I’ve long loved the idea of the Asus ROG Flow Z13 — the Microsoft Surface Pro of gaming laptops. In fact, when I got to test it for Laptop Mag, I called it “the future of gaming laptops, but the future could do with some more time in the oven.”
The gaming versatility of this form factor gives you impressive portability while drastically improving the raw horsepower over your standard handheld. Simply put, it’s an ideal middle ground, but it was seemingly humbled power efficiency-wise by relying on a dedicated GPU.
Well, with the advent of AMD’s brand new Ryzen AI Max APUs, packing integrated graphics that are just as beastly as an RTX 4060, Asus has gone back to the well and pulled out a banger.
I talked about there being a time when the idea of a dedicated graphics card became a thing of the past — an intersection point between Nvidia’s power-hungry GPUs and integrated graphics where users get all the fidelity and frames per second they could possibly want thanks to raw horsepower and AI.
And with the Flow Z13, I believe this is the first real step of that transition.
Asus ROG Flow Z13: Specs
Asus ROG Flow Z13: What we like
I had a shopping list of things Asus needed to improve for a new generation of ROG Flow Z13, and the team’s done a lot of it!
Switch on speed
We’ve seen big screen gaming laptops and a new slew of Windows handhelds, but what is the middle ground? Acer would have you believe that it’s a rather silly-looking 11-inch handheld. But being real, I think Asus cracked the formula with this 13-inch 2-in-1 shell.
Of course over time, the company has been able to work on improving some key elements of the user experience too. The CNC-milled aluminum unibody chassis feels great in the hand and is even more versatile for all your gaming needs with a 170-degree kickstand. That Mini-LED display up top is sharper at 2.5K, more colorful with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut and smoother than what I’ve seen in the past at 180Hz.
And as for using the machine, that keyboard cover has a nice tactile feel to every key and a generously-sized smooth touchpad. Plus, the instant multitouch response of that touchscreen is pretty awesome too.
Bridging the gap between dedicated and integrated graphics
Historically, Asus has had to rely on a relatively underpowered dedicated GPU for all the gaming needs. Not to say this was an overtly bad decision, but it was some that came with some downsides — namely poor graphical fidelity paired with bad battery life. No matter how low you tune a dedicated GPU, it's still a power hog.
Well that’s where the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU comes in. Rocking 12 cores and 24 threads, alongside a beasty 32 graphics cores, leaked benchmarks and all other signs point to this being as powerful as an RTX 4060. Feeding both CPU and GPU is a new unified memory architecture, which gives each element more than enough of what it needs to not undergo any bottlenecking.
Not only that, but you get all of this gaming potential at a vastly lower TDP too — kept oh so cool and well ventilated by the 2nd Gen Arc Flow Fans.
This means Asus has the confidence to claim this machine has up to 10 hours of battery life on that 70Wh cell. Hopefully, the claim isn’t overblown, but I’m definitely looking forward to testing this with a breeze through a AAA game — see what comes of it.
But if you want a little more…
On-the-go, you’ve got more than enough fidelity power in that AMD chip. However, if you wanted to really take it to the next level, that’s where the new ROG XG Mobile comes in — packing RTX 50-series graphics into a small form factor that connects easily over Thunderbolt 5.
This drastically expands connectivity options beyond the proprietary port you saw on the last generation external GPU, and with everything you’ve seen announced including the next generation DLSS, you can be certain of this behemoth unlocking some truly incredible graphics at home.
Asus ROG Flow Z13: What we don’t like
But while the majority of my gripes have been resolved, there is still just one thing that I’m gonna chalk up to being “just a tablet thing.”
Limited port array
Yes, I get this is a different form factor to the beefy gaming laptops, which are so full of holes you’d think they were peppered by a Tommy Gun. This is a tablet, but also it could’ve been Asus’ chance to really define what a gaming 2-in-1 is.
Instead, the HDMI port is MIA, the ethernet has been ethered, and don’t even get me started on the fact that there’s only two USB-C on here. For gaming purposes, you absolutely need more — especially if this is being pitched as a portable, versatile alternative to the traditional juggernauts.
Asus ROG Flow Z13: Outlook
Yes, I know that RTX 50-series is the biggest star of the show, and don’t get me wrong, I’m hyped. But I’ve gotta be real, I’m more excited about integrated graphics — six words I never thought I’d utter in my lifetime.
Of course, I’ll save final thoughts about this for when we’ve properly benchmarked this system for ourselves to see whether my assumptions come correct. But with my time using the system, I’m feeling damn confident they will be.
A couple years ago, I said the Asus ROG Flow Z13 needed some more time in the oven. And now, it’s come out looking like one of my top predicted picks for the best gaming laptop of 2025.
