The new Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a solid step sideways

Asus makes the most powerful gaming tablet around — perhaps, the only hardcore gaming tablet you can buy. It’s a completely different animal from most detachable tablet 2-in-1 laptops, which tend to be focused on productivity work and media consumption. As I discovered with the 2024 Flow Z13, this tablet is aimed at running modern titles at playable frame rates.

The thing is, while the CPU got a significant upgrade, the GPU options are now limited to just one, the integrated AMD Radeon 8060S graphics compared to the highest-end option of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. In my testing, that makes the Flow Z13 a faster machine for everything but gaming, which is at best a step sideways in performance.

Specs and configurations

There are three versions of the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 currently listed on the Asus web store. The base model is $2,100, coming with an AMD Ryzen AI MAX 390 chipset, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 13.4-inch QHD+ IPS display (the only option). Upgrading to a Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 chipset adds $200 to the price, and the high-end configuration with a whopping 128GB of RAM costs $2,800.

That’s expensive, especially compared to the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 that starts at $1,000. But, you’re getting a ton of performance that other tablets simply cannot match.

Design

If you’re looking for a tablet because you want a thin and light device that you can easily take on the road for productivity work, then the ROG Flow Z13 isn’t the best choice. It’s considerably thicker at 0.59 inches and heavier at 2.65 inches than the leading Windows tablet, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 11 that’s 0.37 inches thick and weighs just 1.97 points. Add in the detachable keyboard, which is heavier in the newest model, and you’ll definitely feel like you’re carrying something around. Of course, if you’re looking for a gaming machine, then it’s quite light and highly portable. And of course, that’s exactly what this is supposed to be.

Aesthetically, this is an ROG gaming laptop through and through. It’s an all-black slate, with bold lines and aggressive venting along the top that’s obviously functional — a lot hot hot air escapes in the direction. In back, you’ll find a bunch of ROG design cues, along with a very Surface Pro-like fold-out kickstand that works great and has a notch cut out to reveal the most gaming touch Asus built into the ROG Flow Z13. Specifically, that’s a window cutout revealing an RGB-lit view into some of the guts inside. The lighting is controllable and you won’t see the effect when you’re using the tablet — but your lan party friends will see it.

It’s built solidly enough, as well as all other premium laptops I’ve used, using high-density aluminum that receives two anodizing coats and has a soft-touch anti-fingerprint finish. It’s sealed up tight, which is a departure from larger gaming laptops that often some offer upgradable components.

Keyboard and touchpad

The detachable keyboard has been upgraded a bit, with larger keycaps, and it features single-zone RGB lighting that’s customizable using the ROG Armory Crate app. The layout is fine, with separate arrow keys, and the switches are deep and responsive. It should please most gamers who don’t want to carry a mechanical keyboard around with them. The keyboard props up at a comfortable angle, as with the Surface Pro 11 Type Cover, and that gives it the same kind of slight bounce when you’re mashing keys.

The touchpad is also a little larger in this version, and it’s large enough to be comfortable — which is sometimes unusual with detachable keyboards. It’s a good-enough mechanical version with slightly loud and harsh button clicks. The display is touch- and pen-enabled, and the pen is a $50 option.

Webcam and connectivity

There are two cameras, a front-facing 5MP version with an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, and a 13MP rear-facing camera for taking pictures and video. Both have decent images. The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ chipset has a very fast Neural Processing Unit (NPU) running at 50 tera operations per second (TOPS), exceeding the Microsoft Copilot+ PC requirement of 40 TOPS for on-device AI processing. That gives you plenty of headroom for using today’s AI features and heading into the future.

Connectivity is changed up this time around. The last version used an Intel chipset and so had Thunderbolt 4. This generation is AMD, and so it’s USB4. That’s just as fast. There’s also an HDMI 2.1 port this time, to go with the USB-A port and 3.5mm audio port. The microSD card reader is welcome.

