ASUS unveiled their 2025 range of Republic of Gamers (ROG) laptops, tablets and desktops in February and we’ve nabbed one of the headliners, the ROG Flow Z13 tablet to take for a spin. 

Priced from $4,499, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is a 2-in-1 gaming tablet and laptop powered by AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor featuring their XDNA Neural Processing Unit capable of 50 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS) and RDNA 3.5 Radeon graphics powering a 13.4-inch 2.5K resolution ROG Nebula Display. 

The 2-in-1 features improved cooling with an upgraded vapor chamber and enlarged air intake, with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB gen 4 M.2 SSD. 

We last took a look at ASUS 2-in1 gaming tablet back in 2022, so it’s time to see what I thought of the ASUS ROG Flow Z13 2025 after two weeks.

Hardware

Design

The tablet is, well, it’s definitely aimed at gamers. It’s chunky and solidly built with sharp angles, obvious vents and random inclusions like the 02 on the rear which is cut off by a CNC-milled window surrounded by RGB lighting which shows off the internals of the tablet.

The tablet does pass in a business setting with the option to turn off RGB lighting, though those CNC-cut lines and venting, as well as the thickness of the tablet will certainly hint that it’s not your everyday 2-in-1.

There’s a kickstand on the rear with a handy tab on the side to make it easier to pull out. It’s stiff to move yet holds position well, letting you move it out up to 170° so you can have the tablet angled almost any way you need.

There’s a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera up there in the corner on the rear for taking shots of any presentations, or if you really want to, just anything you need to. 

While it is a thicc tablet, that also means you get a full array of ports including dual USB-C type 4 ports, a USB-A port, HDMI 2.1 FRL port with a combo audio jack, and a microSD card reader.

There’s power and volume controls on the left hand side of the tablet, as well as a ‘Command Centre’ button. The buttons can be a little hard to find as they lay almost flush with the side, with the power button sitting lower than the others.

The Common Centre button is an interesting addition to the hardware, giving you fast access to your favourite apps, including Armoury Crate. 

The bottom of the tablet has a rail which is magnetised, with pogo pins to attach the keyboard cover. This easily aligns the connector and lets you quickly attach and detach.

The keyboard cover is light with some flex, but features a responsive keyboard which has larger keycaps and touchpad than the previous generation. The keyboard cover feels really nice to type on and even works fairly well in laptop mode on your lap while on the couch. It even works well in low-light, with RGB lighting, which of course you can configure through Armoury Crate.

The touchpad is nice, with multi-touch and gesture support, and though you’re best plugging in a mouse if you jump into games it works well in a pinch.

Display and Audio

On the front, the ROG Flow Z13 has a 2.5K resolution 13.4” display with touch input. There’s stereo speakers on either side of the display for stereo sound. 

ASUS have used an ‘IPS level’ panel rather than an OLED, however it still delivers excellent quality visuals, with the 120Hz refresh rate making for smooth scrolling in the OS, as well as translating to smooth playback in games. The blacks are good, colour representation is excellent, with support for 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. 

The 16:10 aspect ratio display feels good when you’re using it in tablet mode, and looks great. It’s bright enough for use indoors or out, with the display capable of up to 500 nits peak brightness. 

The screen has a gloss finish, though it’s covered with a ‘special glare-resistant Gorilla Glass DXC’ which works well to stop those annoying lights on shiny displays. The glare-resistant glass doesn’t quite get rid of them all, but it does reduce them and makes working with a light source behind you bareable.

On the audio front, the Flow Z13 includes four Dolby Atmos tuned Smart Amp speakers – two on the front and one on each side – giving you hi-res audio. 

It sounds decent with a fair amount of volume, though it’s missing a bit of ‘oomph’ in terms of full sound when you pump it up and distorts when you do. It’s got decent mids and high ends though, however the bass is lacking when it really comes down to it. 

