The New Asus ROG Flow Z13 Redefines Gaming on a 2-in-1 Laptop-Tablet

2-in-1 laptops that are aimed astatine gamers are already a rarity, fto unsocial Windows-based gaming tablets, but that's precisely what the caller Asus ROG Flow Z13 delivers and it's much than a small impressive. Featuring AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395, it offers gaming show that rivals dedicated laptop graphics cards portion besides offering overmuch amended artillery beingness and portability. A due gaming laptop volition inactive beryllium a amended prime for astir gamers owed to terms alone, but the ROG Flow Z13 is simply a showcase for however acold integrated graphics person travel and what we tin expect from them successful the future.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 – Design and Features

The ROG Flow Z13 is simply a 13.4-inch Windows tablet that includes a detachable keyboard. Imagine a Microsoft Surface pulled consecutive from the beingness of Blade Runner, and you'll beryllium connected the close way for its aesthetic. It's importantly thicker than the Surface, measuring a hairsbreadth implicit a fractional inch astatine its thinnest point, and is adorned with the cybernetic tracings the ROG marque has go synonymous with. There's adjacent a tiny viewing model that reveals the circuit committee inside, illuminated with RGB backlighting that earns it immoderate other benignant points.

The added spot of thickness is forgivable erstwhile you look astatine its importantly much almighty internals. This is acold much than an mean tablet oregon adjacent an mean gaming tablet astatine that – alternatively it’s a due PC that takes signifier successful tablet form, and that demands other cooling which accounts for its thicker yet inactive portable size. There's small you can't bash with it acknowledgment to its almighty processor and impressively accelerated memory, and that includes dedicated gaming that doesn't unit you to crook the settings to their minimum oregon driblet the solution conscionable due to the fact that it uses an integrated GPU. Make nary mistake, the Asus ROG Flow Z13 is the imagination gaming tablet successful that it is simply a high-performance gaming laptop with a detachable keyboard.

Asus has much than conscionable gamers successful mind, however. You tin archer that by its configurable memory, which tin spell each the mode to 128GB if you person the currency to wage for it. That's importantly much than astir gaming laptops tin adjacent support, fto unsocial beryllium configured specified consecutive from the factory. But here, Asus presents america with a instrumentality aimed squarely astatine the cross-section betwixt gamers, integer artists, 3D modelers, video editors and contented creators much broadly, arsenic good arsenic anyone who wants to tally section ample connection models (LLMs). It's besides a bully acceptable for students and professionals with heavy pockets. Bring a stylus of your own, and it becomes an exceptional instrumentality for handwritten notes.

All of this doesn’t travel cheap. The exemplary we were sent, which includes the minimum magnitude of RAM (32GB) and retention (1TB), volition acceptable you backmost $2,299. Doubling the representation to 64GB brings the terms to $2,399 and the afloat 128GB mentation runs a steep $2,799. Of those three, the 64GB exemplary feels similar the champion mediate ground, since an other $100 for an further 32GB of representation isn’t a atrocious deal.

The flip broadside is that the strategy isn't upgradable aft the fact. The RAM is soldered into the strategy arsenic portion of the CPU bundle which is however it’s capable to execute its exceptionally accelerated 8,000Hz representation speed. Its retention tin beryllium upgraded and is amazingly casual to entree with a tiny latch connected the backmost of the screen. There's lone a azygous slot, however, truthful if you upgrade, you'll besides request to reinstall Windows and each of the laptop's banal applications implicit again. It besides lone supports the smaller M.2 2230 size, which, arsenic of this writing, lone goes up to 2TB.

Price and upgradability aside, the ROG Flow Z13 is simply a state-of-the-art 2-in-1 successful galore antithetic ways. It has a premium acceptable and decorativeness with an all-aluminum chassis, with plentiful venting to exhaust vigor from the bottommost and the sides. There's a built-in kickstand connected the backmost to support it upright, with heavy-duty metallic hinges susceptible of holding it upright astatine precise constrictive angles. It has large connectivity options (with 2 USB-C ports, and USB-A 3.2 port, HDMI 2.1 out), and the buttons for onboard controls on its sides consciousness coagulated and tactile.

The included keyboard screen is besides precise good, which attaches magnetically to the surface precise easy and stays enactment erstwhile it's successful place. I was capable to reposition the tablet immoderate mode that I liked without the keyboard lawsuit ever coming off. It's capable to fastener successful astatine a flimsy angle, which I recovered much comfy for typing, oregon laic wholly level to get escaped of the tiny magnitude of flex successful its typing experience.

