Coolest laptop of 2023. ASUS ROG Flow X13 Exclusive Review with Detachable RTX 3080

At CES 2023 ASUS showed the most unusual and, at first glance, the coolest laptop for the whole of 2023 – ROG Flow X13… In short, this is a purely office flip-flop system in a 13-inch format with a removable GeForce RTX 3080… We managed to get the only sample in the Russian Federation for tests, spend almost a week with it and check it inside and out.

Completion and appearance

To begin with, the Flow X13 will be sold in two versions – just a laptop or bundled with an external graphics card. In the West, you can calmly buy a laptop first, and then, if necessary, also a video card. But such a maneuver will not work for us. Due to some peculiarities of the laws, a separate GPU will not be imported, so you will have to decide what is needed right away.

Naturally, we got a complete set for tests: these are two black cardboard boxes, traditional for the entire ROG series, one of which had a laptop, and the second – a video card. Let’s start with the first one. The package bundle will be good: in addition to instructions, they will also put a cover and a stylus inside. True, we did not get this wealth: we were content with a small 100 W charger measuring 7.5×7.5 cm and weighing 270 grams. At the end, by the way, it has USB Type-C, from which you can charge your phone, tablet, and Switch. However, the reverse scheme also works: it is quite possible to feed a laptop from a good telephone charge.

The Flow X13 itself is really tiny, and even without a discount on the fact that it is a gaming model. It is slightly larger than A4 sheet in dimensions: 29.9×22.2×1.58 cm. Weight – 1.3 kg. Compactness emphasizes the rejection of pretentious forms and experiments with colors: black, straight lines, no bevels. Only the aspect ratio looks strange. Since the hardware inside still needs space for cooling, the shape was slightly “squared”: the screen was set to 16:10 with a resolution of 1920×1200 and raised by three centimeters. Perceived unusual.

But with the texture of materials ASUS missed. The lid, lower part and space around the keyboard were decorated with frequent lines. It looks nice, but the texture around the keyboard is out of place: the wrists crawl over these bumps during typing, and this is a little annoying.

Otherwise, no complaints: the panels fit perfectly, nothing bends, the rigidity is maintained, and the screen hinges normally hold the display and open 360 degrees, turning the laptop into a 13-inch tablet.

Control

In terms of management, everything is expected. The touchpad is small, with normal sensitivity, but no separate buttons. It was not drowned into the case – the borders are emphasized by the non-standard texture of the keypad. At work, the only complaint is a slight creak when clicking.

The keyboard did not disappoint either. Despite its size, it is full-size with very soft and crisp keys. In the minuses, we will throw the clipped left Shift and Ctrl, brought out to combinations via Fn functions Home, End, Page Up / Down, as well as the incomprehensibly huge # key above Enter. As a plus, we write down the absence of restrictions on combinations – you can hold down at least all the keys at once.

Almost all additional control – keyboard backlighting, screen brightness – is tied to the combination of F1-F12 with Fn. But the volume, mute the microphone and launch the Armory Crate utility are moved to four buttons above the keyboard. Also add that the power key has moved to the right side. Good or not – during the tests they did not understand, but, on the whole, no difference.

But with the connectors Flow X13 is out of luck. The connector for the video card on the left side left room for only one HDMI 2.0 and a combined headset jack. On the right, the space was given to the cooling system, leaving only two USB. And one of them is the same Type-C, in which the charger cable lives most of the time. In general, if you do not use splitters or docking stations, then one standard USB 3.1 Gen port remains for life. 2.

Display

Now – about the screen. Recall that it has a non-standard size – 13.4 inches with a 16:10 ratio. There are two types of matrices. The first is a 4K 60Hz display with 116% sRGB coverage, which is logical for a work car. The second – which we got – the game version at Full HD, 120 Hz and official 100% sRGB coverage.

Since we have a laptop-transformer and the screen leans back 360 degrees, the panel is touch-sensitive and covered with gloss. It is clearly anti-reflective, but it only saves from home or office lamps. We would not expect to work under the sun, even taking into account that the brightness is equal to 321.51 cd / m22… It should also be borne in mind that the matrix needs calibration for serious work. Out of the box, the spread in colors reached 9.52, after setting it kept within 0.27 with 99.6% coverage in sRGB. As promises ASUS, in the release models the factory calibration will be better.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t assess how convenient it is to work with the Flow X13 in tablet mode. First, as already mentioned, we did not get the stylus. Secondly, the engineering sample had some problems with the magnets holding the lid, and when switching to full tablet mode, the screen went out. However, in the partial coup mode, everything was fine. To control Windows and games like Crusaders Kings 3 or Pillars of eternity the sensitivity of the sensor is more than sufficient. The main thing is to learn how to hold your finger for a long time when you need to emulate the right mouse click.

