By harnessing AMD's new Ryzen5,000 series mobile CPU's, the Asus Flow X13 has createda whole new class of laptop. We're gonna call it, theultra ultra book, super book? wonder book, okay I'm not sure, but I am sure that thisis a segue to our sponsor. Honey, honey is the freeto use browser extension that helps you find the best promo codes on over 30,000 websites. Get it today
join honey.com/ltt (upbeat music) From the specs alone, you'd assume that the Flow X13 is at leasttwo weight classes higher. It's got an AMD Ryzen nine 5980 HS, an eight core 16 threadbeast of a processor that pushes it's
sevennanometer transistors to 4.6 gigahertz and it's got an NvidiaGTX 1650 graphics card, to crank out reasonable frame rates. As long as you don't mind turning down some of the eye candy, I mean,dedicated graphics beiby, and while we've seensituations where great specs,
can be let down by disappointing cooling. I mean, we just showed itshredding the MSI GE 66 Raider. In fairness, that reallyisn't MSI's fault. I mean, they have pumpedevery last watt of power that they can into that Intel processor and the GPU in the MSI laptop, will leave the Flow X13 dead in the water.
So let's pivot then to amore relevant comparison. That's where this comes in,just a couple of months ago, we lauded the XPS 15 for itscombination of power and design designating it, the best windows laptop, period but now that it lookslike we might be able to get more performance, froma much more portable machine, it's looking a lot more likethe best windows laptop,
huge asterisk. Despite being the size ofan XPS 13, the Flow X 13, was trading blows with Dell'smuch larger pride and joy in CPU benchmarks, and that was only until Idiscovered something rather fun. In Asus's RG software, you can flip over to manual mode, which lets you turn the CPUfrom a 35 watt TDP up to 45.
Now unsurprisingly,that's a little too much for the poor cooler inthis thing to handle, like look at it, but it's also, a two in oneand if you flip it around, so the intake doesn't getchoked against the table, oh, look at this? Peaking at 95 degrees Celsius, we've got the cooling for 45 Watts now, which knocked a whole minute,off of our blender BMW test and allowed the Flow X13 tohandlely shred the XPS 15, in pretty much everything else.
Where the Flow X13 didn'tdo quite as well though, is GPU benchmarks. The 1650 TI in the XPS 15,outpaced our 1650 Max-Q, on the X13 pretty easily but the experience wasn't that different. We're talking 10 Edpmedium to high details. The same can't be said of the XPS 13, which if you think aboutit, is a way farer fight. So yeah, the Flow X 13, punches well above itsweight class for power, particularly in the CPU department but the thing is, the power of the XPS 15,is only part of its draw. The people we know, who bought XPS 15s, did it for the overall experience, the materials, the track pad, the keyboard and of course flexing on everyone that can't afford a $3,000 laptop.
So is the Flow X 13 ableto compete in this regard ? To a degree. The magnesium chassis is fairly stiff, but does flex a bit if you press on it, especially up at the topand as for aesthetics, personally I think theystruck a great balance between professionalism and gamer appeal, but it's not quite as sexy.
As for IO, at first glance, it looks exceptional forthis class of laptop. You get two USB type Cs, a type A and full-sized HDMI, but Iwas a little disappointed when I realized it was HDMI 2.0 and when I remembered that AMD machines, don't have Thunderbolt. At first I was like, "you know at least I'll have a full-sized USB port, so maybe I can deal with this
but I was kind of shockedat how many things I use on a daily basis,that require Thunderbolt. Our 10 gig network adapters,our best external capture card, they both front Thunderbolt 3 and when it comes to docking or running an external graphics card, Thunderbolt, is the onlyway to do it or is it?
