Asus has announced its ROG Flow Z13, which it touts as “the world's most powerful gaming tablet.” Yes, you read that right—this is a gaming tablet. Not a mobile game, but a PC game. There's an RTX 3050 Ti inside, and you can connect it to the Asus ROG XG Mobile's external GPU for more frames.
I'll warn right away that we don't have a price for this thing yet, and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing we're expecting isn't super affordable, especially if you have XG Mobile installed. Asus' latest crack at this kind of form factor, the ROG Mothership, starts at $5,499.
But even if it ends up being a luxury product, it may at first glance be a form factor that will eventually reach a more accessible level (as we're starting to see with, say, dual-screen devices). We'll find out more when the devices are released in “Q1/Q2 2022.”
Either way, if you look at this device and think, "Wow, Surface Pro," you're not alone. After spending a bit of time with the ROG Flow Z13, I can confirm that it feels just like using the Surface Pro too. There's a detachable kickstand and keyboard, which pop on and off with minimal effort. This is a generally good looking and well made device.
Some things may not be visible from the pictures. First off, it's huge. The main benefit of these detachable devices is generally how thin and light they are. This thing weighs 2.43 pounds and is 0.47 inches thick. It's a thick tablet, that's what I'm saying — it's a very different experience from using an iPad of any size, and it's not something I want to carry around the house or hold while I'm giving presentations. (It's still pretty compact compared to the 10.5-pound Mothership, of course.)
Secondly, the keyboard is quite flexible. This is a problem I've had with previous Surface Pro models, though Microsoft has tightened it up in the latest. I already have light keystrokes, but every tap I squeeze depresses this removable deck. I'm not someone who usually pays attention to keyboard flex at all, but even I was a little gobsmacked by how much this one bounced up and down throughout the day. I would probably recommend that people who really want a solid keyboard deck wait for the next generation. With that said, I really enjoy typing on this thing because the keys have a wild amount of travel (1.7mm).
Elsewhere, I don't have much to complain about. The 13-inch, 3840 x 2400 touch screen looks good and is responsive. There's also a useful selection of ports (which you rarely see on a product of this kind) which includes USB-C with Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort 1.4, USB-A, and a microSD slot in addition to a headphone jack. Connecting XG Mobile (which can now offer the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT as well as the GeForce RTX 3080) will add a lot more, including DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and another RJ-45 Ethernet.
The factor that will make or break this device, of course, other than price, is the framerate. The Flow Z13 has a 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900H, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage in addition to the RTX 3050 Ti. The Core i9 is the biggest unknown — last year's ROG effort at ultraportable gaming, the ROG Flow X13 convertible, has a terrible AMD processor inside, and we don't yet know how this new Core i9 will compare. The X13's battery life isn't great either, so that's a question mark.
The Z13 does have an advantage over traditional clamshell laptops in that the bottom doesn't stick to the desk. In theory, this should provide more room for cooling (and the Mothership runs cooler than many of its competitors). The device was warm during most of my non-gaming use, but I didn't hear any fans running.
All told, the fact that there's a tablet you can play games on, and it appears to work, is cool. It's a fun device to use, and I'm all for powerful devices that are getting thinner and lighter without sacrificing everything else a laptop user could want. The detachable form factor, if this year's CES is anything to go by, seems like a strategy the manufacturers see as a viable way to do that.
