Every so often, we’re blessed with a major company dropping a product so patently ridiculous it slices through the mundane droves to capture our attention. Lenovo is particularly adept at this (and, in fact, just showed off some more bizarre proof-of-concept devices).
ASUS is also joining the fun with the triumphant return of its ROG Flow Z13, a 2-in-1 convertible that, at first glance, appears to be another Surface Pro competitor. Once you get closer, though, you’re slapped in the face with the over-the-top aesthetics and outrageously powerful gaming-focused hardware.
I’ve been eager to get my hands on the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025) since I first saw it at CES 2025, and now it’s actually on my desk. I get to play with what may very well be the world’s most powerful gaming tablet to my heart’s content, and it’s just as awesome as I hoped it would be.
But is it awesome enough to actually recommend to you?
What do I need to know about this laptop?
The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 very much follows the basic design ethos of the Surface Pro, in that it’s a Windows-powered tablet with a large touch-enabled display, built-in and highly adjustable kickstand, and a magnetically attached keyboard that also doubles as a protective screen cover when not in use.
ASUS also includes that keyboard in the box, unlike Microsoft, so you’re getting the complete package in one box. The ROG Flow Z13 shares little else with the Surface Pro, though, as it’s absolutely designed for gaming, creative work, and heavy-duty AI workloads.
This is a chunky tablet, with ample space for a healthy number of ports and massive vents for releasing all the heat its powerful hardware produces. Speaking of, you’ll find AMD Ryzen AI on the inside of the ROG Flow Z13, but not the chipsets with which we’ve grown familiar the last year.
No, the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025) is powered by the new Ryzen AI MAX platform, the most powerful chips AMD has ever designed for mobile hardware.
An all-in-one System-on-a-Chip (SoC), the Ryzen AI MAX chips boast a powerful CPU, a built-in Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with enough power to earn Copilot+ PC status and enable advanced AI computing, and AMD’s most powerful integrated GPU ever. Yeah, unlike its predecessor, the ROG Flow Z13 has no need to rely on additional, power hungry hardware from NVIDIA.
You can purchase the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025) starting now from $2,099.99 at ASUS, but both pricing and configurations for this monstrous machine are a bit confusing at the moment. ASUS ROG Flow Z13 preorders seem to be entirely out of stock, but we’ll likely see wider availability as the year progresses.
What’s the unboxing experience like?
The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025) is a premium device, so it doesn’t come to you held in a nondescript cardboard box or wrapped in tacky plastic. No, you’ll find the ROG Flow Z13 inside a compact, shiny silver box, with its massive 200W charger stashed safely in its own gleaming box.
Not content with the traditional box shape, ASUS did decide to cut a corner off this box for some reason. I suppose that doesn’t really make a difference, I just thought it was odd.
Shimmy the lid of the box off, and the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 greets you with its imposing, matte black metal back and the unique glass window that offers you a peek under the hood.
It’s a fine unboxing experience and this box is certainly much easier to keep around if you’re being cautious during your warranty/return periods or know you’ll eventually want to resell the ROG Flow Z13.
There’s an awful lot of wasted space under the tablet in this box, though. The ROG Flow Z13 understandably doesn’t come with an active stylus like most 2-in-1 convertibles, so I wonder if that was part of the plan at some point.
Can you really consider this a tablet?
ASUS may have made the ROG Flow Z13 unapologetically thick, but it is still a tablet at its core. You’ll certainly feel it when you’re holding this device, but you can always set it down at almost any angle thanks to the solidly built kickstand and its helpful silicon tab for opening it.
What surprised me is how good this keyboard cover is. Microsoft has been the uncontested champion with Surface Pro here, but the ROG Flow Z13’s keyboard attachment is spacious, with a good typing action and comfortable layout.
The glass touchpad is massive and feels buttery smooth. You even get customizable RGB lighting for the keyboard backlighting! Convenient magnets keep the keyboard firmly attached to the screen when everything is closed down, and more magnets let you prop the keyboard up at an angle by clipping to the bottom bezel.