It's 1 of the champion keyboard lawsuit typing experiences I've had frankincense far, with coagulated question and tactility successful each keystroke, arsenic good arsenic per-key RGB backlighting. It besides includes a ample touchpad with integrated buttons that works reliably and didn't origin immoderate shade gestures passim my full investigating period.

The show isn’t OLED, but it’s a bully illustration of however bully a high-quality IPS surface tin look. You whitethorn expect a merchandise of this caliber to spell with OLED, but its surface is bright, fast, and vibrant portion besides lacking immoderate hazard of representation burn-in oregon the haloing issues communal to mini-LED displays.

Spec-wise, the show checks each of the close boxes. It has a precocious pixel density with its 2560x1600 solution (the 16:10 mentation of astir 1440p) and looks exceptionally crisp. It’s rated for a highest brightness of 500 nits with a 1,500:1 opposition ratio, and runs astatine a creaseless 180Hz refresh rate. It covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour abstraction and is Pantone and Dolby Vision certified.

The prima of the amusement is its processor – the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is the latest introduction successful AMD’s AI-enabled processor line. The Max+ indicates its higher level of show versus the already awesome HX bid (including the HX 370 that I’ve reviewed successful aggregate systems astatine this point). It’s a 12-core, 24-thread CPU with a max timepiece velocity of 5.0GHz and a whopping 76MB of cache – acold much than is emblematic connected a mobile processor similar this one.

That cache is important due to the fact that it straight translates into performance. The larger the cache store, the much information the processor tin store and entree rapidly, which is precisely what you privation for gaming. Likewise, the chipset is designed to supply the processor with a nonstop enactment to the system’s memory. It’s however Asus was capable to execute specified a precocious velocity and wherefore it’s not upgradeable by the end-user.

The existent ace up its sleeve, however, is its integrated graphics chip: the Radeon 8060S. It’s the archetypal iGPU we’ve tested from Asus’s Strix Halo RDNA 3.5 lineup, and it’s much than a small awesome with its 40 compute units and boost timepiece velocity of 2900MHz. For 1080p gaming, its show lands astir the RTX 4060 laptop GPU portion utilizing importantly little power, generating little heat, little noise, and allowing the ROG Flow Z13 to beryllium arsenic lightweight and portable arsenic it is. For the radical who would see a precocious show 2-in-1 successful general, it’s a large payment that lends the instrumentality acold much inferior than it would different have.

As a effect of its efficiency, and the request for portability, Asus equipped the Z13 with a 70WHr battery. It’s obscurity adjacent the largest astatine this terms constituent but fixed the AI Max+ processor and little power-hungry hardware elsewhere (such arsenic the surface erstwhile compared with OLED), it’s capable to connection akin artillery beingness successful time to time tasks and amended artillery beingness than a emblematic gaming laptop tin erstwhile really moving games.

Another constituent successful its favour is its generous enactment of ports for a tablet. Often, tablets person 1 oregon 2 USB Type-C ports and small else. Here, you get those 2 ports (both USB-C 4 with DisplayPort and PD support), a 10Gbps USB Type-A, a full-size HDMI 2.1, a microSD paper reader, and a headset jack. There’s besides a larboard for the system’s 200-watt powerfulness ceramic – thing you’ll request to unlock Turbo show mode but isn’t indispensable for its modular show mode and recharging the artillery implicit USB-C.

Since it’s a laptop arsenic good arsenic a tablet, it includes cameras connected some the beforehand and back. The rear-facing camera is 13MP but isn’t precise sharp. It’s 1 of the fewer areas of the strategy that feels similar an afterthought, but it’s besides the astir apt portion to spot regular usage successful the full system. The beforehand facing camera is 5MP and is decidedly sharper, but struggles a spot with challenging lighting and agleam windows. It volition enactment for meetings and classes, however, but I wouldn’t usage it for streaming oregon making videos personally.

Finally, the speakers connected the laptop are decent and escaped of distortion adjacent connected their highest measurement but deficiency immoderate of the assemblage recovered connected Asus’s mean gaming laptops. I was impressed astatine the magnitude of item they were capable to contiguous astatine max volume, but erstwhile pushed to its limit, it tin dependable a interaction shrill. They tin surely enactment successful a pinch for videos oregon gaming, but similar usual, a coagulated gaming headset oregon brace of earbuds is going to connection a amended experience.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 – Software

The ROG Flow Z13 uses Armoury Crate and Asus's ScreenXpert bundle for its configuration. Both programs should consciousness precise acquainted if you've ever utilized Armoury Crate for different devices before. They aren't hard to travel to grips with, but I volition accidental that the implementation of ScreenXpert has been the champion I've experienced of immoderate Asus laptop yet.

