70 fps.

I'll start with the reasons for knocking 1 star... Physically, the dock/eGPU is very sleek but the heat vents, due to the short and stiff nature of the connecting cable, will inevitably end up very close to the laptop. You can angle it so it's venting toward the left and mostly away, but if you're using this in laptop mode as opposed to desktop, you'll be getting a nice dose of heat. If your room is drafty in the winter, this could be a good thing, I suppose... At full fan speed it is fairly loud. The next contributing factor to the 1 point loss is the activation/deactivation procedure. This is not as simple as plug it in and go...and most definitely not an unplug and, well, go again. You have to plug it in while the machine is on (fine), lock it, wait for the software to prompt you to enable it...click then wait a number of seconds for the status LED on the connector to turn red. Once enabled (and the LED is red), if you wish to quickly grab the laptop... you need to open the software manually...deactivate the eGPU...wait for it to do its thing and turn the LED back to white...then unlock and unplug... Except often times something running in the background is using the GPU and the software barks at you. These are annoyances more so than shortcomings, but as simple as they may sound, they tend to add up. As a side note, because this relies on Asus software (extension of Armor Crate), this solution will only activate under Windows. No Linux support, in case you were wondering. Finally, and this may not be a big deal to some, but when active the discrete Nvidia GPU on your Flow device is disabled..and I mean, at the hardware level. It does still alow use of the built in Radeon iGPU, but if you were planning on offloading workloads to the 3050 Ti (rendering, PhysX, etc), this arrangement won't work. That was a bummer for me and had the largest weight in the lost point. So...why only a single point knocked off after this wall of gripes? Simply put, this XG Mobile with the 6850m is amazing for its intended purpose. I am a fan of super light, 13" class laptops... But they're not easy to come by with powerful GPUs due to inherent power and thermal limitations. Leveraging a proprietary interface that provides direct PCIe 3.0 x8 while making use of a hefty PSU for better TDP availability, the 6850m is able to shine and breathe new life to this little laptop. The additional high speed ports, as well as 2.5Gb ethernet are a nice bonus...and its ability to power the laptop means you don't need to haul both this and the laptop's power birck in your backpack. It is also lighter than I expected... Definitely not a feather, but manageable in a backpack. The performance is superb and, if you look at it as a compact, high speed dock + power supply + GPU instead of just a simple eGPU, at the current Asus direct price it is a no-brainer, which is almost half its MSRP! I'm not sure if that price is a permanent update or a sale but Best Buy honored a price match which sweetened the deal as I can get perks to use later on. This has extended the life and usability of my ROG Flow x13, which means money saved in the long run.

I am writing this review after having already bought the XG Mobile 2023 (Nvidia 4090 model) and returning it to purchase this one. This will be going over my experience using it with the ROG Ally as well as the Flow Z13 and Flow X13. Right out the gate I will say, DO NOT BUY THIS FOR YOUR ALLY (yet). For the Ally: The Ally is not designed for use with the XG Mobile, at least for now. I saw many videos and reviews for the XG Mobile and ROG Ally combo before pulling the trigger on a purchase, but after owning 2 different models I can safely say that the Ally is not suitable for these docks at least for now. When connected to the device there are many hiccups and hoops that need to be jumped through before getting it to work properly without it going into a connecting/disconnecting loop. To solve this I waited a good 5 minutes before manually restarting with the XGM connected. Afterwards I ran tests on an external monitor and got great FPS! The issue, however, is with the frametimes. When a keyboard and mouse are used together in demanding titles, the device suffers MASSIVE framerate drops to the point where the games become unplayable. This is not the case in many games, but I have tested in Borderlands 3 and Valorant and both titles showed very odd behavior where one would stutter and the other would have "stuck inputs" (longer pauses depending on how many keys and mouse buttons were pressed in succession). This behavior was seen on both the 2022 XGM and the 2023 XGM. I looked in the settings of the Radeon Software and can confirm that the Ally is only using a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection. This leads me to believe that there is some type of bandwidth limitation when playing games and using multiple device inputs at once. This may not be apparent if using a controller, but if your hope was to turn the Ally into a desktop, you're best off just building a desktop or getting a Flow device. Speaking of Flow devices... Flow X13: Overall both this XGM and the 2023 XGM with 4090 worked great on that laptop. I own the 2022 X13 and it saw a significant increase in performance when connected to both, but I felt the performance to cost of this XGM was a much better value for that device. Opening Radeon software shows this device supports PCIe 3.0 x8 connection so no issues there. Flow Z13: I owned the 2022 Flow Z13 and now own the 2023 model. Both were tested with this model XG Mobile and both show a measurable increase in gaming performance when docked. This device is my primary device and I use the XGM as a docked desktop to play games when I am at home. I have been able to play many of my games at my monitors refresh cap of 240Hz and more demanding titles are still able to push to the 160FPS mark at 1440p resolutions. Overall this is one of the nicest hybrid devices I have seen in some time and the 2022 XGM is such a good complementary device for this. Performance is incredible even when using the newer Flow Z13 and the extra USB ports provided by this turn the gaming tablet into a fully featured gaming desktop. Overall I am very happy with this XGM purchase and look forward to any more improvements that come its way. Now for the general use case: This device will need some patience. There are many guides out there for how to make the most of it, but so long as you follow the very basic instructions provided by the manufacturer there should not be any issues. Most importantly, FOLLOW THE CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION GUIDELINES. EVEN IF THE LIGHT IS WHITE, WAIT FOR THE NOTIFICATION SAYING IT IS SAFE TO DISCONNECT THE XG MOBILE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO REMOVE THE DEVICE. Doing so will make it much less likely to have issues, and the safety connect tabs should slide off without any resistance at all. I highly recommend you give it 5 minutes after first connecting the device to get all the drivers, doing a device restart with the device still connected, then checking for any updates in Armoury Crate and the MYAsus apps.