Those features should be the default for these tablets, so take note, companies.
Slim bezels around a 13.4-inch display still mean holding a 13.4-inch display in your hands, but Windows 11 does adjust to accomodate the multi-touchscreen with a larger UI when the keyboard is detached, so everything works exactly as well as it does with Surface Pro here.
Just how powerful is the ROG Flow Z13 with AMD?
AMD made some big claims when it announced the Ryzen AI MAX series, and apart from the awful branding the company has really delivered, it seems. My review unit is equipped with the highest-end Ryzen AI MAX+ 395, a 16-core CPU beast backed by an XDNA NPU with up to 50 TOPS of AI computational power and the Radeon 8060S integrated GPU, the true star of the show here.
You also get 1TB of PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD storage inside the ROG Flow Z13, which sadly can’t be configured higher (but you should be able to upgrade it yourself, if you’re feeling brave).
You’ll need to decide on how much RAM you need from the beginning, though, since that’s soldered as a part of the Ryzen AI chipset. ASUS lets you configure up to 128GB of 8,000Mhz RAM, and you control how much is allocated to the CPU or GPU.
Curious about the limits? You can asssign a ridiculous 96GB to the GPU to act as VRAM, enabling massive local AI workloads that even the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 we reviewed can struggle with.
In general, this tablet is stupidly fast. The new AMD hardware sets a new standard for graphical prowess, with the Radeon 8060S inside this tablet even competing with the RTX 4070 GPU inside laptops like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) we reviewed.
You’ll have to wait for my full review for the hard numbers, but that’s not an exaggerated claim. This is an integrated GPU, playing modern PC games at max settings with stable frame rates, and it does perform really well during my early impressions.
How long can the ROG Flow Z13 last on a charge?
Dedicated gaming hardware is never expected to boast impressive endurance, and that’s especially true when you’re trying to shove all of it into a tablet. The ROG Flow Z13 of yesteryear (2023, to be exact) certainly didn’t relish being off the charger for long.
With an all-in-one chipset and a more efficient integrated GPU, though, it’s reasonable to hope the new ROG Flow Z13 will shatter your expectations. Turns out, it does! Kinda.
ASUS shoved a massive 70Whr battery into this thick chassis, and it works in tandem with Ryzen AI MAX to deliver respectable endurance, at least so far. It’ll take me more time to gauge exactly how well this laptop performs on and off the charger, but it certainly squeezes more than a few hours out of that cell.
Streaming games through NVIDIA GeForce NOW for hours at a time has never prompted a low battery warning, even with the 13.4-inch, 1600p display running full tilt at 180Hz. Don’t expect too much, though — I’ll still be surprised if the ROG Flow Z13 ends up being an “all-day” laptop by my standards.
Should I buy the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025)?
Regardless of how cool the new ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025) is, it’s perfectly reasonable to question just how practical it is. Considering how much you have to pay just to get through the door, why should you buy this instead of a conventional, clamshell gaming laptop?
For most people, you shouldn’t. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) I reviewed costs less than the ROG Flow Z13, and you’re getting a sleek and premium design with great performance and a fleshed out feature set.
The ROG Flow Z13 is for two kinds of people: the mega nerds like myself who simply love weird hardware, especially convertible laptops, and those who demand an incredible amount of power in something they can hold in one hand. Both are niche groups.
Still, there’s simply nothing quite like the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2025) right now. The AMD Ryzen AI MAX platform is crazy capable, and you’re not going to find another device that lets you attach 96GB of RAM to your GPU for the most intense AI tasks.
There’s a lot more testing ahead of me to decide if the complete package justifies its price tag, but after a little more than a dozen hours of use the ROG Flow Z13 is impressing me beyond the “cool factor” that made me want one on my desk.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for my full ASUS ROG Flow Z13 review here at Windows Central.
