The Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a tribute to Asus manufacturing and design. It is a great piece of hardware. However, it is not for everyone. Frankly, it's likely not for everyone, especially given the high price tag, but there is something very appealing about what Asus is trying to do here. It is commendable that they have gone beyond the confines of a gaming laptop and introduced a genuine PC gaming tablet to the world.

Windows tablets have been with us for a long time, of course, but they have traditionally struggled when it comes to gaming. The reason is that their slim size doesn't leave much room for state-of-the-art hardware, especially GPUs; there's no room for the cooling needed to make a GPU worthwhile.

But not so here. Inside the surprisingly rugged Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a full-fledged Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, powered by Nvidia's Ampere architecture with 2,560 CUDA cores and hardware support for ray tracing and DLSS. The system is also equipped with hardware support for ray tracing and DLSS. To be fair, "full-blown" is a bit of a stretch; it is rated up to 40W, far short of its full potential as an 80W GPU.

However, it is worth emphasizing that the RTX 3050 Ti only has 4GB of GDDR6, which may be a limiting factor in some games. This may prevent you from attempting to use high-resolution texture packs, but given the relatively low power offered, you will probably spend more time tweaking settings to achieve playable frame rates than playing with high-resolution textures.

The basic gist is that the RTX 3050 Ti on the Flow Z13 is powerful enough for gaming on the go. It's not a powerhouse, so you'll need to lower the settings whenever possible and use DLSS or FSR, but you can game. But the game can be played.

Asus has managed to fit a surprisingly powerful CPU in this 12mm-thick chassis, the Intel Intel Alder Lake Core i9 processor. the Core i9 12900H has six performance cores and eight E-cores, for a total of 20 threads on the powerful chip. The base clock is 2.5 GHz, with the possibility of boosting up to 5 GHz. We never expected it to reach 5 GHz in such a thin chassis, but it turns out that it actually does.

This impressive duo of core components is backed up by 16GB of LPDDR5-5200 RAM and a fast 1TB NVMe SSD. Asus has put these components in a chassis dominated by an IPS-level 16:10 screen. 4K There are several options available, starting with the display, but the sensible one is the 1920 x 1200 resolution on this review model, which is perfect for work and gaming, despite the RTX 3050 Ti.

The 720p webcam sits at the top edge of the screen, with mic spots on either side of it.The Flow Z13 is not rich in ports, although there is a Type-A port on the right side and a Thunderbolt Type-C port on the left. On the right side are the power button and volume rocker.

Also on the left side is Asus' own ROG XG Mobile interface, which allows connection of the same XG Mobile dock as the Flow X13, offering four USB ports, HDMI and DisplayPort video output, and RJ45 for Ethernet connectivity Not only that, but a mobile RTX 3080 (running at 150W) is included to greatly enhance the machine's graphics power. This makes it a competent enough gaming system, although the entire machine is bulky and the overall system price is $3,299.

On the back, there is an integrated kickstand that holds the tablet at a comfortable 170° angle for work or play. The included chiclet keyboard doubles as a screen cover when moved and is secured to the bottom of the Flow Z13 with magnets. This keyboard can be used flat or flipped up for a more comfortable typing angle. It's not the best typing experience we've had, with noticeable flexing, but it's easy to use and responsive enough.

The keyboard/screen protector also has a touchpad. Of course, there is also an option for touchscreen input, but only if you are in a particularly masochistic mood. Despite the fact that this is a gaming tablet, PC tablet games are few and far between.

As for straight system performance, there is much to like: the Alder Lake CPU brings considerable horsepower, especially since it is backed by fast DDR5 RAM. It's not the fastest machine we've used in the lab, which would be odd if it were, given the form factor. However, it is an adequate choice if you want to do numerical calculations, and more than adequate for normal work.

Of course, there are several performance settings to play with. The numbers shown above are from a benchmark run using the default "Performance" system profile. Switching the system settings to Asus Armory Crate's Turbo mode yields even higher numbers: 5,627 in the Cinebench R20 multi-core test, 12,677 in Cinebench R23, and 1910 in the single-core evaluation.

The video encoding benchmark X264 also improved to 43.08 fps using this profile, a 13% improvement over standard performance settings. This equates to a 13% improvement over the standard performance settings. While this is not a huge difference, switching to Turbo mode certainly saves time when serious numerical computations need to be performed.

Connecting the ROG XG Mobile dock also improved the CPU numbers, as it only needs to support the Alder Lake chips, not the CPU/GPU combo.

As expected, the RTX 3050 Ti struggles when it comes to gaming. It is not a write-off, but given the price of the Flow Z13, it is not a good value. After all, this is a GPU usually found in laptops for half the price Asus is charging here.

Metro Exodus just exceeded 30fps, and that's pretty evident; to get closer to 60fps, you'll likely need to drop the settings quite a bit.

Older, less demanding titles like Horizon Zero Dawn and F1 2020 are a bit more forgiving and offer a smoother experience. But again, that's roughly half the performance you can get on a similarly priced laptop.

When the Flow Z13 is connected to XG Mobile, the situation improves considerably, as one would expect. The RTX 3080 on this machine produces much higher frame rates, so an external dock makes much more sense for serious gaming.

Overall, the Asus ROG Flow Z13 is an oddity. It is a beautiful machine to hold and use, with plenty of CNC machining and attention to detail in its manufacturing. It feels good to the touch and is quiet for the most part.

But when it comes to actual gaming, it's underwhelming, especially when you consider the cost of the system: you can get an RTX 3060 machine for around $1,000, and Nvidia has promised an RTX 3070 Ti laptop starting at $1,500.

In other words, it does not make much sense as a gaming tablet/laptop. The cost is too high for the gaming performance offered. Most games are not suitable for touchscreen operation, so it's honestly not a good choice for a gaming PC tablet. It's like an oversized Steam Deck without a controller, which is not what the industry needs right now.

So while Asus is to be commended for trying something new and producing a beautiful machine, it really has no place in the marketplace; even the XG Mobile Dock doesn't redeem it because it anchors to a desk, which is not where the tablet performs best. It just doesn't work. All in all, this is not a machine for PC gamers, and I'm still not sure who it's for.