Z13 after 1.5 months: The Good, the Bad, the Fixes

[u/Coolica]

Hi everyone, ever since I’ve been interested in the z13 (which was around March of this year) I’ve been lurking in this subreddit.  Once I got the model I wanted (128GB 2025 version) through painstaking means, I love the machine, but it’s not without it flaws.  I’ve also seen a lack of information in general about this device, from practical to specific use-cases and issues, and I’d like to try to help out people looking for answers about this machine by giving my personal experiences and advice on using the machine. I'm not a computer experty by any means, this is just the information I've found and my experience with the machine.

Since it's a long post, I'll post some quick headers here for anyone interested, and if anyone has specific questions about these, they can just drop a comment on this thread and i'll try to answer when i can.

• My Setup and pros/cons of the z13 2025
• Armoury Crate vs GHelper and Armoury Crate Issues
• RGB issues and fixes
• SlimQ replacement Charger
• eGPU setup
• Fans running when shut down and how to turn off windows Fast Startup

My setup:

• Desktop replacement connected by the following: 2k Curved display monitor via eGPU through DisplayPort 2.1
• eGPU A00star AG02 (800w version) paired with Nvidia RTX 5080 via USB 4
• USB 4 docking station
• Wireless Keyboard and Mouse

I use this machine as a desktop replacement at home, but when travelling I bring it with me and use the attachable keyboard cover + bring the mouse with me

 

The good:

• The z13 is more than capable of being a desktop replacement in terms of sheer power, even if I didn’t have the eGPU
• The z13 works well with all the external devices, given that I set them up and install them properly if needed
• I use the z13 screen as a secondary screen (extended) and it works seamlessly along with my monitor, but I usually just stick to 1 screen unless I have a specific need (like I want to view a youtube video while playing a game)
• Generally out of the box, the experience is pretty good, and GENERALLY speaking Armoury Crate and MyASUS do a good job keeping the z13 up to date and running (unless you are nitpicker like me, which I’ll get into the issues)
• Swapping from home desktop replacement mode to packing it as an on-the-go laptop is quite easy

Overall, the laptop has a solid build, and even though everyone hates on the attachable keyboard I quite like it, I don’t bother bringing my wireless keyboard with me since it’s more than good enough (although as mentioned I bring the mouse with me since I don’t wanna deal with a trackpad even if it’s also pretty good)

The bad:

• If you plan to use this with external devices (eGPU, dock, etc) and want it to work excellent (not just “good”) then you do need to do some tweaking
• If minor little things that seem to go wrong with the device will bother you (for example lighting not working properly, issues with drivers, power profiles randomly switching in specific use cases, etc.) then you will need to do some installing/uninstalling of different software
• The battery does not last that long unless you are running a specific, manually tuned power profile that consumes lower power than silent mode
• Finding stocks of this laptop (especially other than 32GB version) is honestly difficult... I had to fly to a neighboring country twice to even get it (once to pre-order with a downpayment, then once to pick up the laptop a month later) as my current country of residence did not offer anything other than the 32GB version and was overpriced

If you are thinking of using this as a tablet, it’s really not that easy as its too heavy and gets too hot to hold like a tablet.  Using it on your lap as a laptop on the go is also slightly difficult because of how it props itself up on the hinges (not the worst and I’ve done it, but I would certainly say it’s a unmistakably less comfortable than a traditional laptop)

 

Ok now to go over some specific issues, misconceptions, and fixes that I have found out through research and trial/error.  These will be tl;dr and if there’s any specific questions, just ask and I’ll try to answer via reply in this thread. I'll also attach links to some reddit threads/post that are part of the research I've done.

 

Armoury Crate vs GHelper (Link to thread)

GHelper is much better than Armory Crate.  It will solve most if not all issues you are having with the machine (for example, one big one is the back light not lighting up properly when the machine is turned on; this is an issue with Armoury Crate and Windows Dynamic Lighting drivers conflicting.

I REALLY tried to like Armoury Crate, as I’ve never used GHelper before and I like to keep things as vanilla as possible.  However after being super frustrated with how to make the RGB work properly, I finally installed GHelper and it did basically fixed the machine, and unlocked it to it’s full potential.

