ASUS - ROG 13.4" Touchscreen Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 9 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti V4G Graphics - 1TB SSD - Off black

I absolutely love the 13” ASUS ROG Flow, but not in the way I expected. At just over ½” thick and weighing under 3lbs, it’s super compact and practical, which makes it a joy to carry around and use either as a laptop or tablet. This is significant, because I usually don’t like 2-in-1 laptops. They’re often heavy, too thick, and cumbersome, making them more of a novelty than something convenient. But here, the Flow is just slightly thicker than a tablet with a case, and the bottom screen bezel doubles as a finger grip edge, so you’re not blocking the screen as you’re holding it. It’s well thought out to be practical, which is a common theme with the ROG Flow. From its relatively large keyboard, to responsive touch screen, wide trackpad, backlit keys, and 120hz PANTONE calibrated Gorilla Glass screen, it’s a fantastic daily and media use laptop. As a gaming rig by itself, it does well for what it is, but likely needs the optional XG Mobile attachment for serious Ultra graphics gaming. BUILD / DESIGN Well built and compact, the Flow X13 is a pleasure to carry around (especially coming from a 15” laptop). I love the matte black finish and the 360° screen hinges enable it to convert into a tablet, or tent it open to stand up like a table top TV. There’s a lot of small details that I appreciate, like the subtle curve to the keyboard keys for better tactile feedback and an excellent trackpad that doesn’t seem to miss. At about 0.65” thick, it’s even practical as a tablet with a responsive touch screen that’s also stylus compatible. ASUS claims a 10 hour battery life playing video at 150 nits, but it’s maybe more like 6-7 hours in practical use. It drops to about 3-4 hours for something more intensive like gaming, but it really depends on your settings and how you’re using it. The fingerprint reader (power button) works well, but is tiny and a pain to set up. However, after it’s set I noticed all I had to do was slide my finger across the sensor and it matched me quickly. The ports are up to date with two USB-C 3.2 gen 2 ports and one USB-A 3.2 gen 2 port. Be sure to look behind the rubber PCIe cover to find the 2nd USB-C port. The body’s all plastic, but it’s rigid with a high quality feel. The Gorilla Glass screen should ensure it can take as much abuse as most smartphones. No word on how it holds up to drops, but I’m hoping to never test that either. If that happens in your first year though, ASUS is cool enough to include 1 year of accidental drop protection after registering. DAILY PERFORMANCE Powered by an 8 core AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU with onboard Radeon graphics and a secondary NVIDIA RTX 3050 Ti graphics card, ASUS crams a lot of power into a thin body. They keep the infrastructure speedy too, with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVME HD that tested at up to 2.5 GB/s on CrystalDiskMark tests. It’s remarkable that it doesn’t have cooling issues, but the thermal management works great and the fans are just about whisper quiet in every mode except Turbo. The bottom can get extremely hot in laptop mode, so beware of actually using it on your lap. This seemed to be more of an issue when gaming in Performance and Turbo mode though, so in regular day to day use, it’s likely fine. With the fan exhaust ports in the rear and right side, the cooling system works even better when the laptop is tented or in tablet mode, because the heat rises straight out of the top and even stays cool after 6 hours of streaming HD video. A dedicated Armoury Crate button quickly launches the app to make adjustments to the performance modes and screen settings. You can even save presets for specific games, which is really neat. For everyday office, streaming, web surfing, photo editing, and 4K video editing, the Asus Flow is snappy in both laptop and tablet modes. It’s an absolute pleasure to use as a main day to day laptop, but as a gaming laptop, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. GAMING PERFORMANCE As a stand alone gaming rig... it’s ok. It has the new RTX 3050 Ti GPU, which is Ray Tracing and DLSS capable, but you’ll need to find less demanding games to take advantage of it. Playing Doom Eternal on Ultra Nightmare settings, it averaged about 70-75 fps, which isn’t half bad if you know how crazy the game can be. However, playing it over HDMI on an extended monitor, the frame rate dropped to about 45-55fps, which was disappointing. Granted, this was with all of the graphic settings on Ultra Nightmare, which is a stress test for many computers, let alone a laptop. Turn it down just a notch and Doom’s super smooth on the 120hz screen. Cyberpunk2077 on the other hand…no. With low graphic settings playing on the internal screen, it struggled to even run at 60fps. However, there’s an XG Mobile peripheral, which is basically an external GPU hub powered by an RTX 3080 that should instantly turn the Flow X13 into a serious gaming rig. It plugs into a nifty PCIe 3.0 x8 port that’s proprietary to ASUS, but I hope it gets widely adopted. Even without the XG Mobile, there’s a lot of possibilities with a PCIe port, which should offer the same speeds as adding a PCIe card directly to the motherboard. Outside of the graphics, the speakers sound great with immersive depth and spatial imaging by Dolby. It’s not “surround” surround, but it creates a nice phantom 3 channel front stage. ASUS managed to include the same size keyboard that’s in my 15” Macbook Pro, ensuring that my hands won’t get cramped and helping to prevent hitting the wrong key. For the best gaming experience, be sure to switch it to Turbo performance mode in Armoury Crate for the fastest processing, and switch the graphics to high performance mode in either NVIDIA 3D settings or in the Windows Graphics Settings. The NVIDIA GeForce Experience app might do it automatically when it optimizes games to run best on your system, but you’ll have to do it manually for Xbox GamePass games. For some reason, the Flow seems to prefer to use the internal Radeon GPU over the NVIDIA, even when it’s plugged in and in Turbo performance mode. This is significant, because by default, it wanted to play DOOM Eternal with the Radeon GPU and was averaging only 40-45fps with the internal screen on Ultra Nightmare graphics. A good 30fps less than when using the NVIDIA! I would think there would be some kind of automatic switchover for high end graphics use, but I can’t tell how or when it decides to automatically switch to the Radeon or the NVIDIA GPU. Not a big deal for me, but definitely something to know if you want the best gaming experience from this laptop. OVERALL Overall, the ASUS ROG Flow X13 is a top notch 2-in-1 media laptop that’s relatively good for gaming. It can’t handle Cyberpunk2077, but DOOM Eternal on Ultra was fine, and it should be much smoother with less intensive games. When I think of a gaming laptop, I usually picture a 15” behemoth that’s “portable”, but not in a daily sense and acts more like a 2nd computer. ASUS flips the picture here with an emphasis on portability and practicality, making it great for daily use and why I like it in a different way than I anticipated. I’m using it far more than I anticipated and it’s quickly becoming my main computer. If you’re in the market for a portable laptop to do just about everything AND be a serious gaming machine with a full size graphics card, the ASUS ROG Flow X13 has the potential to be that. Add the XG Mobile peripheral and you’ll have a high powered laptop running an RTX 3080, which should handle most anything. Even if you don’t game and just want a high quality PC laptop with a better graphics card, the Flow X13 by itself should make you very happy. Highly recommended! PROS - Portable and practical - Well built, attractive matte black finish - 120hz screen refresh rate - Responsive trackpad and touchscreen - Converts into a tablet - 15” keyboard - Excellent Dolby sound - Dual graphics cards (Radeon and NVIDIA 3050 TI) - Two USB-C 3.2 gen 2 ports, one USB-A 3.2 gen 2 port - Calibrated PANTONE color validated HD screen - 16GB RAM (expandable to 32GB) - 1TB NVME HD (2.5 GB/s on CrystalMark test) - Backlit keyboard - 8 core Ryzen 9 5900HS processor - ASUS PCIe x8 port - Ability to add ROG XG mobile external GPU for serious gaming - Averages about 70 FPS playing DOOM Eternal on Ultra Nightmare - Very quiet fans - Asus pen stylus compatible - Gorilla Glass screen - Adaptive-Sync display support - 16:10 screen ratio - Free 1 year accident coverage from ASUS after registering - Fingerprint reader - Curved keys on keyboard - Armoury Crate makes switching performance and color easy - Link MyASUS works well with LG v50 CONS - Screen is limited to 1080P (4K@60hz screen also available) - Struggles to handle Cyberpunk2077 on low - Bottom gets very hot in Turbo and Performance laptop mode - Struggles to play DOOM Eternal on Ultra Nightmare on an external screen (avg 40 FPS) - External screen output performance better for videos and media than gaming - Needs ROG XG Mobile Dock to handle demanding games on Ultra graphics settings - Forget about Crysis - No ethernet port - Fingerprint reader (power button) is small - Doesn’t always automatically use the NVIDIA GPU for games - Doesn’t have built-in game optimization program

