I tried a cutting-edge Asus gaming tablet, but it's left me conflicted

Asus often pushes the envelope through its Republic of Gamers (ROG) gaming brand, and it's been doing that pretty loudly when it comes to gaming phones in the last few years. Alongside this, though, it's also been making an interesting play where tablets (or 2-in-1s) are concerned.

The original ROG Flow Z13 was a unique proposition when it launched, and remains so to this day – but that hasn't stopped Asus from revisiting it with some new specs for 2025. I've been using it for a couple of weeks to see just how a gaming tablet actually feels to use – and whether it's genius or madness.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) review: Price & availability

If you take stock of the best gaming laptops on the market fairly often, like me, you'll know that they can get frighteningly expensive. Still, there's no avoiding the fact that the ROG Flow Z13 (2025) comes in at the premium end of even that scale, for all that it's not simply a laptop.

For those of us in the UK, the tablet is priced at £2,199.99, while in the US that comes out at $2,099.99, and in Australia that means AU$4,499. That's a real wedge of money no matter where you are, but you should be able to order it as of now in all of those locations.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) review: Design

Before we get on to the technicality of what makes the Z13 Flow impressive and confusing at the same time, there's how it actually looks and handles.

This is a chunky, thick tablet at its heart, one that far outweighs something like an iPad – or, frankly, any of the other best tablets you could think of. It measures 30 x 20 x 1.49cm, and crucially weighs in at 1.2 kg – trust me when I say you'll be unpleasantly surprised the first time you pick it up.

On one face, it has a large 13.4-inch touchscreen, while its thick edges house a range of ports, including a proprietary charging port for the sizeable brick that gives it charge when in need. The back of the tablet has a sturdy kickstand that's stiff enough to stand at a wide range of angles, but easy to adjust.

In the package, as you open it, you'll also get a magnetic keyboard attachment in the classic folio style, which can fold up and protect the screen when you're not using the tablet. It has a full trackpad and keyboard with a decent amount of travel, but isn't mechanical or anything like that.

There are various touches that make it obviously a gaming product from a distance, including a window on the back that shows some motherboard, and the option of a little RGB lighting in that area. That said, it's not the most 'shouty' of devices, and could probably go by stealthily as just a standard 2-in-1.

This all leaves the ROG Flow Z13 in a funny place. In some ways, it's smaller and far more packable than a gaming laptop of a similar price would likely be. In others, though, it's very heavy for a tablet, so really feels comparable to lugging a laptop around instead.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) review: Features & Specs

Here's where things get a little more complicated. The whole point of the 2025 refresh of this gaming tablet is that it brings the AMD Ryzen AI Max 390 chip to the table. This is a 12-core processor from AMD's new Strix Halo lineup, and it's extremely powerful, with no two ways about that.

Part of what makes it headline-grabbing is that it potentially offers a massive leap forward in integrated graphics performance, thanks to a built-in Radeon 8050S chipset. This means that, unlike the bad old days of CPU graphics, the whole shebang promises to run even new releases at playable frame rates without the need for a discrete laptop GPU.

Aside from the processor, though, you get a bevvy of impressive other parts. The ROG Flow Z13 comes with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM for rapid multitasking, and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD so that you have plenty of storage (although modern games may stretch that a little).

The display, meanwhile, is a 13.4-inch WQXGA IPS panel that offers a 180Hz refresh rate at a resolution of 2560 x 1600.

If you can tune games to run at really high frame rates, you'll have a display that can match those, albeit one that doesn't quite manage the truly inky blacks of an OLED panel – and these are becoming more popular. Of course, it's also a full multi-point touchscreen, with stylus support that opens up design opportunities.

As it was making a tablet, Asus clearly felt it couldn't skip cameras entirely, so the ROG Flow Z13 has a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP face-recognising IR camera, neither of which I can imagine anyone using willingly beyond occasional video calls.

Ports are hugely important where a tablet that offers so much productivity potential is concerned, and Asus impresses with the number it squeezes in here.