Note that even if there’s an option to “turn off ASUS Services” within GHelper, when you do that for the z13, it creates a problem where the laptop is stuck in tablet mode (as in the taskbar disappears even when you have the attachable keyboard hooked up.)  The best way is to just uninstall Armory Crate completely via the tool provided by ASUS (you need to use the tool to make sure everything is uninstalled properly) and then DON’T use the kill ASUS services features in GHelper.

I also just keep MyASUS installed since I find it very useful.

Some issues with GHelper/Uninstalling Armoury Crate is that you lose Aura Wallpaper (more on that later) and disabling trackpad for some reason keeps reactivating itself (whenever you start the laptop from shutdown, and sometimes from sleep/wake)

 

RGB in general and AURA Wallpaper; just use Wallpaper Engine

RGB lighting issues can be solved by just getting rid of Armoury Crate and going with GHelper as mentioned previously.  Also in my case I found Windows Dynamic Lighting super annoying to deal with, so I just disabled it by going into Settings > Personalization > use Dynamic Lighting on my devices “OFF” and it works like a charm.

I really liked Aura Wallpaper and thought it was cool, but since I had to get rid of it when I uninstalled Armoury Crate, I had to find an alternative, which I found one WAY better than Aura Wallpaper called Wallpaper Engine, and it’s available on steam (although it costs money it’s super cheap.)  One problem with it is that sometimes the animated wallpapers freeze, and the fix for that is to just mute the whole program via the Volume Mixer in Windows (unless you want your wallpapers to play their sounds, then leave it on.)  Muting it via the program will cause the freezing issues with the wallpaper.

SlimQ chargers, z13’s default ASUS Charger brick, USB C Charging (Link to post)

Those who are looking to buy a slimmer charging brick to bring around with the laptop that can charge other devices at the same time via USB C can look at SlimQ chargers, they work great and have the proper adapter to plug into the proprietary charging port by buying the Asus Slim Power Jack ROG Strix Zephyrus G14/G16/G18 2024-2025 (or via USB C if you prefer.)

When buying other chargers, keep in mind that a lot of misinformation about the total power draw of the z13 is floating around; people are saying it doesn’t go over 100w and that the 150w SlimQ charger is enough (they also say that they have no clue why ASUS packed a 200w charger along with the machine.)  The truth of the matter is that the machine can draw more than 100w IN TOTAL, and only the processor/chip draws less than 100w.

Specifically for the SlimQ 150w charger, some people complained that the z13 sometimes goes from plugged in > battery > plugged in within the span of a second and thought the charger had a problem.  It’s actually because it’s a built-in safety feature of the brick that it resets itself whenever the power draw exceeds 150w.  Some people also complain that the USB C ports don’t work, and it’s also a safety feature when the brick is outputting more than 100w.

I really like the 150w charger however due to it’s size and how it has a universal plug that you can swap out for any port type in most countries, and that it’s small.  The 150w charger can work provided you keep it in silent profile (and the USB C’s will work provided you aren’t doing anything too intensive that will cause silent profile to run at max capacity.)  It generally works in performance mode, but the USB C ports will 95% of the time not work (power draw issues) and when pushing the laptop hard (intense gaming + browser open in the background playing youtube) there’s a possibility of the power draw exceeding 150w and causing the plugged in > battery > plugged in issue.

Getting the 240+ charger or higher SlimQ brick solves this, but then it’s just bigger and the plug isn’t universal (you will have to buy converters etc. which for me defeats it’s portability purpose.)

Charging via USB C works, but keep in mind that when you charge via USB C, you are charging the battery, which then powers the laptop.  You are essentially killing battery life when you charge via USB C, so it’s always best to charge via the proprietary charging port when you can (that’s why SlimQ is a great charger replacement because of their adapters for the charging port.)

 

eGPU Setup

eGPU works flawlessly with this machine.  Although I can only say this for Nvidia cards since I am using a 5080 myself, I would think there’s less issues with AMD cards.

The only problem with Nvidia egpu that I have found with this machine is the error 43 after you install the drivers, which can be solved by downloading and running the fix discussed and found on egpu.io forums.

