![Halo Infinite on the display of the ROG Flow Z13.](https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/rog-flow-z13-02.jpg?resize=625%2C417&p=1)
“The Asus ROG Flow Z13 proves why gaming tablets might be the future of gaming laptops.”
- Bright, beautiful screen
- Amazing portability
- Ingenious design
- Surprisingly good performance
- Comfortable keyboard and touchpad
- Poor battery life
- Dorky aesthetic
- Mediocre webcam, no Windows Hello
The ROG Flow Z13 shouldn’t be possible.
It’s a device not much bigger than a Surface Pro, yet with some bona fide gaming parts inside. It’s a 2-in-1 laptop – detachable keyboard and all – but with the power of a legitimate gaming laptop.
It’s more than just an engineering wonder for kicks and giggles. As it turns out, there are significant benefits gaming tablets have over gaming laptops, and the ROG Flow Z13 capitalizes on them.
Video review
Design
The ROG Flow Z13 is certainly unique, but it does build on the pedigree of two previous Asus products. The first is the ROG Flow X13, released last year. Like the Z13, the X13 focused on extreme portability – at least, for a
The other strand of DNA in the Flow Z13 is the ROG Mothership, a much more audacious project. It’s a 2-in-1 tablet, but stretched out to 17.3 inches with a weight of more than 10 pounds (with the keyboard included). A fun idea, but not exactly practical.
The ROG Flow Z13 takes that nugget of innovation and turns it into something surprisingly practical. The Flow Z13 weighs just 2.43 pounds and is only 0.47 inches thick. That makes it the smallest
Of course, there are downsides to this being a 2-in-1. Like the Surface Pro, the Flow Z13 is tough to use on your lap. The 160-degree, built-in kickstand, while excellent, doesn’t work so well in that scenario.
And despite how thin and light the Flow Z13 is for a gaming device, in most cases, it’s too heavy to use as an actual tablet. If you intend to use it that wy, you’ll likely be resting it on your lap or on a table.
However, it would work quite well propped up on a fold-down airplane tray. Connect up a wireless controller, and you’re all set for some gaming on the go. You can even play in split-screen mode, with up to four controllers supported for playing with friends. Not sure you’d want four people crowded around a tablet this small, though.
Lastly, Asus highlights how you might use the tablet more as a second screen for your desktop setup. These scenarios won’t apply to everyone, but there are some unique situations that only a device like the Flow Z13 can fulfill.
Display
The ROG Flow Z13 comes in two display flavors, both of which are mini-LED panels. There’s a
The Flow Z13 even fixes one of my problems with the Flow X13’s display, which is the brightness. The X13 maxed out at just 300 nits, whereas the Z13 can be cranked up to 528 nits. It’s a bright, beautiful screen — brighter than the latest MacBook Pro and Surface Pro 8. It has a slightly warmer tint than those screens, which is to be expected on a gaming device.
That brightness comes in handy, too, as the device uses a glossy screen rather than having a matte finish like most
The Flow Z13 fares well enough in color gamut (95% sRGB, 74% AdobeRGB), accuracy (Delta-E of 1.59), and contrast (1050:1), too. It might not be a screen you’d want to do precise color grading on, necessarily, but this is a better screen than those on the majority of
Ports
The Flow Z13 is pretty lacking in port selection. There’s a USB-A port on the right side and two
While that’s a bit limited for a
Beyond that, you’ll also find a headphone jack, a micro-SD card slot for expanding storage, a volume rocker, and a power button.
Performance
My review unit of the ROG Flow Z13 features an Intel Core i9-12900H processor, but you can also configure it with a slightly slow Core i7-12700H. Either way, it’s a 14-core CPU (six performance cores and eight efficiency cores). The result is fantastic processor performance, especially for a device this small. The Flow Z13 is one of the first units we’ve reviewed with Intel’s latest 12th-gen chips, and it’s off to a very impressive start.
