I never heard of a 2 in 1 gaming laptop before CES 2021. Was there one? Convertible laptops and gaming laptops are two incredibly different things with unique thermal and performance needs – not to mention that they are designed for two different consumer bases. But it seems that we finally shrunk GPUs small enough and let the CPUs cool enough to combine the two form factors. Opposites apparently attract! Asus made a wonderfully portable transformer for a gaming laptop on the ROG Flow X13.
Without holding or typing on Flow X13 as I normally would at CES during “earlier times”, I expected it to be bigger than it really is. It is not the thinnest or lightest 2-in-1, but it is also a gaming laptop, which makes its size and weight even more impressive. Measuring 11.8 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches and weighing 2.9 pounds with a 13.4 inch 16:10 touchscreen, this laptop fits perfectly anywhere in any setting: laptop, tent, tablet, whatever. The chassis design is This one versatile thanks to 360 degree hinges. The X13 will fight all other ultrathin and portable laptops for space on its tray table, when it is safe to fly again.
In terms of style, I don’t care about the all-black design compared to other laptops. Maybe it’s the 2-in-1 design. Maybe it’s the way the cover is subtly etched with small textured lines, and the space below the keyboard matches that texture with even smaller embossed lines. And the keyboard itself has the same layout on the ROG Zephyrus G14 and G15, with well-spaced keys that should be comfortable under most people’s fingers. In fact, if it weren’t for the textured lid and the 360 degree hinges, you could mistake the Flow X13 for the Zephyrus G14 or G15 at first glance. It’s a beautiful laptop and easy to fall in love with.
At its heart is AMD’s new top-of-the-line mobile processor, the Ryzen 9 5980HS. (Asus also has another version with a Ryzen 9 5900HS, which is a step below this, but still cutting edge.) If you’re looking for a 2-in-1 that can handle CPU-intensive processing tasks, you want a laptop with this CPU. It outperforms the sophisticated 11th generation Core i7-1185G7 from Intel and the Apple M1 rendering 3D images in Blender and transcoding 4K videos to 1080p in Handbrake, thanks to its dizzying multi-core performance. Its single-core performance is also on par with Apple’s M1 and Intel’s Core i7-1185G7. It even beats Intel’s 10th generation Core i9-10885H in raw performance and Blender and Handbrake as well. It’s a whole minute faster to render 3D images and about 30 seconds faster to transcode 4K video.
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We still have to see how this will compare to Intel’s New Core i7-11375H Special Edition Although. Intel says it is faster than AMD’s mobile 4800HS and 4900H processors and will support scalable BAR to make the CPU and GPU communicate directly, which can mean increased performance in some games or applications. The company also has an 11th generation H series processor that will come later this quarter that includes an 8-core and 16-thread chip, which I’m sure will rival AMD’s 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 9 5980HS. But for games and thin laptops, the Ryzen 9 5980HS is currently one of the top mobile processors to beat. It should be on more gaming laptops than it really is.
But, like all novels in life, once the honeymoon phase disappears, these once charming peculiarities can start to irritate your nerves. Like, I would like the Asus Flow X13 to come with more than one USB port. I have always preferred to use a wireless mouse with laptops and have normally used USB connections in the past, but Bluetooth exists for a reason. That and the X13’s trackpad are so smooth that my fingers slide over it like an ice skater, so it’s not a problem that this laptop doesn’t have an extra. A little annoying, yes, but the HDMI port and the USB-C port that acts as a charging port make up for that.
The airflow also works in an interesting way. You have to keep the screen at a 115 degree angle for the most efficient airflow in laptop mode. If you set the monitor to 90 degrees, it can block the airflow from the bottom and rear vents, which will affect performance. I rotated the Blender benchmarks to both sides and having the screen at a 90 degree angle will increase the processing time by one minute.
But this laptop is never too hot to touch. The skin temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). The CPU also never broke 82 degrees Celsius (179.6 Fahrenheit), and that was when I was running several game benchmarks, configurations at most, in a row. The longevity of the processor should not be a concern for anyone. Battery life is normal at 6 hours, which is longer than average, and normal for gaming laptops, but nothing close to the 21 hours AMD was proud of during its CES lecture on its Ryzen 5000U series processors .
My problem is the GTX 1650 Max-Q inside Flow X13, and not because I can’t maximize the performance in 1080p. I can decrease performance in Metro Exodus down and still around 70 fps. Asus has prioritized the ultra-thin design of the X13 as it should, because the whole appeal of a 2 in 1 is to be light and portable. Asus probably would have gotten away with a GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q, like the Microsoft SurfaceBook 3 (which weighs less and is smaller than the Flow X13), but thermals were probably a concern. You win some, you lose some.
But you can’t currently buy the Flow X13 without also buying the Asus eGPU with an RTX 3080, which costs an astonishing $ 3,000. It’s a big order for someone like me, who’s looking for a new laptop and doesn’t need something with an ultra-powerful graphics card. We didn’t get that eGPU either, so I tried this laptop more as a 2-in-1 than as a gaming laptop, but it is functionally both and was still able to play many rounds of Overwatch on it without problems. The fact that no one can buy the Flow X13 separately now means that this convertible gaming laptop is much more niche than it should be.
And that, folks, is the story of how the Asus ROG Flow X13 broke my heart. If I could buy the X13 alone, I would buy it. I would like a laptop with a long battery life, but almost everything else about the X13 is correct, so I am willing to sacrifice a few hours. But I can’t put a “recommendation” label on this laptop knowing that Asus doesn’t sell it without the eGPU. I don’t see most people opting for a $ 3,000 2-in-1 gaming laptop with an integrated RTX 3080 eGPU. As I said, it is very, very niche.
READ ME
- Lovely design
- Super lightweight and portable
- Ok battery life
- I wanted the super fast CPU to be combined with a better GPU
- Currently packaged with an RTX 3080 eGPU … for $ 3,000. Laptop not sold separately