The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a breakthrough gaming tablet that puts traditional gaming laptops on notice. With the help of AMD's brand new Ryzen AI Max APUs, this is capable of better performance than an RTX 4060 laptop — all without a dedicated GPU (a dream come true for battery life).
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00:00This is a pretty wild time for gaming. NVIDIA RTX 50 series. That's it. That's the video. Take care
00:08everyone. No, actually. Is it weird that I'm immediately not fascinated by a big spec bump
00:14and instead what I'm thinking about is the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 coming back. So let's talk about it.
00:22The ROG Flow Z13 is basically what you get when Microsoft Surface Pro gets a little busy in the
00:28bedroom with a gaming laptop. ASUS took that to heart and they've gone back to the drawing board
00:33and they've come back with this thing. And after a couple of years in the oven it's a gaming tablet
00:39two-in-one hybrid that doesn't have a dedicated GPU whatsoever. Instead you've got the AMD Ryzen AI
00:47Max Plus 395. This is the top tier APU that's coming out of AMD and as leaks have shown it is graphically
00:57more capable than an RTX 4060 dedicated GPU. You're not going to have all of the heat dissipation
01:04problems with integrated graphics. Things stay a lot cooler. So your tablet's probably not going to
01:09sound like it's taking off every time you turn it on. On top of that with the 70 watt hour battery
01:13inside using integrated graphics consumes a far less amount of power just slow sipping it. So you'll
01:21probably get a lot more gaming potential out of that rather than your average gaming laptop with a
01:25dedicated GPU that will last just about to the end of this sentence. And in terms of making the games
01:31look good you've got that beautiful mini LED display up front with a QHD resolution and it's got a
01:37180 hertz refresh rate. Pair that with some of AMD's frame generation techniques and you could be running
01:43some games pretty smoothly to say the least. Port wise you've got what you need and that's about it.
01:50USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, headphone jack. Would I have liked more for gaming? Yes but it's a gaming tablet
01:57so deal with it I guess. And in terms of that keyboard cover I would describe it as surprisingly
02:04good. Don't get me wrong it's not the full mechanical switches that you'd probably like to play with at
02:09home on your laptop. But ASUS does work around that with a pretty solid 1.7 millimeter key depth
02:16on each key that has a nice tactile bump every time you get to the bottom of it. And there's
02:21little magnets so that it actually sticks to the bottom of the display so you've got a nice angle
02:25and the trackpad feels surprisingly good on it. And finally top it off with what I would like to call
02:33just the tablet things. Namely it does indeed have a 5 megapixel front-facing camera with Windows
02:40hello infrared capabilities. It also has a 13 megapixel rear view camera but please don't be
02:47that person that takes photos on their tablet. It was cringe five years ago and it's cringe now.
02:51And all of that is crammed into a CNC milled aluminium shell that comes in at just 1.2 kilograms or
02:59roughly 2.4 pounds I think. And it is surprisingly sleek at 12 millimeters thin and you've got that
03:06nice little window in the back so you can see all of the little gubbins inside at work. But what if
03:11you're telling me Jason I like all of the integrated graphics work while I'm out and about. What if I
03:16wanted something a little bit more powerful when I got home? Good question. Let me tell you about the
03:22ROG XG mobile GPU. The next one from them. Because they've done this before. They're pretty pricey.
03:28Don't get me wrong. You're probably looking at about $1,500 or more. What you get with it is Asus's
03:36first Thunderbolt connected external GPU. It doesn't actually just connect to the ROG Flow Z13. You could
03:45use it with anything. If you were feeling a bit mental connect it to your Asus Zenbook A14. I mean
03:51don't but you could. So after my time going hands-on with it and after seeing what power it's truly
03:59capable of. This could be my favorite laptop of the show. Turns out it's a two-in-one. But of course
04:05let's hold on that. Wait and see what happens after the review. Because my vibe that I'm getting from it
04:13at the moment is that this is the byproduct of Asus actually giving it more time in the oven. I think
04:20this is potentially going to be a more solid all-rounder in terms of gaming, in terms of
04:25performance, in terms of battery life. I'm really excited to get my hands on it. I'm not going to
04:28lie to you. But that's about enough for me. What do you think? Am I getting excited about all the
04:33wrong things by looking at the RTX 50 series and going, go ahead and let me know in the comments.
04:39And if you want to see any more of our videos, the subscribe button is somewhere down there.
04:42And if you want to read more of our stuff, then head on over to TomSky.com.
04:47I've been Jason England, and I'll talk to you next time.