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.

 

Initial hands-on review from Dave2D:



Good news, it looks like this thing delivers on the performance front, with strong rendering scores against a 10875H-equipped Razer Blade 15:




And the docked GPU performance averages about 70% of a desktop RTX 3080 at less than half the power (150W vs 350W), which he also noted ran "quiet". Very nice...



No testing of the pen unfortunately, but we got the specs for 4K OLED panel, which looks to be decent enough for light content creation (though not bright enough for outdoor use).



Internally, there is a 62Whr battery (lasting ~6h of browsing at 250nits) and a slowish, but user-replaceable 2230 NVMe SSD:



Also @Tams was correct about the proprietary docking connection using a USB-C port. As Dave notes @4:38, the left USB-C port is usable for charging and data when undocked:



This suggests that the plethora of ports are functioning on the docking station are communicating over standard USB-C, separate from the GPU interface. (Interesting, and actually quite smart by ASUS to let us reuse the USB-C port. )



Ah, but the price...an eye-watering $3299! (Eye-watering, mostly because I'm crying at being too pleb for this thing. )

 

I was kind of hoping Asus/AMD could pull off a miracle in the battery life. But, they probably would've had to use a U-series chip or increase the weight/battery size to reach 8-10 hours. The letdown I wasn't expecting was only making this available in a bundle for $3K. I hope this laptop inspires other manufacturers to make something similar.