It's okay. I probably won't do this setup again in the future, though. I think Asus had the right idea, but not the right execution. Future standards may make their proprietary solution unnecessary, also. Not say that's where I think Asus failed on execution. I would have preferred if the laptop didn't have discrete graphics at all to cut back on power requirements on the go. But I get it, they were aiming to try to keep gaming performance up when undocked. This just isn't my priority.
I suspect when I'm itching for an upgrade in a couple of years or so that I'll go back to a SFF desktop with desktop class graphics and separate thin and light laptop. I might even forego the laptop altogether, depending on how things look at the time.
The Framework laptop (which has been in the news lately) looks like it fits into the thin/light category (< 3 lbs), with integrated graphics rather than discrete. The thunderbolt port supports an eGPU and external display, so it might work for these types of use-cases.
Alternatively, there are these from Origin (which have Nvidia discrete GPUs):
For me, for the future, I'll likely do something like a Framework without an eGPU and just use a SFF desktop for gaming. I don't do much advanced gaming anymore so I don't need a lot of power for something bigger than SFF.
Just to note - those thunderbolt eGPUs are a bit more limited in performance than Asus's solution because thunderbolt only provides 4 lanes of PCIe, while Asus's port provides 8. So far as I know, USB4 and TB4 didn't expand on this, even with the new PCIe mode. All of that is to say Asus's connector allows for the 3080 Laptop GPU to be used likely near 100%, while TB likely would not be able to, so you'd be limited to lower end graphics. This is what drew me in to the Asus solution.
Maybe it's worth pointing out the eGPU does NOT use the USB-C port on the Flow X13. The proprietary connector includes a USB-C connector along with the PCIe extra connector. The USB-C connector can be used separately. But in terms of the dock, the USB-C port on the connector is used for port expansion (the dock has 4 USB-A 3 ports, ethernet, and power, along with the display outputs).
This is where I think things could end up deprecating Asus's solution. Future TB may provide higher end PCIe (ie: upgrading to a higher level, adding more lanes). There may be other standards based technologies coming as well.
I could probably be fine with a 4060 in a TB enclosure in the future. But at the moment, my needs are met, so I'm not planning out my future technology stack just yet.
I suspect when I'm itching for an upgrade in a couple of years or so that I'll go back to a SFF desktop with desktop class graphics and separate thin and light laptop. I might even forego the laptop altogether, depending on how things look at the time.