There's a 3.5mm jack for audio, an HDMI 2.1 port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port rated up to 10Gbps, and two Type-C USB 4 ports with support for DisplayPort and power delivery, both rated up to 40Gbps.

Finally, there's the aforementioned in-house power port and a microSD slot for expandable storage (which could be very handy).

In terms of connectivity, you get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, both of which should be nice and futureproof for a good few years, while the internal battery is rated at 70WHrs.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) review: Performance & Usability

Here we get to the meat of the matter, which is how the ROG Flow Z13 actually performs when put to the task of gaming. The answer is "solidly" – until you start to remember what it costs.

Opening up a brand new title like Avowed, and playing around with its settings, it's perfectly possible to get a stable 60fps experience without cutting too many corners visually. With further tweaking you can raise this ceiling considerably. However, I'm not convinced that anyone would want to buy a ROG Flow Z13 to play new games on lower-than-high settings.

Leave things on high or ultra, across a range of slightly older but intensive titles, and you'll routinely get much better results, meaning your default experience won't be at 30fps by any means. Still, the amount of variation simply isn't all that great an advert for the technically impressive chipset it's running. AMD's FSR 3.0 frame generation is doing a huge amount of legroom in general, too.

Where this gets a little more conflicting is when you start to compare its performance to a range of gaming laptops with discrete laptop GPUs. Our colleagues at Gamesradar+ have gone into more detail on this front for those interested, but the broad picture is simple – a full gaming laptop will almost guarantee you better performance for less money.

The CPU performance when multitasking outside of gaming is stellar, with no slowdown and easy switching between multiple heavy-load applications. Given its touchscreen, this makes it seem like a machine that could make sense for a very small niche of professionals who need that screen for drawing or design work, but also fancy the occasional bit of gaming. It's a very expensive way to tick those boxes, though.

Another factor while gaming is sound, of course, and the ROG Flow Z13's speakers are very solid for the size of the tablet. Still, any self-respecting gamer will want to use one of the best gaming headsets for a huge upgrade, and the tablet's built-in Dolby Atmos-compatible smart amp will ensure that this results in genuinely great sound.

What does come out solidly is the tablet's battery life, which can stretch to 90 minutes of gaming with high graphics intensity, and easily lasts a good chunk longer than that when you're web browsing or watching video. Still, this brings me to the question of actual usability, which is another sore spot.

Asus markets the ROG Flow Z13 as a gaming tablet – which, clearly, it is. However, it comes with the keyboard attachment, and I simply couldn't find many situations where it made sense to use it without that addition. This means that the machine is effectively a de-facto gaming laptop that you simply can't use on your lap. It requires a flat surface to comfortably sit on, because of its kickstand.

This is added to by the fact that, once that decent battery life starts to run out, the power brick to recharge the tablet is pretty sizeable. So, the dream of being able to game at high settings without needing a big backpack of stuff to make it all work still feels a little distant.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) review: Verdict

It's sometimes very complicated to review expensive, luxury gaming devices like the Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) – because, on the one hand, I'm not sure I'd recommend that anyone actually buy it. A similarly-priced gaming laptop will likely get better performance, and be usable in a wider range of situations.

However, none of that is the device's fault, and it does very much do what it says on the tin. After all, it's got a super-powerful CPU that performs admirably under strain, built-in graphics that are incredibly impressive on their own merits, and the ability to function as a standalone tablet when useful.

So, this Asus tablet is one where I think potential buyers simply need to do as much research as they possibly can – to ensure that they're thrilled by the ROG Flow Z13's best bits, rather than caught out by its obvious shortcomings.

Also consider

A gaming laptop is the most sensible alternative to the ROG Flow Z13, but picking out which one is a more complex matter. Since slimness and portability are obviously factors, I think a 2024 Razer Blade 14 might well be a great pick – although the forthcoming 2025 Razer Blade 16 will be even more powerful when it arrives soon.

Alternatively, there's a lot to suggest that someone eyeing up this tablet might just be better off picking up a powerful iPad Air and doing their gaming either using its very-solid graphics or a separate laptop or desktop gaming rig. It's a left-field option, but you'd be getting a tablet that's more useable in almost every way, for far less money.