Just watch out for that high price tag and its limited ray tracing performance.
Fast forward to 2025, and that dream has been achieved, albeit with a couple of catches.
Youre going to see reviews point to these catches, and I wont shy away from them either.
(Image credit: Future)
But while they may harp on about this, the whole isfargreater than the sum of its parts.
Love the portability of playing on a gaming handheld?
The versatility of ways you could game on the Z13 nails that.
Want that all-in-one for work and play that a laptop can give you?
And as I predicted, the move to integrated graphics has done wonders for the battery life.
In fact, the only real obstacle in its way now is the price.
But make no mistake about it.
The company is cooking with this new 2-in-1, and the results aretasty.
From the many ways I could play and the raw horsepower to play with, to the stamina.
(Image credit: Future)
Acer would have you believe that its a rather silly-looking 11-inch handheld.
But being real, I think Asus cracked the formula with this 13-inch 2-in-1 shell.
No matter how low you tune a dedicated GPU, it’s still a power hog.
(Image credit: Future)
Well thats where the AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 APU comes in.
Rocking 12 cores and 24 threads, alongside a beasty 32 graphics cores.
And the end result?
(Image credit: Future)
There is a catch when it comes to ray tracing performance, but more on that later.
Lets just get to the big win here.
But this is only half the story.
The real Steam Deck magic comes into play here.
Like any gaming laptop, there’s a dedicated app to tune it.
But the moment you go in and change that to 16GB, the results speak for themselves.
Those are somesignificantincreases here almost like you’ve given your Flow Z13 a shot of adrenalin!
And what’s more, I could’ve squeezed even more out of this.
That’s the right balance for maintaining multitasking too.
So, before you do anything, here’s how to change this crucial setting.
1. pop kick open the AMD app
You’ll find it in the start menu.
Plus, powering two separate chips is definitely not the most power-efficient way of doing things.
But in regular day-to-day use, I hit around the 7-8 hour mark with a varied workload.
Controversial take: I think ray tracing is a little bit overrated.
But on a 13-inch screen, does it really make a difference?
Though, you could tune the prefs and get 60 FPS on medium.
Asus ROG Flow Z13: Verdict
The 2025 Asus ROG Flow Z13 is the epitome of balance.
Its a controversial idea, and dedicated graphics will still be a thing for alongtime to come.
But the Flow Z13 is the first realization that this balance is actually possible.
A couple years ago, I said the Asus ROG Flow Z13 needed some more time in the oven.
And now, its come out the oven as one of my favorite devices of the whole year.
