Laptop, News

Asus ROG Flow X13: A 13″ Convertible Gaming Laptop With AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS

Asus released some very interesting gaming laptops recently. Last year, it was the first brand to release a modern, very capable 14-inch gaming laptop (the ROG Zephyrus G14), and now, we’ve got the Asus ROG Flow X13. Not only does it come with AMD’s new Ryzen 9 5980HS processor, it is also a convertible gaming laptop in an even more compact 13-inch form factor.

In fact, the ROG Flow X13 can actually be configured with three different processors: the aforementioned Ryzen 9 5980HS, Ryzen 9 5900HS, and Ryzen 7 5800HS. According to Asus, the Ryzen 9 5980HS processor – which can go up to 4.8GHz on a single core – is reserved for the “Flow X13 Supernova Edition.”

While the CPU options for the ROG Flow X13 are very powerful, the GPU under the hood of this laptop…isn’t quite on the same level. It’s only packing an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU, which is a decidedly entry-level graphics card. For a gaming laptop of this calibre, you’d expect it to be equipped with a far more powerful GPU.

Well, that’s where the ROG XG Mobile comes into the picture. It is an external GPU enclosure that only works with the ROG Flow X13 at the moment, since it has a proprietary connection that can deliver 63Gbps of bandwidth. This allows you to take full advantage of the performance offered by the GPU in this enclosure; it can be configured with an RTX 3080 or RTX 3070 laptop graphics card.

On top of that, the XG Mobile is also very, very compact. It is only “6% the size of typical eGPUs” – as Asus puts it – and the enclosure also takes advantage of vapour chamber cooling to enhance thermal performance.

Now, let’s get back to the ROG Flow X13, which is actually closer to a productivity-focused laptop rather than a gaming machine. We say this because it has a 13.4-inch 3840 x 2400 touch-enabled IPS screen (60Hz) with a 16:10 aspect ratio; a display you’d usually find on a premium productivity laptop. Of course, if you want a panel that’s more suited for gaming, there’s a 1920 x 1200 screen option with a faster 120Hz refresh rate.

Other specifications of the ROG Flow X13 include up to 32B of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage, a 1.3kg chassis that measures only 15.8mm thin, as well as a 62WHr battery that promises up to 10 hours of video playback. All in all, it’s an interesting gaming laptop that should be able to serve as a very good productivity machine as well.

The Asus ROG Flow X13 convertible gaming laptop is now available for pre-order in the US for a cool $3,000 (about RM12,115), which also includes the ROG XG Mobile eGPU with an RTX 3080. Malaysian price and availability have not been announced yet, but we reckon it will arrive on our shores in the near future, as with most of Asus’ gaming laptops.

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