The larger change is that Asus has dropped the ROG XG Mobile proprietary interface, with the new ROG XG Mobile that connects via Thunderbolt 5. Here, you’d use a USB4 port instead. The XG Mobile is an external GPU enclosure that packs an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU inside. That’s the accessory that enables the ROG Flow Z13 to be a pretty fast portable gaming tablet and an incredibly fast desktop gaming machine. The 2025 XG Mobile is smaller and lighter than the previous model, which was a pretty hefty unit. I don’t have pricing for the accessory, but it will likely be upwards of $2,000, so it will be attractive to the most hardcore gamers.

Thermals

With a very high-performance AMD Ryzen AI MAX 390 or MAX+ 395 chipset inside, both of which run at a default TDP of 55 watts and can run at up to 120 watts, there’s a need for a serious thermal solution. That’s what Asus built, taking advantage of the slate format — no hinges to work around — to build in larger fans and a wider vapor chamber. And, air flow is better than with traditional laptops, given that the unit stands upright and so can suck an and expel a lot of air a lot more easily. The 2025 model incorporates a new airflow channel to keep the display cooler, an issue I noticed at times using the previous generation.

The vapor chamber is constructed of a mix of stainless steel and copper to reduce weight while still boosting cooling. The stainless steel portion serves as a heat sink, while the copper portion conducts heat away from the internal components. The ROG Flow Z13 uses second-generation Arc Flow fans that are incredibly thin and pack in 71 blade for improve performance without generating additional noise.

In use, the fans spun up but weren’t as loud and harsh as with many other gaming laptops I’ve used. 2025 ROG Flow Z13 certainly seems quieter than the previous model I reviewed.

Performance

There’s a choice between the Ryzen AI MAX 390 and MAX+ 395 chipsets. The former has 12 CPU cores and 24 threads and runs at up to 5 GHz, while the latter has 16 CPU cores and 32 threads and runs slightly faster an 5.1 GHz. I reviewed with the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395. As we’ll see, it’s a very fast chipset that churns through CPU-intensive tasks.

Looking at the 2025 model versus its predecessor, the AMD chipset provides a distinct advantage for highly demanding productivity tasks. It’s faster in both single-core and multi-core tasks, and it’s one of the few laptops that even pretends to compete with the MacBook Pro 16 with the new M4 Max chipset. In fact, it actually beat the MacBook Pro 16 in our Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB video to H.265.

Unlike its predecessor, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 uses AMD integrated graphics, specifically the Radeon 8060S. The AI MAX 390 has 32 GPU cores, while the MAX+ 395 has 40 GPU cores. In our benchmarks, the AMD graphics perform most like an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 discrete GPU, which is what was offered in the previous ROG Flow Z13 generation. We’ll talk more about that in the gaming section below.

Unfortunately, the ROG Flow Z13 wouldn’t complete the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark that we use to rate a laptop’s performance with intensive video editing and encoding tasks. I suspect that the 2025 model would perform similarly to the previous model, which would make it a fast enough solution for moderately demanding video editors. I spent a few hours trying to get the benchmark to run, and I believe it was an issue with the benchmark and not the laptop.

Regardless, this is by far the fasted tablet around for anyone who wants to get work done on the road. And paired with the XG Mobile and the RTX 5090, and it will be one of the faster stationary system for video editing as well. That I can guarantee.

Gaming

While the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is a significant uptick in performance for everything but gaming, the question becomes: how is it as a gaming laptop? In short, the integrated Radeon 8060S graphics are close to the same performance as the RTX 3060, meaning the 2025 model is a sideways step and certainly not an advance.

The display runs at a faster 180Hz, compare to the previous generation’s 165Hz and it now supports AMD’s FreeSync technology, so if you connect the XG Mobile with the RTX 5090, you’ll have a better chance at tear-free gaming. By itself, the tablet’s refresh rate vastly exceeds its performance capabilities.