On headphones it’s a different story, and really rocks out if you use some decent cans wired into the headphone jack.

There’s a Hi SNR 3 mic array on-board next to the webcam which has pretty decent sound capture when you’re on a video call – and the webcam is pretty decent as well.

Battery and Charging

There’s a 70Wh battery inside the ROG Flow Z13 with a 200W charger included in the box using ASUS’ rectangular charging connector. The charger is fairly large, so if you have a smaller 100W USB-C charger to take with you, you can also charge with that instead.

The 70Wh battery lasts a good long time, with around 6.5-8 hours of use for general business and office work, with the display around 50% brightness. That’s enough to get you through a day in the office with no issues really. 

Of course gaming you’ll see a much smaller battery life if you push it onto the performance modes. I saw around an hour of high quality gaming before the battery got to around 10% when warnings began to appear and frame rate started to suffer. 

If you do need to top up your battery, the 200W charger can get you back to full in almost no time. A 100W USB-C charger gets you to 50% charge in 30 minutes, while the 200W charger with proprietary plug takes just under, which is wild – however that last 50% takes another hour and a half to get you to full. 

Performance

Powered by AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB gen 4 M.2 SSD, the system also includes AMD’s XDNA Neural Processing Unit capable of 50 TOPS. On the graphics side, the system comes with an AMD Radeon 8060S GPU with 4GB of DDR5 VRAM on-board.

As far as the system goes, the AMD Ryzen processor and RAM is great, easily eating up day-to-day tasks, switching apps and more with ease. It also handled well video editing, able to quite quickly render a 15 minute 4K video. 

The system does have some fan noise when you’re putting it through it’s paces, though it’s minimised by the 2nd Gen Arc Flow Fans and the new stainless steel and copper vapor chamber which reduces weight, as well as improving the cooling. The fan noise is fairly quiet for the performance you get, and the unit itself never gets hot even when you’re using it as a tablet.

Which brings us to the small matter of the RADEON 8060s GPU kicking ass on gaming. An easy 50-60fps on games like Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Planet Crafter and Sons of the Forest ate it up. A smooth gaming experience all round from my perspective. 

Of course we ran it through 3DMark, which did initially find the Radeon not capable of running the Steel Nomad bench tests, but we persevered and here’s how it went. 

Software

Windows

The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 comes with Windows 11 running the 24H2 build which is supported through October 13th, 2026 according to the Microsoft support site. 

There’s not a lot of pre-installed apps on the Flow Z13 – at least not that you don’t actually want. 

There’s the usual ASUS apps, including GlideX for screensharing, and Screen Xpert for controlling the Command Centre. You also get the Dolby Access app to config your Atmos spatial sound – and AMD software (Adrenalin) to run your Radeon GPU. 

You also find the MyASUS app installed which is an easy place to perform updates, performance optimization, and get access to various ASUS services. The way I like to control all this is through the ASUS ROG Armoury Crate software.

This piece of software looks cool, and really lets you dig into all the settings for your laptop, controlling the performance or economy of the system, fans and of course the RGB lighting which you can sync to your other ASUS gear with Armoury Crate. 

As usual there’s Mcafee Premium installed with a limited timed free trial. Of course if you’re a Mcafee fan, update the license and off you go. For everyone else it’s easy to uninstall to avoid the reminder popups which will come as you approach the end of the trial. 

Final thoughts

The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 is a great 2-in1 that performs well across the board, from the AMD internals to the lovely and bright 13” display and functional, as well as comfortable keyboard cover. 

It’s a thick unit, so using it on the couch as a tablet isn’t ideal when you compare it to something made for purpose like an iPad or just an Android tablet – but it does the job. 

What it is great at is being a compact powerhouse, so if you want to hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse it becomes a very powerful desktop replacement system.

At $4,499 it’s not going to suit the budget of every user, but if you want the portability of a 2-in-1 with the gaming chops to give you some down-time when you need it, this is the system for you.