I prefer ultrabooks as secondary computers and was intrigued by this 2 in 1 machine that was $1,199 when I got it on sale. The machine itself has moderate to poor thermals, moderate battery life and Asus bloatware, but it was $800 than the Razer Blade Stealth that I was looking to replace plus the RTX 3050 Ti is way better than the 1650 max q. I have an eGPU but I've rarely used it as I have a desktop with a RTX 3080. If you can't get it for $1,200 it's not worth it. Tablet mode is incredibly uncomfortable due to weight, and thermal vents expelling all the heat it generates. I like that it has 2 USB C ports (one is hidden in their ridiculous proprietary port for the eGPU that's either never in stock and more expensive than the laptop itself). I almost returned it when I thought there was only 1 USB C port. I use it with 2 external monitors on a little wheeled table so I can work in places that aren't just my desk. Gaming performance is decent but obviously it's an ultrabook and its weight is low so don't expect much. The screen quality is pretty good, but not as good as the razer blade stealth or Surface pro 8 (I bought all 3 and tried them, but $800 savings put the Asus in first). Tenting feature is kinda cool. If I want to watch a video while laying on the couch I'll use that. Overall? It's 3/5 Go up a size if you want to demand anything beyond "secondary computer" usage for this thing. 14-15" laptops have way better specs/thermals for the price.

