ASUS - ROG Flow Z13 13.4" 2.5K 180Hz Touch-Screen Gaming Laptop - Copilot+ PC - AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 - 128GB RAM - 1TB SSD - Off Black

The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 is an incredibly powerful gaming laptop packed into a compact and portable design. The 13.4-inch 2.5K touchscreen looks sharp and smooth, and the 180Hz refresh rate makes gaming, scrolling, and everyday use feel very responsive. With the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor and a massive 128GB of RAM, this machine can easily handle demanding games, video editing, multitasking, and professional workloads. The 1TB SSD also provides fast startup times and plenty of space for games, software, and important files. What I really like about the Flow Z13 is its versatility. It gives you the power of a high-performance gaming laptop while still being lightweight and easy to carry. The touchscreen and tablet-style design also make it useful for presentations, creative work, travel, and entertainment. The Off Black finish gives it a clean and premium look. It is definitely an expensive device, but for someone who needs extreme performance in a compact form, the ROG Flow Z13 is an impressive option. Overall, this is a powerful, portable, and premium gaming laptop that is also suitable for content creators, business professionals, and anyone who needs serious performance on the go.

Sshort and simple. Power: As powerful as a 4070 RTX mobile. Can go as low as 5W. Extremely power efficient. Weight: A light laptop or a very heavy tablet. AI: Can load 120B LLM locally without any issues using LM Studio 30-50 t/ps Battery: Under 10W 8+ Hours. AAA games 1.5-2 hours. Emulations or indie games. 3-5 Hours. These are appoximations and can vary depending on your use case. Display: 180hz 10bit color display is very nice. Overall this device is an engineering marvel and I have no regrets. I did not think I would keep it but it's grown on me. The 8060s iGPU is also worlds faster than 890m in the HX 370 or Z2extreme devices

I spent a good couple weeks with the 64GB version, and only recently this came into stock and I was able to snatch one before they went out of stock again. So far it's had all of the above for a good 2-in-1 for me, good battery life, great for gaming, and amazing for AI work. Expect mid-4060 (laptop) to lower 4070 (laptop) performance from the iGPU. The only caveat I've noticed is the battery life TANKS, and by that I mean truly terrible, if you don't throttle performance while gaming on battery, but that's pretty much within my personal expectation for this device. I have a similar review under the 64GB model, but something I'd like to note for this device: If you're not a developer, a creator, or in the machine learning space, the 128GB is not worth the price tag for you. Many modern gaming laptops can do 90% of what this thing can do at half or less the price.

I was a bit worried about the form factor and to be 100% honest, the battery setup/life isn't ideal if that's what you need this for... but that's where my critical review ends. 128GB ram and a blazing fast processor on something the size of a large tablet is AWSOME. I did order a second power supply because I regularly move my device between my office and my couch and, like I said, battery life doesn't really cut it but I'm almost always next to an outlet so it's not a big deal. I've run dual hypervisors on here while running 4 code-writing codex agents while having 20 tabs open in edge and this thing didn't skip a beat. I literally couldn't see any performance degradation. I mostly work from a NAS so the 1TB thing wasn't a big deal for me either since I only keep current work on-device. Overall, I'm super happy with the purchase.

After having this for at least six months or so I have to admit that it is almost a flawless machine. The only "con" I can think of is that you cannot lift the stand from the left side which is a habbit I have to break still... There is just not a lip or anything to open it with on that side... For the long list of pro's.... - Battery life: partly because Armory Crate from Asus stops windows for periodically checking stuff when asleep or off. I can turn it off or let it sleep in my bag for a week and only loose 2% battery at most. - Performance: So I have thrown everything from LLM models to gaming at this. I would say that its on par if not slightly better than the Apple Macbook Pro 14" notebook I have. I have a 2tb SSD, 128GB of unified memory on that with the M4 Max and top graphics/cpu selection. This still does better at both LLM's and gaming. For games you should expect a RTX 5070 experience +/- 5% depending on the title. The extra Vram actually came in really clutch when Borderlands 4 was launched and bugged out. I dedicated 64GB to Vram and was actually able to run it where my 4090 was unable to... Fit and finish: Amory Crate is good mostly.... If the computer goes to sleep sometimes the lighting profiles do not "wake up" properly and end up either not having a keyboard light or turning on the back lights which I do not normally have on. That could use some work by Asus, not a BestBuy issue by all means. I just cleaned it off prior to this review and found there to be no scratches on the screen, the back or really anything... So its still looking new out of the box. Even the keyboard didn't retain oil or gloss over so far... Thats more than I can say for 99% of keyboards even! The screen: There is a nice anti reflective coating on the screen which makes it easy to read and stops reflections from being so harsh. I have had no issues with it wearing off. The screen itself is a good size, resolution and paired with either the slim pen or the pen pro works well for everything from hand writing to art. I take a lot of notes and keep a jounal daily so this gets a lot of hands on use... I am actually surprised at how well this works as a tablet. To give some depth into this... I pretty much stopped using my Boox Note Air 4C and just use this now... Use Case, who should buy this?: IT professionals, content creators, or editors on the go. It has no issue docking to a Cal Digit TS4 which is hooked up to 2 mac studio monitors. It also has no issue hooking up to the input of the USB/Display hub on my Lenovo Legion Ultra Wide monitor for gaming. Because the monitor has a built in USB hub I keep my speakers, ethernet, headset, keyboard, mouse and Elgato Stream Deck + plugged into the monitor. The KVM switches right over and I have a second screen right below for discord or web browsing while gaming. Cons: Bit pricy, but almost earns the price tag. Had the opted for a 2TB SSD instead of the 1TB and given us an option to have a 5G modem than this would be the perfect, end all be all of mobile computing. PERIOD. Asus Armory Crate still has its minor flaws, but some really big W's at fixing known windows issues. At this point anything beyond that I would be nit-picking.... If its within your budget and you want a do-it-all that you can dock and take with you, write on, draw on, hook up at the office... Its got the power... If you want something thats going to last you the whole day without paying for a Macbook (Mind you my MacBook Pro 14" was like 5-6k with the specs above) then well... Its best in class for windows portables. I would HIGHLY recommend this over a surface pro any day... Those are so limited on what they can do that its not worth your time.... Bite the bullet, spend the extra and you'll have a machine for 5-7 years instead of 2...