Beginning with Armoury Crate, the archetypal surface you're greeted with is simply a dashboard that besides has toggles for the system's antithetic show modes. On this screen, you tin get a speedy look astatine your GPU and CPU usage, instrumentality speeds, representation usage, and remaining storage, arsenic good arsenic toggle antithetic features similar disabling the Windows cardinal oregon Alt-Tab. You tin besides presumption retention and representation utilization arsenic well. Going 1 tab down takes you to a much in-depth configuration paper that besides has toggles for antithetic functions similar enabling the Windows cardinal oregon touchpad, and Modern Standby Assistant.

There are besides tabs wrong this paper to configure the system's lighting. There is nary per-key RGB backlighting, but it is capable to show a static colour oregon respective antithetic preset animations for a spot of other flair, and the aforesaid is existent of the model connected the backmost of the system. If you person different Asus peripherals, it's besides compatible with Aura Sync to rapidly align the lighting for everything astatine once.

Further down successful the tabs is simply a surface configuration conception called GameVisual. Here you tin take betwixt a fig of antithetic preset colour configurations, akin to a gaming monitor. You tin besides take the colour somesthesia betwixt precise lukewarm and precise chill (although this isn't measured successful Kelvin, but alternatively successful a gradient slider). There is besides a dropdown paper to take your colour abstraction betwixt sRGB, DCI-P3, and Display-P3 for contented creation. This is particularly utile due to the fact that of however well-suited the ROG Flow Z13 is to antithetic originative pursuits.

ScreenXpert takes the signifier of a toolbar that, for the astir part, tin mitigate having to unfastened Armoury Crate. A floating icon lives connected the close broadside of your surface and, erstwhile tapped, opens up a enactment of configuration options, including the system's show mode, on-screen keyboard, microphone settings, task groups, arsenic good arsenic a artillery show for immoderate connected devices you mightiness have.

If each you're disquieted astir is changing the show mode, remainder assured that there's inactive a dedicated hotkey connected the detachable keyboard for changing this without opening the bundle astatine all. Still, I recovered the sidebar to beryllium utile and easier to usage than the full-fledged Armoury Crate suite.

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Asus ROG Flow Z13 – Performance

I won't hide the lede: The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is simply a powerhouse. Its processor is, frankly, excellent, and determination is precise small that it can't grip with ease. The integrated GPU is besides fantastic, offering show that you would usually request to put successful a dedicated GPU to achieve.

On the flip side, for the aforesaid oregon little money, you could easy get a high-performance laptop with an adjacent amended graphics card. The Flow Z13 is an costly device, and the efficacy of its integrated GPU, portion interesting, volition precise apt mean little than axenic gaming show for galore antithetic gamers. It's not a instrumentality for everybody, and it's not designed to beryllium for everybody. But for the peculiar assemblage that would see buying a high-performance gaming 2-in-1, it's conscionable astir arsenic bully arsenic it gets astatine the moment.

Getting into performance, we trial each of our systems with a enactment of synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. Our games are acceptable to ultra settings and utilize upscaling unless different noted. At 1080p, upscaling is acceptable to prime mode. At 1440p, it's acceptable to balanced mode. We've precocious reworked our investigating regimen and methodology. So, acknowledgment for bearing with america arsenic we physique up our trial data.

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Beginning with synthetic benchmarks, things are arsenic you would expect from an APU with a bully integrated graphics chip. The results are decent but not caput blowing oregon class-leading. At this constituent successful the testing, I admit that I was a spot worried, but successful existent satellite gaming, things instrumentality a crook for the better.

I’ve mentioned successful anterior reviews that we person precocious changed our investigating methodology and are rebuilding our information acceptable with a caller suite of benchmarks. Since the different laptops I’ve tested with this caller suite person dedicated GPUs, they don’t connection a just comparison, truthful I besides ran it done the aged trial regular to analyse however it compares to little level GPUs and APUs.

It's an awesome accomplishment that sets a caller modular for integrated graphics.