Bought this recently on sale. It's a very compact laptop that's powerful for daily use and gaming. I enjoy using this laptop except for one fault: the lid will scratch the laptop near the vents whenever I open or close it. For a laptop that's only a few weeks old, this is disappointing and frustrating! Especially for someone like me who treasures the laptop. It almost made me return it, but I decided to keep it since I needed it for college.

Finally a laptop to replace the desktop. Speed, capacity and graphics. Boot up in seconds. Ample storage thanks to the 1tb SSD. Full 16gb RAM. AMD RYZEN multi-core 5000 chipset. FHD 120HZ 16:10 display. ON/OFF finger print reader. Comes with HDMI output as well as wireless display capability thanks to native windows-10. The touch screen functions like a tablet by folding the =keyboard over which disables the keypad for easy tablet work. I love the audio and backlit keyboard. USB, USB-C ports come in handing for charging and other accessories. System Checkup via MyASUS.

It’s the best computer for gaming and editing i if you are looking for something more flexible this is batter choice but.

Not sure if this is Best Buy or Asus' problem, but I purchased what was supposed to be a "Certified Open Box" device. It came in generic packaging, with the charger loose in the box. The device was covered in fingerprints, and the XGm cover ont eh side was nowhere to be found. Ignoring that, I turned on the computer and everything seemed fine. I even through on a couple games I planned to play and they worked fine. Now for the reason for the bad review. I tried to use a stylus on the screen, and it jumped and skipped. I can't draw a straight line. At first I though it was the pen, until I tried my friend's Surface Pen and it did the same thing. Then, I noticed that when I was using the touch screen with my finger, it would register my swipes as multiple rapid taps. Asus referred me to Best Buy, and I currently have a scheduled appointment with Geek Squad.

Good laptop overall but I would not give it a perfect score as my laptop is now getting super noisy when the fan is running at high speed. The diagnosis says that my laptop might have a fan problem. OK, a fan problem after 3 months of buying. Not to mention screen problems that happen about once per week.

I would bet there is no better gaming laptop out there. Why do I say this? It offers everything you'd want in a gaming laptop or a serious business laptop, without making it a ball and chain tied to your leg. It provides an amazing gaming experience, in a compact laptop size. It has decent battery life, high performance, a display and video graphics card that will impress even the most hard to please gamers, and has standard 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. All of this in a laptop the size of most small 13" business laptops that are popular today. From the keyboard, to the backlit touch pad, to the modest styling (not flashy, less likely to be robbed for it/have it stolen), to the proper sized fan for cooling, it seems this was well thought out and will separate itself from the amateurs. Did I mention the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader? Or that it is also a convertible, into a tablet? Or that the sound coming out of the speakers is beyond amazing. As a business laptop, time is money. And this allows you to be most productive without a spinning wheel while it loads a page or saves/opens a large AutoCAD file. You can be off working or at least have open Outlook while you are listening to a web broadcast or working on AutoCAD. I've had many times I hear from peers in the drawing business that their bosses don't appreciate the productivity thing and cheap out. This is worth every penny if productivity is respected. This is the first time I've used a gaming laptop and have thought it can be equally business as well as gaming because of its size and weight, plus nobody would know. That means a few things. It can be a dual duty machine. Or it can be used for business without folks thinking you are just a gamer who brought your machine to work for the day. The 16:10 ratio display, the graphics card, and the RAM/SSD on board means it can tackle just about anything you can throw at it. But it is also a laptop that is easy to type on, and also the trackpad is responsive without having to scroll things 3 or 4 times to get a smooth scrolling on pages.