Asus ROG Flow Z13

A tablet PC with true desktop replacement performance? That’s what the incredible Asus ROG Flow Z13 and its ROG XG Mobile sidekick promise.

Asus ROG Flow Z13
(Image: © Future)

Our Verdict

The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is an astonishing technical achievement, but is also undeniably flawed. Cramming an Intel Core i9-12900H 14-core CPU and RTX 3050 Ti graphics into a tablet PC is completely crazy, for both better and worse. It makes for a remarkably powerful tablet and yet the 12900H processor in particular simply can’t give its best in such a confined space. As for the ROG XG Mobile graphics dock and its Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics, it’s a similar story. As impressive as it is that the whole ensemble actually works, ergonomically it's a bit of a mess, the physical connection feels fragile and the performance isn’t on par with a good laptop with similar components, let alone a desktop. There's still real appeal here for certain very specific workflows, but it's squeezed into an uncomfortably narrow niche.

For

  • Staggering performance for a tablet PC
  • Mostly fabulous build quality
  • Stellar feature set

Against

  • Ergonomically a bit of a mess
  • ROG XG Mobile connection feels fragile
  • An expensive route to high performance

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Where to begin with the extraordinary new Asus ROG Flow Z13 and its ROG XG Mobile RTX 3080 sidekick graphics box? This is a tablet PC unlike any other. It’s absolutely rammed with high spec components, including no fewer than three GPUs in this configuration.

To that you can add a 14-core Intel 12th Gen CPU, 1TB SSD, 16GB of DDR5 memory, CNC milled aluminium chassis, vapour chamber cooling with liquid metal and a clip-on keyboard with RGB lighting. Yes, all in a tablet. But the really exceptional bit is that triple-graphics config. You get one integrated GPU in the Intel processor, a dedicated laptop GPU in the tablet itself and then yet another in the external ROG XG Mobile box, the latter being a beefy Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 mobile chip.

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