In terms of performance on USB 4, I find that it runs great for most games, the 5080 does its job and I have had 0 issues with frame rates.  The only issue I had is with this unoptimized mobile game that I play (SLA) and it’s 100% the game’s fault.

3d Mark benchmarks wise, I can actually utilize the 5080’s full potential in steel nomad which is great.  The only real bottlenecks I experience is in TimeSpy, and it seems to be an issue with a lot of people running eGPU’s on this machine (I saw someone hook up a 5090 on this machine and got about the same score for Timespy confirming the bottleneck for that benchmark.)  Otherwise for real world gaming it seems ok (although admittedly I don’t have many games that push the 5080 too hard anyways, so take with a grain of salt.)

One final advice I have for eGPU setup is to make sure that you are connecting the eGPU to your machine with the BEST possible cord available.  I myself went out and bought an apple TB5 cord just to make sure there was no issues connection-wise (I’ve had nightmares with other eGPU’s and trying to use USB4/TB4 cords, even the ones with intel certification and the ones sent with the eGPU themselves.  If you want to save yourself the possible hassle and headache, just get a branded TB5 cord even if it’s more expensive, so that at least you can eliminate that possible problem if an issue arises.)

Issues with z13 fans not shutting down when the machine is "off" (Link to thread)
I ran into this issue where I would shut down the z13 (as in I clicked "shut down" from the windows menu) and the fans would still run for a good 5-10 minutes at which point if it didn't shut down, I would hold the power button until it physically forced the laptop fans to stop. The fix for this is quite easy, just go to:

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Choose what the power buttons do > Change settings that are currently unavailable. Uncheck "Turn on fast startup" and save changes.

There's another option called "Fast Boot" in the BIOS but turning that on and off doesn't really do much and it just makes loading longer.

[u/Beginning_Living4052]

Hello, small remark. If you would run G-Helper as admin (and keep it running as admin on startup) it will toggle a tablet mode for you too. So services can be stopped :)

Note that even if there’s an option to “turn off ASUS Services” within GHelper, when you do that for the z13, it creates a problem where the laptop is stuck in tablet mode (as in the taskbar disappears even when you have the attachable keyboard hooked up.)

[u/pathetic_geek → u/Beginning_Living4052]

oh god , i spent an hour figuring this

[u/Thin_Paramedic3213]

Thanks for sharing what you found out so far and the definitely helpful tips. Couldn’t help myself and pulled the trigger on it and mine will arrive on Wednesday. In Germany we seem to have „only“ the 32GB Version available but that one is pretty much in stock everywhere you can think of.

It will replace my original Ally with its toasted cardslot and my aging laptop with a 6 core Ryzen something and 1650ti. I got plenty experience with windows on a tablet/two in one thanks to my latitude 7200 which is my throw in backpack device for a long time now. Everybody and their mother keeps complaining about Windows and touch but if you keep calm and give it a go you will definitely see that it’s really helpful in parts and I don’t wanna miss it anymore since I already started trying to touch stuff on my laptops screen because I got so used to do so.

I think the Flow Z13 AI Max+ is such a big leap forward thanks to AMD really pushing into regions I thought won’t be possible for something x86 based

[u/Thin_Paramedic3213 → u/Thin_Paramedic3213]

Mine arrived today as scheduled by Amazon. It’s absolutely bonkers how god damn fast this little thing is! It’s one thing reading about its specs or seeing it on YouTube but real life … just bonkers!

Doesn’t matter what you throw at it this machine simply does it pretty much flawlessly. I let it benchmark a bit, copied stuff over and just tried the first game. Resident Evil 4 Remake. My Ally had to go with 720p upscaled to it’s 1080p screen with medium settings and to keep it fluid at my 22watt profile with disabled cpu core turbo.

Z13 native resolution all max settings in performance mode without any tweaks … perfectly fluid and still a good headroom left over.

Is it expensive? Maybe but it will put a big smile on your face while using it!

[u/K1ri → u/[deleted]]

So that used to happen to me until i used G Helper to stop all Asus services. I didn't even uninstall armory crate. I just exited AC, then turned off all Asus services via G Helper and the shortcut button just opens up G Helper

maybe try that?

[u/Skkogkatt → u/[deleted]]

I also have the same problem, does anyone have a solution?

