Asus ROG X13 Flow

So, Asus announced a bunch of new AMD gaming laptops at CES 2021. This 2-in-1 stood out the most to me. 16:10: check. Respectable GPU: check. AMD Zen 3 CPU: Check. Active Pen: Check. No Thunderbolt 4, but an even faster (though proprietary) port.



I think my main worry will be the battery life (60'ish Wh battery to power a 35W CPU and GTX 1650 seems kinda low) and the active pen (not sure how good Asus active pens are).

 

The most impressive thing is the portability of the little beast: it's only 0.59 inches thick and 2.87 pounds.

(Tom's Hardware)

And even the GPU dock is only 2.2 lbs, so far more portable than a typical GPU enclosure, and very feasible for an on-the-go workstation setup.

It's really amazing how much performance density this thing is packing. For perspective, the previous gen 4900HS already outperformed the i9-9980H 90W desktop processor:

(TechSpot)


If the cooling is up to snuff, this thing will probably beat the highest-end Concept D7 Ezel Pro (with its "lowly" Xeon W-10885M ) in CPU workloads (which is most things, like Photoshop and ZBrush).

Only question is the pen. Asus tends to use N-Trig, so everything will depend on the quality of Elan panel they choose. Let's hope they don't skimp like HP on the Spectres.

This could be the dark unicorn of 2021.

 

Some random tech website states it's a wacom touch/pen panel.
If so, I still wouldn't count on it being better than AES.

At this price and lack of EMR, the ConceptD 7 would make more sense, but 2.9 lbs is really impressive and I'm really liking Ryzen these days.

 

Implementation for Wacom AES and MPP seems to vary widely between manufacturers. So, I won't exactly rule out Asus, but my hopes aren't very high either. So far, I've only seen Lenovo, HP, and Microsoft putting any effort at all to improving pen experience for the electrostatic pens.

 

This thing plus my Tab S7+ via SupeDisplay for EMR action just might be the perfect combo...

 

BTW, is the 2230 the new 2280 or what? I guess MS making it de facto M.2 for Surface Pro X, XBox Series X/S and Surface Pro 7+ is making waves to other manufacturers?

 

I love that eGPU, even though its performance might get a step down if they offered via USB-C or thunderbolt, had they done so, I might have picked one up separately to use with other systems. Damn proprietary port.

 

I very much doubt it will be EMR. It looks like it takes a battery. Guess we can't have everything!

The eGPU connector may not be proprietary. It looks like it uses a USB C connector and a OCuLink connector. Respectively part of the USB and PCIe specs, so anyone licencing those standards would be able to use them. ASUS won't be able to patent the distance between the connectors and I doubt they'd bother patenting the, what looks like, custom housing.

The ConceptD7 is an absolute tank though. I wouldn't want to carry one around much.