The Flow X13 has yetanother really cool trick up its sleeve, the XGmobile connect interface, which gives us a PCI Expressgen three by eight link, straight into this, the XG mobile eGPU. Now you get a coupleof options for the GPU that you can have crammed in here but of course we're showingoff the most powerful one, an RTX 3080 mobile, with a 280 watt powersupply built right in, the RTX 3080 and this compact package, is able to boost up to 1810 megahertz,
allowing you to connect to either, a high refresh rate 1440P display or a 4K60 display and havea pretty darn good time, especially with your extra connectivity. You've got your ethernet, you'vegot your USB, SD card slot. This combination was evenable to slightly beat out the Zephyrus G15, a Ryzennine RTX 3080 beast. But there is a problem, a mobile RTX 3080, is prettyclose to a desktop RTX 3070 in terms of performance and you will be payingnearly RTX 3090 money, for this package.
I mean, I get it, it's currently the best eGPU notebook combination on the market, bar none and goodengineering costs good money, but Asus's, kind of shotthemselves in the foot here, by making the news Zephyrus G14 and G15, so darn good for everydayuse, that it's hard to not just recommendbuying one of those instead. We'll have a review ofthose coming by the way, so make sure you're subscribed and of course what I say and what I do, are two entirely different things and given the option, personally I would choosethe much lighter Flow X13.
Largely, thanks to its screen. There are two options for the display. We have the 4K touch option, which you should absolutely not buy, because unless you're a literal hawk, you don't need over 9 million pixels, in a 13.4 inch form factor but that's okay, because there's also a full HD plus model, that runs at 120 Hertz.
We got to check it outon a pre-production unit and it is exceptional. It brings a level of fluidity, that has previously simply notbeen available on ultra books and especially not on ones,that also have a touch screen. Now it's possible thatthe 120 Hertz most of it, does harm battery life, but then again, so does running atunnecessarily high resolutions. So I would expect it to be pretty similar, to the seven and a half hours, we were able to get from our machine.
One area Asus coulddefinitely improve though is, well, this area above the keyboard, using this space for media keys is fine, on a big chungus 15 inch gaming laptop, but here, every last bit of space needs to be used efficiently and I would rather havehad a larger track pad. Like it's fine, but it definitely feels very three years ago and cramps, compared to offeringsfrom Dell, HP and Razer.
The keyboard is also a bit of a sore spot, for a gaming laptop,it's, well it's excellent and I can get up to fullspeed on it effortlessly but at this size, it's competing againstthe likes of the XPS 13, HP Specter and Lenovo ThinkPad. All of which, have pretty much perfected getting incredible typingfeel, out of a small laptop. To be clear, the Flow X13, it's still good but the slight machinists makes
it, more of an A minus, at leastcompared to that group. Unlike some of their other RG machines, Asus, wisely included awebcam on the Flow X 13, definitely grateful for that, the quality's even not bad and I would normally complain,that they didn't include, Windows Hello facialrecognition on the thing, but get this, the fingerprintreader on the side, has Asus's special sauce,fingerprint caching.
So you don't actuallyhave to touch it again, after the boot sequence,it just logs right in. The speakers are alsogood but not incredible. The Dolby Atmos integration, offers excellent stereoseparation and good detail, but the bass is pretty lacking, compared to something like the MacBook Air or the quality of this t-shirt, from lttstar.com, totallyunbiased by the way. Meaning that the Flow X13,isn't the perfect ultra book and if you plan on doing all day typing, browsing the web andeven light photo editing, you'll probably be better served, by an XPS 13 or a Specter 14.
But if you need performance, the Flow X13, is completelyin a class of its own. With more grunt than an I9 10908 K, and a reasonably powerful GPU. This thing shreds, whenit comes to light gaming, video editing or even light hard work. Also given how the prices ofultra books have ballooned, the 1499 asking price isn'teven out of this world.
So the real tough decision, is if you value the touchscreenand the lightness enough, to choose this, over thesimilarly priced Zephyrus G14, with an RTX 3060. That is assuming of course, that you can find eitherof them in stock anyway.
I mean, you can't buy Ryzen 5,000, you can't buy RTX 3000 andthis has literally both. So is it like unobtainium squared? -
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