Asus ROG Flow Z13 (Core i9-12900H) | Asus ROG Flow X13 (Ryzen 9 5900HS) | Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon (Ryzen 5800U) | Razer Blade 14 (Ryzen 9 5900HX) | |
Cinebench R23 (single / multi) | 1548 / 9664 | 1486 / 11478 | 1594 / 11788 | 1431 / 11226 |
Geekbench 5 (single / multi) | 1784 / 9386 | 1415 / 7592 | 1637 / 9139 | 1448 / 7243 |
PCMark 10 | 6417 | 6249 | 5682 | 6612 |
Handbrake (lower is better) | 103 seconds | 102 seconds | 102 seconds | 95 seconds |
The biggest standout from my CPU testing was the single-core performance in Cinebench R23. When turned turned into Turbo mode, its score was a record setter for
Unlike many
We’ll get to gaming, of course, but the Flow Z13 will handle just about anything else that you throw at it, too. It scored well in PCMark 10, which benchmarks day-to-day tasks like web browsing, word processing, videoconferencing, and even video editing. It obviously annihilates the Surface Pro 8, but it also surpasses last year’s ROG Flow X13 and stays in step with larger
All in all, this is a surprisingly well-cooled tablet.
Many tablets are passively cooled, meaning they don’t use fans. Not the Flow Z13. Asus has thrown in almost every trick in the book to keep this thing cool and quiet, from large vapor chambers over both the CPU and GPU to liquid metal on the processor for better heat transfer. It all adds up to a surprisingly well-cooled device. Even under the “Turbo” mode, the Flow Z13 is nowhere near as loud as a traditional
In Performance mode, with all cores powered up, the Flow Z13’s core temperatures never got higher than 70 degrees Celsius. I could push it up to 74 degrees in Turbo mode, but all in all, this is a surprisingly well-cooled tablet.
For the opposite effect, you can also change the performance setting to “Silent” in the Armoury Crate application, which turns off the fans entirely. You won’t want to do anything intensive in this mode, but if you’re just watching a video or browsing the web, it won’t feel any different than using an iPad in terms of noise or heat.
Gaming performance
The Flow Z13 includes Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti or 3050 for graphics options. I tested the more powerful option, and since the configurations are only selling for a $100 difference, I highly recommend opting for the 3050 Ti.
The 3050 is as low as you can go and still call something “gaming,” but on a device like this, where performance is undoubtedly limited to due lack of airflow, the bump up to the 3050 Ti is well worth the money.
Asus ROG Flow Z13 (RTX 3050 Ti) | Asus ROG Flow X13 (RTX 3050 Ti) | Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon (RTX 3050) | Surface Laptop Studio (RTX 3050 Ti) | |
3DMark Time Spy | 4612 | 4503 | 4223 | 4266 |
Fortnite | 46 fps | 47 fps | 40 fps | 57 fps |
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla | 34 fps | 20 fps | 34 fps | 37 fps |
Cyberpunk 2077 | 38 fps | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Civilization VI | 74 fps | 65 fps | n/a | 75 fps |
Our normal suite of game tests, all recorded above at the highest settings for each game, resulted in expected performance. As you can see, outside of lighter fare like Civilization VI, you’ll want to play most games on Medium settings for the best results, whether that’s Halo Infinite or Fortnite — both of which get over 60 frames per second (fps) without losing too much fidelity. Rarely will use the full breadth of the available 120Hz of refreshes, so you won’t be bottlenecked there unless you plan on connecting up the XG Mobile.
Of course, the more challenging games are where you start to see the limits of this graphics card. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla only averaged 45 fps at the High setting (the game’s medium preset) and 47 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 (again, at Medium). Both games were still smooth enough to play, but you’ll need to drop settings considerably to get closer to 60 fps.
All in all, gaming performance lines up with what the Flow X13 can do — it also had an RTX 3050 Ti. They’re both ahead of larger
The parts of the chassis you are actively interacting with stay blissfully cool.