By the way, for someone this “under-tablet” mode, with a keyboard on the back, can come in when playing with a gamepad. Taking into account that the screen is small and during the game you always want to move it a little closer – the option is quite working. And in general, even in the standard position you get used to the touch screen and periodically point your finger at some button, link or shortcut.

Filling

Although the Flow X13 is a very compact laptop, it got some serious hardware. Initially, it was known that he will receive Ryzen of the new 5000th generation. At the time of the announcement, we personally believed that we were talking about “lightweight” eight-core Ryzen 7 5800U… But ASUS took a much bolder step and installed full-bodied models here with the letters HS (reduced power consumption) at the end. In the younger versions, we are talking about Ryzen 7 5800HS, in the older ones – like ours – oh Ryzen 9 5900HS… These are 8-core models with support for up to 16 threads and 16MB of cache, but the former runs at up to 4.4 GHz and the latter runs at up to 4.6.

Recall that last year AMD brought the Zen 2 architecture to the laptop market, and with its Ryzen 4000 literally destroyed Intel in the gaming laptop segment: the processors may not have been particularly faster, but they turned out to be much colder. At this year’s CES, the company announced its transition to a modern Zen 3 and the release of Ryzen 5000 for laptops. And Zen 3 is a complete rejection of the old formula with four-core chipsets and the failed Infinity Fabric bus.

And this means a decrease in latency between cores, and not such a high dependence on memory. Although the latter, apparently, laptop manufacturers no longer care. In this model, DDR4 3200 MHz was installed: two 8 GB bars. In the future, they promise to switch to LPDDR4X at speeds up to 4266 MHz. The permanent memory was supplied with 1 TB: NVMe from Western Digital with a read speed of 2.42 GB / s.

Note that ASUS, unlike many competitors, did not limit the laptop to an integrated GPU in the processor, but supplied a discrete graphics card. Of course it’s not particularly powerful. GeForce GTX 1650, but it is she who transfers the Flow X13 from the category of “office machine” to the category of “work laptop on which you can play”.

All this is cooled as follows. Air is sucked in from below through the ventilation holes on the cover. Hot streams are thrown back and to the right by two tiny turbines through three small radiators. There are only two heat pipes, and both go through the processor and through the video card. At the same time, it should be noted that for better heat transfer, ASUS uses not thermal paste, but liquid metal. ASUS switched to it at the end of last year, and for this she had to solve a bunch of problems, starting with the question of how to apply metal on an industrial scale in laptops in general to how to protect adjacent components from possible short circuits. Naturally, this imposes some restrictions: for example, not everyone can replace the thermal interface on the processor and video card on their own.

Despite the tricky form factor, the laptop is easy to disassemble: you unscrew 11 screws from the bottom and pull off the cover. True, there is nothing to do inside. Almost all the space is occupied by a powerful 62 Wh battery and a cooling system. The RAM and SSD are soldered on the back of the motherboard, under the keyboard. Basically, the only thing left is to clean the fans and remove the WiFi module. Why do the latter – we do not know. By the way, WiFi is the only option to get online. There was not enough space for LAN.

In work

Here’s how it all works. In office mode, the computer does not strain: the turntables are silent, the processor holds 2.5-2.6 GHz and does not rise above 52 ° C. Temperatures rise under load, but, as with the previous generation, AMD processors adhere to the rule “it’s better to lower frequencies than burn the table.” Therefore, even in Photoshop, the stone first rises sharply to 86 ° C, gives out the declared 4.4 GHz for a few seconds, and then drops to 2.5 GHz and stays at 78 ° C.

A similar picture under more serious loads. IN 3dsmax At first, the laptop tries to hold 3.5-3.8 GHz, but eventually drops to 2.4 in order to keep at temperatures of 88-91 ° C. Theoretically, the frequencies can be raised – ASUS has selected the Fn + F7 combination, which switches the hardware between the “quiet”, “balanced” and “turbo” modes, but in practice they change little. In “turbo”, the fans are a little louder, the processor often jumps to 3.8 GHz, but in the end returns to a comfortable 2.4. The stone may go even lower: under AVX, the frequency is kept at 1.8-2 GHz.

