"Pushing Things to the Limit": ASUS's Sascha Krohn on 20 Years of ROG and the Ceraluminum Era

ROG is celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and the anniversary hardware is everywhere on the Computex show floor, laced in gold and black. So when I sat down with Sascha Krohn, Director of Technical Marketing PC & Laptop at ASUS ROG, at the TaiNex 1, I expected the conversation to drift toward legacy. It didn't. The room was loud, the air conditioning was fighting a losing battle against the Taipei heat, and at some point, the organisers started dimming the lights to nudge us out as it was past 5:30 pm. And yet what we ended up talking about, more than anything else, was texture. The feeling of running your fingers across a laptop lid that no one else in the industry is making quite the same way. Twenty years of pushing hardware to its limits, and the thing ASUS most wants you to notice in 2026 is how its machines feel in your hands. Well, that’s just one of the few things.

The Material Nobody Else Has

Ceraluminum is now across the entire Zenbook lineup, all the way down to the entry-level Zenbook 14. I asked Krohn whether it has become a brand signature, something a customer can recognize the way three cameras on the back instantly read as an iPhone.

"Yes, that's very much what we're aiming for," he said. "Ceraluminum in itself is expensive, and it's a difficult technology to master, especially because you want to have it very smooth and not have different blotches or lines on it. That's really tricky."

The investment, he explained, was a deliberate bet from the very beginning. "As soon as we figured out how to make it work, we're like, this is great and nobody else is doing it. People love it, the feeling is good, the material properties are really good, so let's go for it. We invested a lot of money into it"

I've experienced this firsthand. When I reviewed the Asus Zenbook S16 a few months ago, I ended up spending the first five minutes of the video just talking about the material, the finish, and how good the whole thing felt out of the box. That doesn't happen with most laptops. Krohn's point about recognisability isn't marketing speak. It's already working.

You Never Needed ROG. That Was the Point.

Twenty years in, I put a slightly provocative question to him. There's a difference between a product that solves a problem and one that creates a want. Had ROG's centre of gravity shifted from one to the other?

He rejected the premise entirely, and his answer was one of the most interesting of the conversation.

"I think ROG, for me at least, was always about creating something I want and not something I necessarily need," he said. "You could do everything you wanted on a non-ROG product, but you get better performance, you're able to customise it more, and you have a better experience on an ROG product. It was always a premium solution, right from the beginning."

Even the original Crosshair motherboard, the product that started it all, was a want. "When you see an ROG product, there's more there. More performance, more features, more configuration options. You can fine-tune it, tweak it, customise it. And it has a really beautiful design. For me, every ROG product falls into that category."

It's an unusual thing for a PC brand to admit. Most of the industry justifies its products through problems solved: thinner for travel, faster for work, lighter for the commute. ROG is one of the few openly building for desire, which puts it closer to how watch and sneaker brands operate than how PC makers traditionally do. And you only need to look at this year's anniversary lineup to see the philosophy in action. Nobody needs a translucent handheld with gold-accented internals and bundled AR glasses. The ROG Xbox Ally X20 exists purely to be wanted, and this just further proves Krohn’s answer.

A Republic That Keeps Expanding

So what does ROG stand for today, when the portfolio covers everything from routers to AR glasses?

"ROG, the Republic of Gamers, stands for pushing things to the limit and making sure you get the best possible experience," Krohn said. "And it is all centred around gaming. That hasn't changed, and I don't think that will ever change."

The ambition is presence across every gaming surface. "No matter how you game and where you game, if it's on your phone, your handheld, your living room, or a gaming desktop setup, you're always playing games. We are there to give you the best possible experience."

The Edge Nobody Can Copy

Every major PC maker is chasing the same trends right now: thinner machines, AI branding, premium materials. I asked Krohn what ASUS does that genuinely cannot be replicated by Lenovo or HP, with one rule attached. He couldn't say Ceraluminum.

His answer wasn't a product at all.

"Our formula of success is listening to customers," he said. "We have over 16,000 employees. Half of them are here in HQ in Taiwan, and half are overseas, spread all over the world. Having all these local offices with local staff who understand the local market, it's kind of like a giant network of information."

The differentiation, he argued, is in what happens to that information. "It's not just about listening, but digesting it and using it. I don't think it's perfect, but it's working really well, and I think it's better than our competitors. That gives us a big competitive edge, and I think it's difficult for other brands to replicate."

AI on a PC: Solution Looking for a Problem?

Some would argue that AI on a PC is still a solution in search of a problem. Krohn didn't entirely dodge the critique.

"I've heard some people say there's new hardware all the time for AI, but the software solutions still need more time to be refined and have some really huge benefits," he acknowledged. "It just generally takes time for those features to develop and for people to learn how to use them efficiently."

Then he pointed at the recorder sitting between us. "We're having an interview right now, and you're probably going to use AI to transcribe it. You technically don't need AI for that, but it just makes it so much easier and faster and more convenient."

His strongest case for on-device AI, though, had nothing to do with productivity. It was privacy. "If you have children, you want them to learn what an LLM is and how to interact with one. But you don't want all that information to go into the cloud. You don't want everyone who has access to that database to learn the queries your child is asking and create a profile for them," he said. "Even for myself, I don't want a profile about myself on the internet. Having a local LLM is great for that. You can still have your privacy and security."

The Favourite Child

With the lights dimming around us, I asked one last question. Of everything launched for ROG's 20th anniversary, what was his personal favourite?

"Definitely the Ally X20," he said without hesitation. The anniversary handheld brings an OLED display to the Ally lineup for the first time and ships bundled with the gold-accented XREAL R1 Edition AR glasses, a product Krohn has a personal connection to. "I'm a huge AR VR enthusiast. I have several AR glasses and VR headsets at home. I worked with that team when they were developing it, so I'm a big fan."

Then came the most candid design opinion of the entire interview. "I love the translucent, smoky, dark plastic. And usually I don't like gold. I find gold too stereotypical, like, oh yeah, gold, everybody's using gold and fancy. But for this, I think it's tastefully done. Not too much, just nice accents."

It was a fitting note to end on. Twenty years in, ASUS's most senior technical voice describing the anniversary flagship the same way the company wants every product described.