Taiwan-based tech firm Asus launched the ROG Flow X13 hybrid gaming laptop in India recently. The laptop comes at a starting price of Rs 1,21,990. We spent some time with the premium Windows machine and here are our key takeaways.
Asus ROG Flow X13: Design
The ROG Flow X13 comes in a thin and light frame. The design and the color aesthetics have been kept sober and minimalistic, with embossed stripes running diagonally at the backside of the display. The entire color scheme of the body is kept in black and the laptop’s compact size makes it easy to pack it in any of your backpacks.
It looks like a work laptop only and that may benefit the gamer in you who does not wish their laptops to proclaim that they are meant specifically for gaming. With its lightweight and compact design, the ROG Flow X13 will allow you to combine work and play in a single machine.
The chassis is slightly thicker than the display panel. The hinge attaches the display to the chassis at two points quite securely. However, you should be careful when twisting the display backwards and do it slowly. Since the laptop is a convertible, the display rotates on the hinge to transform your device into a tablet as well, should you need to use it in that way.
The ROG Flow X13 comes with stylus support and together with the touchscreen input, it adds flexibility in the use of the device. Suppose you are in a small meeting with five-six people and you only have the laptop screen to rely on to explain some topic, then the design will help you put the laptop in a 180-degree flat position in the middle of the table and everyone can look at the diagram or a presentation.
ROG Flow X13: Performance and battery
The ROG Flow X13 unit we reviewed came with AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS with Radeon graphics coupled with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPU. It had a 32GB RAM backing the power of the machine.
We began testing the new laptop by playing Borderlands 3 on Ultra graphics settings in Performance mode. We’d set the maximum frame rate in-game to 60 fps. The gameplay was quite smooth and we did not come across any sort of glitch during the session that lasted close to four hours. For a more fluid gaming experience, you might want to go a bit easy on the graphics settings.
We also switched between Default and FPS graphics settings via the Armory Crate’s Game Visual settings. The FPS setting brightens the darker areas on the screen when you are in the game and it can slightly improve your chances at spotting the enemies faster in tight, first person shooting scenarios.
In our tests, the ROG Flow X13 turned out to be a powerful gaming machine that can handle AAA games well. On the flip side, the heat dissipation could be a big worry during gaming if you are not using a laptop cooling pad as the heat tries to escape from the right side and the underside of the chassis and if you keep the ROG Flox X13 directly on the table or on the bed during your gaming sessions, the upper part of the chassis or the top half of the keyboard can become very hot.
There is ample space on the chassis to rest your wrists while typing plus the trackpad is wide too.
The touch and pen input is very prompt and you would not have any issue there, with the applications opening instantly. When being used in the tablet mode, the laptop may feel heavy with the one-handed operation.
The ROG FlowX13 comes with Dolby Atmos-powered speakers and there is a clear reproduction of sound with very less distortion even on full volume but it is not very loud enough for a room and it would be better to game with your headset on. From the Spatial sound in settings, you can go for the Windows Sonic setting when using headphones.
After about 10 minutes of launching Borderlands 3 on the system, the battery levels dropped from 46% to 30%. This was when we had not plugged in the laptop for charging. The Ultra settings in games are going to eat up a lot of battery so, stating the obvious, keep the charging on when going for a gaming session.
When the ROG Flow X13 was idle for some hours in Performance mode, the drop in battery levels was slower. In our tests, the laptop battery levels saw a 30% drop in 2 hours after we had charged it to full (so 100% to 70%). In the next 2 hours, the battery level stood at 46%. Very light tasks like typing and playing music at low volumes won’t cause a sudden drop in battery levels too. Oh, but if your work involves 20-25 tabs being open in your browser, or you are working on a graphic-intensive application, then it does put a grind on the battery levels. But the battery life is good enough for most of the office-related tasks.
If you are using the laptop for some light tasks and are not running any heavy application, it can give you a battery life of over five hours on average, which could even stretch to close to six hours. If you are gaming on it, then there is not much issue as the charger would be plugged in only.
Verdict
The ROG Flow X13 is a light and fast machine that could be a good option for gaming enthusiasts who would like to carry the same laptop to work. The design is solidly done with a sturdy hinge, the matte finish is appealing and the compact form factor makes the laptop easy to carry around. It has a battery backup of about 4.5-5 hours on light-to-medium usage which we felt could have been more considering Asus has marketed it as a versatile laptop and not just a gaming laptop. The heat dissipation on the unit could also have been better but overall, the ROG FlowX13 is a light and powerful premium hybrid laptop from Asus that would suit both your work and play needs.
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