Naturally, this is bad for performance, but the laptop does not overheat, and the fans do not try to blow your mind. Although, let’s not be cunning, the Flow X13 loves to rotate with turntables, but it does it delicately: at low frequencies and evenly, without howling.

However, despite rather modest frequencies, Flow X13 does not lag behind its large-sized comrades. He catches up with hotter and noisier models on Intel Core i7-10750H, outperforms laptops on Ryzen 5 4600H and slightly inferior to last year Ryzen 7 4800H… At the same time, it is clearly seen that this loss is precisely due to its small size and the need to often drop frequencies: according to single-core tests, in which the speed is kept more or less at the factory, Zen 3 is out of competition.

Games

But with games, Flow X13 is more complicated. It is clear that the GTX 1650 is not a card with which you turn everything on to the maximum, cut down on anti-aliasing from above and season it all with honest lighting. No, this is the youngest NVIDIA chip with a modest 4 GB of video memory, and in Flow X13 it also lacks cooling. It almost immediately gains at 83 ° (this is at 72 ° standard for NVIDIA) and operates at a frequency in the region of 1450-1500 MHz versus the normal 1750-1800 MHz.

As a result, the Flow X13 loses to large laptops with the same video cards: the lag ranges from 13 to 30%. However, you can play on this system. Valhalla at medium settings it produced 43 fps, Far cry new dawn at “high” – 34, Watch Dogs: Legion – 43, Horizon Zero Dawn – 41, F1 2023 at maximum speed – 67 fps. Naturally, projects like League of legends, Dota 2, CS: GO. More, let’s say, calm games go great: Crusader kings 3, Pillars of eternity 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2… In general, even if you can not count on supergraphics with Flow X13, and 60 fps will not always be discussed, but you can play on this machine, and if you do not harbor unnecessary illusions, then the presence of even such a weak video card in a laptop is much better than the core built into the processor.

We checked: you can play on the local Radeon only in projects with very weak graphics. Valhalla shows 22 fps at minimum speeds with failures of up to ten frames. Far Cry New Dawn – 16, Watch Dogs: Legion – 19. Some bloggers, testing the built-in chips, persuade to lower the resolution to 720p, but this is a dubious pleasure.

Video card

However, we are not discussing the GTX 1650 here today: it’s time to talk about the external RTX 3080 Mobile. To begin with, the dock is called the ROG XG Station 2, and by all accounts this is an independent product, which, unfortunately, is still supported by only one laptop model.

The station came to us clearly not in an OEM box. The design is the same as that of a laptop: black thick cardboard, a plastic handle, and inside is the device itself and a standard computer power cable.

The size of the XG Station is the size of a chubby diary: 20.5×15.5×3 cm. Weight – only 1 kg. In design, again, this is a black notebook, made in the same style as the Flow X13: a textured surface with oblique lines, a small ROG logo and cutouts for ventilation.

In addition to promising significant performance gains, the card also complements the laptop with the necessary connectors. On one of the ends there is a card reader for SD cards, on the other – four USB 3.1, LAN, HDMI 2.0 and full-size DisplayPort 1.4. In other words, ASUS has done everything so that this dock can be installed on a table once, connect monitors, a mouse, a keyboard, a network to it, and when you come home, just plug in your laptop and work like a powerful stationary computer. Naturally, nothing prevents you from carrying this thing with you. To go with her to the dacha, on a business trip, on vacation is not a question.

Moreover, with the XG Station, you don’t have to carry another power supply with you: it is built into the case, and you just need to plug the cable into it from the outlet. Everything is also connected to the laptop without surprises: the wire from the dock is inserted into the proprietary ASUS connector on the left end and is fixed with a slider lock for reliability. As soon as this is done, the software picks up the external video card, configures something there, warns that before pulling out the cord, you must turn off the station through the menu, and that’s it – the system is ready for games.

There is only one thing that has not been screwed up here – a non-removable cable that goes to the laptop. It is tough, short – only half a meter – and the connector itself is enclosed in a plastic box 5.5 x 4.5 cm. Not only does such a design fit badly into a bag, but it will not be possible to carefully assemble it on the table the first time. It is necessary to free up the space to the left of the laptop, and get used to the periodic confusion with wires. However, such a connector is not easy here.

