The Asus ROG Flow Z13 would be impressive as a 14-inch laptop. As a 13-inch detachable tablet, it's incredibly fast, well-made, and easy to recommend.
Asus ROG Flow Z13 MSRP $1,880.00 Score Details DT Editors' Choice “The Asus ROG Flow Z13 offers unparalleled power per pound.” Pros Cons I love a good unicorn, and I’m not talking about the mythical creature with a pointy horn. I’m talking about technology that feels like it shouldn’t exist or succeed — but still does anyway. The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is one such a unicorn, and that’s because it stuffs a blisteringly fast CPU and a surprisingly speedy GPU into an audacious detachable tablet.
Design Yes, the ROG Flow Z13 really is a tablet. It’s thicker than the industry standard Surface Pro 9 at 0.56 inches at its thickest versus 0.37 inches. And the Asus is heavier, at 2.6 pounds for just the tablet versus 1.94 pounds. Thanks to its slightly larger display, it’s a bit wider than the Surface. It also has a 16:10 aspect ratio that’s less tablet-friendly than the Surface’s 3:2.
Now, on to the good stuff. Somehow, Asus incorporated enough extras into the ROG Flow Z13 to make it stand out uniquely as a gaming tablet. From the front, it’s the typical black slate with small display bezels on the sides and slightly chunky bezels on the top and bottom. But turn it around, and there’s some ROG styling, with holes drilled in that double as venting.
When it is, there’s some give that makes mashing the keys a slightly bouncy experience. The small mechanical touchpad is OK, and the display is touch- and pen-enabled. Asus doesn’t include the pen, which is weird at these prices, but it’s around a $50 purchase for those who want to write and draw on the display.
It also packs in an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060, a midrange GPU many times faster than the integrated graphics in every other Windows tablet. The RTX 4050 is an option too, and both GPUs receive 65 watts of power . For around $100, there’s no reason not to choose the much faster RTX 4060. In theory, it should be a major upgrade over the RTX 3050 Ti included in the original model.
There’s remarkably little thermal throttling even in intensive tasks, with CPU temperatures remaining in the 70 degrees to 80 degrees Celsius range for most operations. It will spike at up to 95 degrees Celsius when gaming, but overall, the cooling system works well. One thing I discovered when testing the ROG Flow Z13 is that you must use the included power adapter. It’s a 130-watt USB-C adapter, which I thought would be roughly equivalent to the one Dell ships with the XPS 16. So, out of convenience, I used the Dell adapter to power the Asus. That was a mistake. The ROG Z13 wants to use its own adapter, or it won’t switch into Turbo mode — and performance across the board is terrible. I don’t know what additional circuitry Asus is using, but it matters.
To make for an actionable comparison, I included some much larger laptops in the group. I also included the Surface Pro 9’s results, which are more limited because we didn’t bother running some of our more intensive benchmarks on Microsoft’s relatively underpowered tablet. Gaming By now, you won’t be surprised to hear that when it comes to gaming performance, the Flow Z13 again impresses.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the ROG Flow Z13 hit 45 fps at 1440p and ultra graphics, with FSR 2.1 at Quality. The Alienware M16 R2 with an RTX 4070 high was faster at 55 fps. The XPS 16 was also slightly faster at 50 fps. After few tweaks in this game, such as turning FSR 2.1 to performance, the ROG Flow Z13 went up to 65 fps. The HP Omen Transcend 14 with the RTX 4060 barely cracked 30 fps.
2-In-1S Asus ROG Flow Z13 ROG RTX 4060
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