Looking astatine the crippled information set, there’s not a batch of constituent of comparison, truthful looking astatine the Flow Z13 connected its own, we tin spot that it performs decently wide but you’ll inactive get overmuch much bang for your subordinate with a dedicated gaming laptop if that’s each you’re aft – remember, these results are astatine Ultra settings connected a strategy that lacks a dedicated GPU. Outside of benchmarking, you would astir surely crook down the settings successful immoderate of these games, truthful there’s country for each rubric present to play smoothly.

(Unfortunately, Red Dead Redemption 2 consistently crashed during the benchmark, truthful that trial was near retired but volition beryllium updated present arsenic I fig retired what’s causing the CTD error.)

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To get a amended representation of however it performs much broadly, I ran the laptop done a scope of different gaming tests and compared it to my older RTX 4060 laptop truthful you tin get a amended presumption of Strix Halo series’ performance. These tests were tally astatine Ultra settings, and to support things simple, I near ray tracing and upscaling disabled crossed the board. For an iGPU, the show is phenomenal and trades blows with the RTX 4060 mobile. It inactive won’t marque consciousness for galore radical considering the signifier origin with its higher terms point, but arsenic a long-time tech enthusiast, it leaves maine genuinely excited astatine what’s coming.

An important happening to enactment astir show compared to the RTX 4060 is that it is precise babelike connected the crippled and the further settings you use, peculiarly erstwhile it comes to rendering techniques similar DLSS with Nvidia and FSR with AMD, and ray tracing tech.All things considered, the Radeon 8060S is amended matched against the mobile RTX 4050. And for an integrated GPU, that’s truly impressive.

Frame complaint is lone 1 portion of the equation, too. Because it’s not moving a power-hungry other component, its ratio is besides overmuch amended than a competing gaming laptop adjacent with a little performance. Realtime gaming uptime connected artillery varies depending connected however demanding the crippled you’re playing is (I averaged astir 90 minutes playing World of Warcraft, for example). For a much standardized test, I enactment the laptop done its paced with Procyon’s Battery Benchmark, and it lasted 9 hours and 26 minutes.

The different payment is the debased instrumentality noise. Though you tin surely perceive the Z13 erstwhile its fans are moving astatine afloat tilt, it's inactive quieter than astir gaming laptops with comparable hardware. I was capable to play games sitting adjacent to my woman connected the sofa arsenic she enjoyed the latest occurrence of Virgin River connected Netflix. As a hubby that has caught side-eye owed to the loudness of gaming laptops before, I was relieved to find it overmuch much tenable for usage successful adjacent proximity with others. I would instrumentality this into a assemblage room without a 2nd thought.

The information that the Z13 is simply a 2-in-1 means it has to marque definite compromises that interaction its usability, but acknowledgment to its coagulated keyboard folio case, it works perfectly good arsenic a mean laptop astir of the time. Now, there's nary mode astir that a folio screen is ne'er going to bushed a dedicated high-quality laptop keyboard, but arsenic mentioned earlier, it’s a fantastic folio keyboard with a large trackpad to match.

The laptop works champion erstwhile utilized connected a table wherever the kickstand tin clasp it astatine the due angle. I admit that Asus gave a batch of country for accommodation present and that the hinge for the kickstand is precise stiff. It's not rather arsenic bully erstwhile utilized connected your lap. The kickstand had a inclination to property into my legs, and it ne'er felt arsenic dependable arsenic a mean gaming laptop. It's besides deed oregon miss whether it volition enactment with your height-adjustable laptop stand. Depending connected its design, the kickstand whitethorn not beryllium capable to connection capable interaction to clasp the surface up. On others, wherever it's much of a coagulated platform, it works good though your mileage whitethorn vary.

Where it shines champion is erstwhile you detach the keyboard wholly and link a controller. This signifier of tablet mode shows disconnected its finesse and is akin to gaming connected a portable show and makes the Flow Z13 consciousness overmuch much similar a portable gaming console than a 2-in-1. It was a batch of amusive playing Baldur's Gate 3 this mode and adjacent World of Warcraft with a abstracted rodent and keyboard connected a tiny laptop desk.

Though it is simply a spot bulky and heavy compared to the Microsoft Surface Pro Gen 11, it's 1 of my favourite devices to transportation successful my backpack with the keyboard screen folded up. Its compact dimensions let it to descent successful a spot similar a textbook and arsenic I mentioned successful an earlier section, I would overmuch alternatively commercialized an other fewer millimeters of thickness for the massively improved show that the ROG Flow Z13 is capable to provide.