But gaming on a laptop is about more than just frame rates. The genius thing about the Flow Z13 design as a 2-in-1 is its surface temperatures. Most devices, whether it’s something like a Dell XPS 15 or a Razer Blade, suffer from getting warm (or even downright hot) while under heavy load. The Razer Blade 14, in particular, even stays warm during more common tasks — it’s downright uncomfortable at times.
But because the Flow Z13 puts all of its hot components and thermals behind the screen rather than under the keyboard, the parts of the chassis you are actively interacting with stay blissfully cool. It makes long sessions of computing much more comfortable, and it’s key to what makes this design so smart. You’ll never end up with sweaty palms, and that’s not something you can say about any conventional
The Turbo mode I mentioned when talking CPU performance doesn’t make as big a difference in games. You’ll still see a bump of around 5-10% though, depending on the game, so it’s still worth having on since it’s not too loud.
Keyboard and touchpad
The ROG Flow Z13 includes a detachable keyboard cover, which is nearly identical to the Surface Pro Type Cover in functionality. It’s extremely high quality, and I’m surprised at how closely the Flow Z13 emulates the Surface Pro in this regard.
The keyboard cover magnetizes to the top of the screen when closed, and also has a secondary magnetized position for typing at more of an angle. The palm rests have a textured finish, like a more rubbery version of the Surface Type Cover. It picks up crumbs easily, but avoids fingerprints more than a smoother finish would.
As for the keyboard itself, you’ll be happy to know you’re getting a full 1.7mm of key travel — and it feels fantastic. This is the same keyboard you’ll find in Asus’ conventional
The touchpad is similarly excellent. Sure, it’d be great if it was a bit taller, but Asus makes up for the size with quality. The glass surface is super smooth, and is yet another step up from even many premium
Battery life
If there’s one pitfall for the ROG Flow Z13, it’s in battery life. The device has a 56 watt-hour battery inside, and while Asus claims up to 8 hours of life on a single charge, the reality is you’ll get much less. In 1080p local video playback, the tablet died after just under seven hours. That was with the screen at 100 lux, which was 13% screen brightness.
In light web browsing, the system lasted just four hours and 10 minutes. That’s over an hour less than the Flow X13 in the same test, and almost two hours less than the Razer Blade 14. All testing was done using the MUX switch, which helps the device switch between the discrete GPU and the integrated GPU.
Don’t even bother gaming on the battery, though that’s never recommended on
Cameras and security
Not much effort is put into the webcams and security features of
On the back of the tablet, you’ll find a world-facing 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting
Before the recent trend to increase the resolution of laptop webcams, 720p was the sad standard all
It’s unfortunate we’re stuck again with a 720p camera here, and even worse, it doesn’t include an IR sensor for Windows Hello. No facial recognition, and not even a fingerprint reader. This is a portable device, and I’m not sure why gaming brands think gamers care less about security and privacy than anyone else does.
Price and configurations
The ROG Flow Z13 comes in a few variations, with the two primary ones being the option between the RTX 3050/Core i7-12700H and the RTX 3050 Ti/Core i9-12900H. My review unit, the more powerful option, comes in at $1,900, and also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a
Of course, you can also opt to buy it bundled with the XG Mobile GPU enclosure, which pairs well with the device. But the XG Mobile hasn’t received any updates from last year outside an option for the RX 3850 XT, so I don’t want to imply that it’s necessary. It does, after all, add on a sizable chunk of change to your purchase.
Our take
The ROG Flow Z13 is a niche product in the same way the original Flow X13 was. But in doing something new, this little device challenges many of the assumptions we’ve made about makes a good
Are there any alternatives?
All the possible alternatives to the ROG Flow Z13 are compact
How long will it last?
The ROG Flow Z13 comes with the latest hardware, Windows 11, and some extremely well-made and durable materials. It feels solid and sturdy in the hand. The performance, however, may leave you wanting more a few years down the road. Nothing inside can be easily replaced or upgraded, either.
Should you buy it?
Yes. If you’re looking for a smaller alternative to a traditional
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