Features:

Such docking stations, with external video cards, were once produced by all and sundry. Usually they looked much more prosaic: they took a case from a conventional HTPC, put a power supply in it and unsoldered a PCIe x16 slot for a regular video card. Apart from the absolute non-mobility of such devices, the idea was very similar to what ASUS is now offering, only it did not work.

Docking stations used interface Thunderbolt 3… Как расширение USB он невероятно крут и быстр, но как входной порт для видеокарты не годится. Всего четыре линии PCIe настолько душили внешние GPU, что прирост производительности не окупал танцы с бубном. ASUS для своего дока изобрела фирменный разъём на восемь линий PCIe, а этого уже достаточно, чтобы, в теории, не ощущать проблем по пропускной способности.

По сравнению с базовой конфигурацией Flow X13 ускоряется в два с лишним раза. Абсолютно все игры, начиная с AC Valhalla и заканчивая Metro: Exodus, держат стабильные 60 fps на максимальных настройках без намеков на фризы. Абсолютно нормально ноутбук реагирует и на включение ray tracing. Без DLSS та же Watch Dogs: Legion показывает 52 fps, а Metro: Exodus — 61. Меньше получается только у Cyberpunk 2077: даже без лучей он болтается в районе 40 кадров, но здесь без комментариев — такие результаты мы видели и на домашней RTX 3070.

К сожалению, до реальных возможностей RTX 3080 Mobile полученные результаты не дотягивают. Сейчас у нас на тестах ноутбук с RTX 3070 Mobile, и при схожих вводных он не особо отличает по производительности от Flow X13. Кто виноват в этом — процессор или новый интерфейс ASUS — мы поймём, когда протестируем еще один-два ноутбука с похожими конфигурациями. Пока можем сказать лишь, что по сравнению со старыми доками XG Station 2 сделала огромный шаг вперёд.

И это касается как адекватных результатов, так и общей схемы работы. Если старые док-станции могли подпортить нервов на ровном месте, то XG Station 2 просто нормально работает. Когда вы втыкаете коннектор, компьютер отключает родную дискретку и использует новые ресурсы: ни от вас, ни от программ он ничего не требует.

А вот что не понравилось — для внешнего решения XG Station 2 неоправданно громкая. Да, внутри стоит огромный видеочип с 16 ГБ GDDR6, но, как нам кажется, лучше бы ASUS чуть увеличила размеры корпуса и впихнула внутрь большую тихоходную вертушку. Плюс к этому GPU ощутимо греется: в играх поднимается до 85-86°C при частотах от 1700 до 1850 МГц. В режиме «эффективность» температуры падают до 75-76°С, но скорость чипа уменьшается до 1500 МГц, что, впрочем, не сильно сказывается на производительности.

Давайте подводить итоги. Для начала выскажемся по Flow X13. Без зазрения совести — это лучший ноутбук своего класса, и впервые в нашей истории мы выдаем устройству сразу две награды: «Крутая Железка» и «Выбор редакции». Единственный минус компьютера — фактура корпуса вокруг клавиатуры. В остальном — идеальная машина для тех, у кого есть мощный ПК и кому нужна рабочая компактная система с минимальными возможностями поиграть во все современные проекты. Аналогичных продуктов по уровню исполнения и кругу выполняемых задач на рынке не существует.

А вот по док-станции впечатление двоякое. Решение, конечно, гениальное, уникальное, и, самое главное, рабочее. Таких вариантов, что твой ноутбук-«полуовощ» в одно движение превращается в игрового монстра, ни у кого нет, и вряд ли появится, тем более в таких габаритах и с таким скромным весом.

С другой стороны, остается много вопросов. Во-первых, получается дорого. Суммарно система приближается к 300 000 рублей (из которых станция — 160 000). А за такие деньги уже реально купить и ноутбук, и обычный компьютер со всей обвязкой. Во-вторых, для полустационарного решения XG Station 2 неоправданно шумная и горячая. В-третьих, RTX 3080 избыточна: нужны версии на 3060 или 3070, которые собьют ценник. В-четвертых, перед покупкой хочется понимать, что Flow X13 не останется единственным ноутбуком с нужным разъёмом.

Поэтому на наш вкус коридор реального применения у XG Station 2 узкий. Она нужна тем, кто часто ездит в командировки, на отдых или бесконечно переезжает, либо тем, кто по внутренним причинам не хочет заводить две системы и готов за это неплохо заплатить.