There seems to be some interest in this little powerhouse, so let’s start a thread. The 2023 Asus ROG FLow Z13 is a significant improvement over last year’s version, see @cbutters ’ video below. It features an Intel i9-13900H and an RTX 4050 dGPU, all in a tablet form factor.
For detailed info, see the official product page, and for max specs see below the image.
“Our own” @Cbutters just posted a benchmarking session of the 2023 Asus ROG Flow Z13 on YouTube, and he seems to be impressed. I wasn’t that aware of this “performance slate”, pretty cool.
Bear in mind that the 2022 version had terrible battery life. I doubt this year’s is any better.
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Hifihedgehog
(Hifihedgehog - Waiting for Surface Pro 10!)
4
True, but it has basically the same specs as the leaked Surface Laptop Studio 2: 14-core 13th Gen Core and RTX 4060. I wonder how the Laptop Studio 2 will fare in battery life in direct comparison?
I haven’t looked at the specs, but iirc @Cbutters calls the Rog Flow z13 lightweight, whereas the current SLS is quite a brick. Might be that they’ll have very different battery capacity and hence very different battery life. Here’s hoping.
Edit: apparently not for this generation, the new Z13 has 75Wh according to The Verge (edit, apparrently still 56Wh) and the current SLS has 56Wh. Oops!
Verge is wrong (as usual) about the new Z13 it has a 56WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion battery.
It weights 2.6lbs (1.18kg) without the “type cover” It is quite the chunky boy tablet… but has plenty of performance.
Thanks for the notice on the leaked SLS 2… I figured it would have exactly those type of specs… It will be a beast compared to 1st gen SLS. Low wattage NVIDIA 4000 series is such a big upgrade.
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Hifihedgehog
(Hifihedgehog - Waiting for Surface Pro 10!)
7
Interesting. So the Surface Laptop Studio will be in many ways the Laptop-fied and Surface-fied version of this. The only thing that will be the differentiator for battery life I feel will be the power optimizations.
Yes… and unless surface adopts 140W USB-C or something and isn’t limited to 100W like it is now, the Z13 will be outperforming it. The display is really quite good on the Z13, 2560x1600 and no visible ghosting at all… the SLS has a nice panel, but it does ghost quite a bit;
So unless surface updates and improves their power situation and their lcd panel situation, the Z13 will be quite a bit ahead (it also has mux switch and advanced optimus).
As for what I’m looking forward to; I’ll probably instead be keeping for a daily driver the ROG FLOW X13 2023 w/ RTX 4070(convertible yoga style 13" pen enabled tablet w/ AMD 7000 CPU that uses the same LCD panel and is a brother device to the Z13) It is announced, but isn’t out yet; but should be within a few weeks time.
I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about Microsoft lately due to some recent experiences I’ve had with them. ASUS is innovating fast and doing things nobody else is doing, and making their products better each time around; Their ROG Flow series is really compelling to me.
That said, I can see myself slinking back to microsoft for an SLS2 w/ rtx 4060 even @ 100W, just because the inking/pen experience on those asus products is still very unrefined.
@Cbutters, great video! Do you plan on doing another one addressing inking and battery life?
Either way, what a beast that Z13 is! I usually like to get the last gen when I buy something, but as you pointed out, the differences between last year’s z13 and this year’s are very impressive.
@Eltos
The Z13 uses MPP 2.0; as it works with my slim surface pen. I tested this 2023 model and it appears to be exactly the same as the 2022 model in terms of Pen behavior… (I did a video on this you can see on my comparison video between the old 2022 model Z13 and the Surface Pro 8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1duGpoh_Y)
Regarding battery life… Yes, it can be abysmal if you keep it in “performance” or “turbo” mode with the dGPU on all the time. However; If you use the Asus preconfigured “Silent Mode” and ALSO switch the GPU settings to “Eco Mode” (which disables the dGPU entirely); you can actually get decent battery life… probably as good as Surface Pro; and the fans will not turn on all while staying very cool unless you try to do something super intensive. It took me running furmark on the iGPU for 3 minutes in this mode before the fan even started to spin softly. Their cooling solution is really, really robust.
very interesting pen comparison in your video - thanks a bunch! Unfortunately, the line jitter of the pen disqualifies the ROG Flow for most graphic artists. Otherwise, very interesting specs!
Is there any indication that a Microsoft SLS2 will feature an improvement of Microsoft Pen Protocol, maybe together with a Slim Pen 3?
Slim Pen 2 and MPP 2.5 have gotten very good already and are good for digital painting, but still lag behind Samsung S-Pen/ Wacom EMR and Apple Pencil by a small margin.
Note that the pen comparison video is for the 2022 model, so there’s a chance that the new model with improved screen has different (hopefully better) pen performance.
Unrelated, but can someone translate their memory specs for me? This is what they write:
8GB*2 LPDDR5 on board, Max Capacity: 16GB, Support dual channel memory
Is that “max two sticks of 8GB LPDDR5”? Truly only up to 16GB RAM? That seems low.
Hifihedgehog
(Hifihedgehog - Waiting for Surface Pro 10!)
18
It is just 16GB across the board with your run-of-the-mill dual channel memory configuration.
By the way, Ultrabook Review just dropped their review here. I screenshotted and shared their battery life findings.
Hifihedgehog
(Hifihedgehog - Waiting for Surface Pro 10!)
19
Neat! I splurged on a ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 since I could use the screens and horsepower. I cannot wait to see how the ScreenPad Plus fares as a drawing tablet.
