ASUS announced sometime ago that the ROG Flow Z13, their Surface-like tablet computer would be coming to Australian stores soon and now we know when, it’s out today.

While this may look like Microsoft’s Surface, that is only a glimpse, as the specs for the machine are far beyond what the company from Redmond include in that line. Boasting up to an 12th gen Intel Core i9-12900H processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU, this machine is ready to tackle all the latest games and most demanding applications. Further supplementing this is a combination of up to 16GB of insanely high speed 5200MHz LPDDR5 memory and up to a 1TB PCIe SSD, allowing gamers to multitask and take more of their game library on the go. The Flow Z13 has the performance specifications of much larger devices.

As the world’s fastest gaming tablet, the Z13 has some unique design benefits over typical laptops. Inspired by the ROG Mothership, the Flow Z13 houses its components behind the screen. This unconventional layout for a gaming device allows the Z13 to stand high above a desk or table when in use, granting much better access to fresh air than traditional gaming laptops. In addition, the lack of a hinge mechanism allows for a wider vapour chamber and larger fans thanks to the extra space inside the chassis, all while keeping the machine just 12mm thick.

A vapour chamber allows much more surface area for heat transfer compared to standard heatpipe cooling designs, plus contact with multiple heat sources, like the CPU, GPU and VRM simultaneously. This robust cooling solution allows the Flow Z13 to pack some truly incredible hardware for its size. When paired with liquid metal thermal compound, the Flow Z13 remains supremely quiet even under full load, with acoustics never exceeding 40dB. In lighter workloads, the machine can operate with the fans at zero RPM for truly silent computing.

The real bonus for this product though, is that you can connect it to the XG Mobile device to give you extra power. The XG Mobile family was introduced in 2021 as companion hardware for the ROG Flow series, offering top-tier graphics performance and additional I/O ports when needed. With the addition of an AMD Radeon™ RX 6850M XT GPU XG Mobile for 2022, the family is now complete and offers incredibly powerful graphics card options from both AMD and NVIDIA.

With up to a GeForce RTX 3080 or Radeon RX 6850M XT, dedicated DisplayPort and HDMI outputs, multiple USB ports and an ethernet port, XG Mobile brings flagship desktop performance in a mobile form factor. For high refresh rate gaming, streaming or content creation, the Flow Z13 paired with an XG Mobile is the ultimate portable battlestation.

The only thing to be aware of is the price, the basic model starts at $2,499 meaning it is not a cheap option, but given the power on offer, it could be worth looking into.