Asus is unveiling everything from new phones, tablets, and notebooks to robot butlers at Computex this week. And the company also has some nifty accessories to go with some of those products.
They include a docking station that adds a bunch of ports to tablets or notebooks, a graphics dock for adding a high-performance GPU, speakers, pens, and VR heasdsetss
Asus ROG XG Station 2
There’s not really room for a desktop-class NVIDIA or AMD graphics card in most of today’s tablets or ultrabooks. But if you’ve got a model with a Thunderbolt 3 port (like the Asus Zenbook 3 or Transformer 3 Pro), then you can connect an external graphics dock.
Asus isn’t the first company to introduce this type of dock, but the ROG XG Station 2 looks like a reasonably competitive option.
It has a 680 watt power supply and includes four USB 3.0 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet port, allowing you to use the graphics dock as a USB hub and wired internet adapter.
Universal Dock
Sometimes you don’t need a high-power graphics card, but you do need some extra ports. The Asus Universal Dock features USB 3.1 Type-C, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, and Ethernet ports and an SD card reader.
It could come in handy for laptops like the Asus ZenBook 3 (or Apple’s MacBook), which have only a single USB-C port.
Audio Pod
This audio accessory delivers virtual 5.1 channel surround sound with four speakers.
Asus VR Headset
Asus is also showing off a VR headset designed to work with the company’s Zenfone line of smartphones.
Like Samsung VR or Google Cardboard-style headsets, it’s basically a fancy holder for your phone that includes lenses that help adjust the focal distance so you can put a high-resolution screen right in front of your eyeballs.
But the Asus model manages to stand out thanks to a metal (or at least metallic) frame and leather straps.
There’s also a touchpad and a few buttons on the side of the device which you can use to navigate VR apps.