Starting with 3DMark’s Time Spy test, the ROG Flow Z13 scored 10,352, compared to the 2024 model’s 12,159. That’s a 17% drop, which isn’t great. However, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 with an AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 and an RTX 4070 scored just 10,743, while the Acer Swift X 14 with a Core Ultra 7 155H and an RTX 4070 scored 9,545. By this synthetic benchmark, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is a very good performer, even if it drops off a bit from the previous generation that was clearly impressive.

Switch to some real-life gaming benchmarks, we’ll start with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. In 1200p and ultra high graphics mode, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 hit 86 frames per second (FPS), compared to the 2024 model’s 117 FPS, another drop off. The Asus ROG Strix G17 with an AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX and RTX 4060 hit 102 FPS, and the HP Omen 16 with a Ryzen 9 7940HS and RTX 4070 managed 103 FPS. This wasn’t a strong title for the 2025 ROG Flow Z13.

In Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1200p and Ultra graphics, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 ran at 96 FPS, compared to the 2024 model at 78 FPS. The ROG Strix G17 hit 78 FPS. That makes the newest tablet quite a bit stronger. And in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p and ultra graphics with FSR 2.1 on auto, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 hit 67 FPS, compared to the previous generation’s 88 FPS.

So, ultimately, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is around the same speed as the 2024 model, and depending on the title might be a bit faster or a bit slower. It’s a very competent 1200p gaming tablet across the board, able to sustain 60 FPS or better in most modern games, and it will play older or less demanding titles at 1440p.

Battery life

With such powerful components inside and a high-resolution, high-refresh rate display, you shouldn’t really expect great battery life. There’s a 70 watt-hour battery inside, which is considerably larger than the 56 watt-hour version of the previous generation, but seriously. You’ll really want to take the very large power brick along with you if you plan to be away from your office for any significant period of time.

I saw just 7.5 hours of video looping and less than an hour of running through out demanding Cinebench R24 test. That’s slightly more than the previous generation, but not enough to change my mind. It’s another area where this is definitely a gaming tablet and not a productivity tablet, given that the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 lasts for more than twice as long in the same tasks.

Display and audio

The 2025 ROG Flow Z13 has a 13.4-inch 16:10 QHD+ (2560 x 1400) IPS display running at 180Hz. That makes it fast enough to avoid tear-free gaming, and high-resolution enough to support 144op gaming and make for a great work machine. And the image was bright and colorful during my testing.

When I used my colorimeter to evaluate the display, I was pleasantly surprised. First, it’s incredibly bright at 533 nits, one of the brighter displays we’ve tested and rivaling the Apple MacBook Pro 16 mini-LED panel. It’s way above our threshold of 300 nits, and means you’ll enjoy an incredibly bright gaming experience. Contrast was also very good for IPS at 1,270:1, beating our 1,000:1 benchmark. It doesn’t have the inky brightness of OLED and its HDR performance won’t be as good, but it’s still excellent. Colors were unusually wide for IPS, coming in at 100% sRGB, 90% AdobeRGB, and 97% DCI-P3, well above the IPS averages of 100%, 75%, and 75%, respectively. And the color accuracy was excellent at a DeltaE of 0.97 (less than 1.0 is as good as it gets).

This is a great display for every user. Gamers, productivity users, creators, and media consumers will all find something to like.

Audio is provided by two side-firing speakers, and it’s fine. You’ll want some headphones or an external speaker when gaming or streaming.

A step sideways, but still the best gaming tablet

Yes, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 doesn’t take a huge step forward in terms of gaming performance. Perhaps Asus will optimize the drivers and the Radeon graphics will get faster, but for now, you’re not going to see better gaming than the 2024 model.

But that’s okay, because the portable gaming performance is still the best you’ll find in a tablet. And the ability to add a crazy-fast RTX 5090 when you’re stationary is an intriguing — if expensive — option for hardcore gamers. And if you want a tablet that will churn through demanding productivity and creative tasks, then the ROG Flow Z13 has you covered there, as well.