ASUS - ROG Flow X13 13.4” Touchscreen Gaming Laptop QHD - AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS with 32GB RAM - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 - 1TB SSD - White

At $2.5k, or even lower, this doesn't come with a native HDR display (it only has it for fullscreen(?) apps, you won't get it in games e.g.). I would much rather prefer this over the 165Hz display (maybe a 90/120Hz would be more realistic, you aren't getting close to saturating 165Hz without playing at 800p AND Frame Generation in recent games). I also wish the display was even brighter / not as reflective (not really usable outdoors) but this is just a personal preference - going significantly brighter/different panel (miniLED/OLED would probably harm battery if you still wanted to keep everything else that was good about it). or a RTX 4080 - it still won't perform well at a low power limit but you'll get better efficiency and more memory You're forced into this config for the 32GB RAM so it's unfortunate. Those are my major complaints, everything else is a relatively small issue, (many things fixed over prior gens?). The speakers are very subpar though, for sure. It has no competition (even the Z13 is probably objectively worse, unless you really like the tablet only). It does sustain 70W combined without going over 80 degrees - or it can go over 80 degrees and be not so loud. With some undervolting and thermal mods you can easily do more - I've seen ~15% GPU performance gains. It has nearly uncontested battery life at this size/GPU (14" laptops including Asus' G14 without a larger battery are depressing to look at now) - I think only the 14" MBPs can compete due to their display. The keyboard and trackpad are good / decent; personal preference. They do disable on rotation (even a little) so you may have to disable that service if you use it in bed - I would be very annoyed if I weren't able to do this. I would really like to see a Surface Book esque device from Asus, since they pretty much have the "pieces" - X13 + Z13. You would be able to get double the already good battery, easily push higher power limits on the CPU/GPU (since it wouldn't be combined), and have double the ports/drives. (It would also be double the price though lol, well maybe $3k would be reasonable given M$ prices).

This is a great piece of tech. The hardware will provide great performance in games for years to come due to DLSS support, and 32GB of memory will give plenty of headroom for other tasks for the foreseeable future. Being the only 13" laptop with a dedicated graphics card AND foldable for drawing/notes, this devices is unlike any other. Definitely look into replacing ArmoryCrate with GHelper online as it will save your idle battery life and also offers a lighter load than ASUS' default software.

Coming from the original X13 with 1650 and 1200P screen. They finally upgraded everything I have wanted since the original except a 2 way removable XG Mobile Cable. I got the 2023 X16, but decided it was too large for me to carry all the time. So back to the X13... Larger trackpad and it is much smoother to use. XG Mobile cover is connected to the laptop. Lost that rubber piece in like 1 month on the original. still might happen as it is pretty flimisy, but it is progress. Screen is excellent finally. 2k resolution is perfect for me, especially at this size. The terrible ghosting is also gone which was my biggest complaint. I was carrying a separate 2k screen to game on. OLED or Mini LED would have been nice, but it is a great screen regardless. I personally find the extra sharpness from the 2k screen to be great despite people always saying 1080P is more than enough at this size. GPU is amazing for what it is. I never imagined a low TDP limited GPU could be good enough, but here we are. With games that support DLSS 3, you can game at highish settings with FG and DLSS quality and get around 60ish and a very enjoyable eye candy experience. You now don't have to carry the XG Mobile to game which is a big difference than the original with the 1650. Software is buggy between drivers and such. Needs probably a year for drivers to settle in. Lots of driver reinstalling to get things working right. Fans are on the louder side when they run hard and the laptop does push everything do the temp limits if you allow it to. Games that don't support DLSS3 require me to bring the XG Mobile to play at the quality I prefer. Don't appear to be able to even run any DLSS for DLSS 1 games. I prefer non DLSS if possible, but for this form factor it is a nice middle ground. I only have the 6800 and 3080 XG mobiles. The 4090 is tempting, but priced higher than id like for now. Wifi is a bit stronger and I am actually seeing noticeably better download speeds on my home Wifi 6 router. I was topping at around 300 mbps on the old X13. New one is in the 600s. They need to stop limiting the Charging watts on non Asus Powerbricks.