ROG Flow X16, Asus' 2-in-1 gaming becomes big
ROG Flow X16
ASUS has just announced new models with which the ROG product line intended for gamers is updated. These include the new ROG Flow X16, a 2-in-1 gaming laptop featuring eye-catching aesthetics and top-of-the-range hardware. Under the hood of the laptop we find an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU with 8 cores / 16 threads and a base frequency of 3.3GHz which reaches 4.9GHz in boost.ROG Flow X16 is the evolution of ROG Flow X13, a model that - as the name suggests - offered a 13 "screen. According to what was declared by Asus, users greatly appreciated the features offered by ROG Flow X13 and expressed the desire to have a similar product, but with a larger screen: from here was born Rog Flow X16, which follows the same philosophy of the previous model and differs from ROG Flow Z13, which is in effect a tablet with a keyboard and not a 2 in 1.
| ); } The peculiarity of the 2 in 1 design of ROG Flow X16 is in its 360 ° foldable hinge, which allows it to be used as a secondary touch display by connecting an external keyboard, mouse and monitor, or simply switch to tablet mode . The 16-inch display is a 2K resolution Mini-LED unit with the most advanced features, such as a 165Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time, Adaptive Sync, Dolby Vision, 100% DCI-P3 color coverage and is available in 500 or 1000 nit brightness versions.
ASUS ROG Flow X16 offers up to 2TB of SSD storage, which can be expanded through the M.2 NVMe connector. The rest of the features finally include an RGB backlighting for the keyboard, 4 Dolby Atmos speakers, HD IR webcam and a 3D noise-canceling microphone grid.
ASUS '2-in-1 ROG Flow X16 will be available starting from the end of July at a price of € 2500.
ROG Flow X16 already looks like contender for best new gaming laptop
Asus has announced the ROG Flow X16, a new laptop in its 2-in-1 gaming line with a focus on ultra-portable PCs. The Flow X16 shares a lot in common with the Flow X13, only stretched out to the larger 16-inch form factor.
It’s still a convertible 2-in-1 using a 360-degree hinge and a touchscreen to be used as a tablet.
Of course, being a 16-inch gaming laptop, it’s not as much a standout as the ROG Flow X13 was in terms of its size. The Flow X13 was an engineering wonder just based on its size alone. Who has ever heard of a 13-inch gaming laptop that weighed under three pounds?
The Flow X16, on the other hand, weighs 4.4 pounds and is 0.76 inches thick. That’s small, but it’s no thinner than popular laptops like the Razer Blade 15 or MSI GS66 Stealth. It’s actually even heavier than Asus’ own ROG Zephyrus M16, strangely enough.
Still, the Flow X16 brings its unique 2-in-1 approach to the gaming laptop space, now in a bigger screen size. It’s not just a larger display, either — it’s a better one, too. It has a mini-LED panel with 512 dimming zones — not the kind of screen you typically see on your average gaming laptop. Asus says the display goes up to 1,100 nits in HDR, meaning it’s been certified for DisplayHDR 1000.
Again, that’s basically unheard of in the gaming laptop world outside of Asus’ ROG Nebula Display technology, which debuted in the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 earlier this year.
Of course, the QHD screen also has a high 165Hz refresh rate with a 3ms response time for some ultra-smooth gaming. It’s not as fast as the Razer Blade’s 240Hz QHD OLED screen, of course, but it’s certainly an upgrade over the 120Hz screen on the ROG Flow Z13 or the 60Hz screen on the Flow X13.
But let’s be real — the real advantage to having a larger version of the X13 is performance. Both the Z13 and X13 were limited to an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti, and the extra space afforded by this larger chassis allows for a much more powerful GPU. Asus didn’t mention all the configurations that would be offered, but the top option is an RTX 3070 Ti, which has a max TGP (total graphics power) of 100 watts.
Unfortunately, the Flow X16 features only a 35-watt processor, the AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS. These are the latest 8-core chips from AMD using the Zen 3+ architecture with a base clock speed of 3.3GHz and support for DDR5 memory. The difference in gaming won’t be too noticeable, but you might see slower performance in certain creative applications than if it had a 45-watt processor such as the Ryzen 9 6900HX.
Asus has some new tricks up its sleeve to keep this thing cool, too. A larger, heatsink covers many of the internal components to absorb heat, while the inclusion of a third fan keeps hot air moving toward vents located along the chassis.
Configurations are offered with up to 2TB of SSD storage and 64GB of DDR5 4800MHz memory.
The ROG Flow X16 has a typical arrangement of ports for a gaming laptop, including one USB-C 4.0 port, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one microSD card slot, HDMI 2.1, and a headphone jack. Lastly, the Flow X16 supports the proprietary XG Mobile port as well, which provides an additional USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port and connection to the XG Mobile external GPU. It makes less sense here than on the less powerful Flow laptops, but it’s still available if you already own one.
Other features not commonly found on gaming laptops include a 1080p webcam, a Windows Hello IR camera, and a quad-speaker setup. Too often, even premium gaming laptops leave out these important quality-of-life updates that non-gaming laptops enjoy.
The Flow X16 will be “available soon,” according to Asus, starting at $1,950. Of course, if you want the more powerful options, prices will range up from there.
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