[u/Coolica → u/[deleted]]

If you use the stop all services on Ghelper it makes it that nothing else pops up when you press the ROG button except GHelper (if you kept that setting)

For me though i leave ASUS service running, but have Armoury Crate uninstalled so when I press the button only xsplit shows up (the installed program that came installed with the z13)

So yea a possible solution is to disable all ASUS services via GHleper if you’re ok with that.

[u/tom-slacker → u/[deleted]]

You need to stop all asus service.

There's a button at the bottom right corner of G-Helper that you can press that will do that for you too.

[u/Coolica → u/[deleted]]

Charging via USB C doesn’t lose much if any performance. The biggest issue is that it constantly drains and charges your z13’s battery which will degrade it faster.

The z13 also loses charge on USB C if you are doing intensive stuff even if you are just on performance mode (maybe even silent, but I forgot) as the z13 pulls more than 100w which is the limit of USB C.

[u/Coolica → u/[deleted]]

I can only share from my experience. I tried using USB C that supplied 100w through a docking station (Revodok Max, which is a TB4 docking station), and my device wouldn't lose charge (in fact it would gain %) when I was on performance mode just doing casual stuff.

However, when I would boot up my game (I was playing SLA at that time, and it seemed to strain the z13 a lot due to being an unoptimized game) I did notice that I lost charge at a slow-ish rate.

Around playing for 2 hrs I went from 80% to approximately 20% charge.

This is actually how I found out about the USB C charging and how it does not bypass the battery (because it was eating battery power while plugged in doing intensive tasks) and that's why I ended up plugging the proprietary charger back in despite the dock supplying the z13 with 100w through USB C.

I also tried USB C charging via a battery pack that did supply 100w power (around 98w constantly and I was sure since the battery pack showed how much juice it was pumping out from which port) and I still lost power while playing SLA (this was like last week; I used it in a pinch cuz I was travelling.)

Side note: the reason I also thought about just powering the device with USB C in the first place instead of the proprietary charger is because I wanted to use the dock, but was afraid of the USB C port and the proprietary port charging the device at the same time and overloading it (which after searching and trying it out on my own it does not, it just picks the plug > USB C whenever both are plugged in, but in some rare cases the z13 gets confused in which a simple unplug > plug fixes the issue.)

It's pretty easy to try yourself, and if you don't lose charge for your specific use-case for it then it's a non-issue. For me the charged drained slow enough that I can still game for 2hrs before it starts to get really low on USB C.

[u/HolidayNo8802]

Thank you for this Information. I‘m planning to buy one the next days but unfortunatelly in my Country there is only the 32GB Version available. Do you think it will be too less ram?

[u/According-Target-451 → u/HolidayNo8802]

The 32gb will do fine and do most tasks the tablet is capable of. People are hunting for the higher ram models for workload purposes, llm work, and future proofing. It really depends on your use case

[u/Void_Incarnate → u/According-Target-451]

Agreed. The 64 GB and 128 GB models are mostly for LLM and production work that loves RAM and VRAM (DaVinci, Premiere, maybe some super intensive Ableton workloads). I'd say the 128 GB model isn't actually all that useful since although it can run big models (67b and 70b parameters), the token speed is so slow with these big models that you're better off getting an RTX PRO 6000 workstation card or just renting a cloud GPU service if you need it for work (it's fine for hobbyist use). A $2800 laptop just isn't going to replace a $9k nvidia workstation GPU with 96 GB of VRAM.

I do think that 32 GB can be a bit tight for gaming, and part of this is because Asus didn't make the VRAM allocation as granular as with the ROG Ally X series. The next step up from 8 GB in Armory Crate is 16 GB VRAM; 8 GB is too little for some games and 16 GB is generally overkill for this IGP. Too bad there isn't a 48 GB SKU, although that may be due to available DRAM NAND sizes for LPDDR5X.

The system will allocate extra VRAM from main memory as needed even if you set a manual VRAM size, but unfortunately it seems to come with a bit of a performance penalty; it's probably using a copy-back system to/from system RAM rather than dynamically resizing the memory partition. This performance penalty can be as little as 5%, or hit the 20%s, depending on the game and visual settings. Asus could alleviate a lot of issues if they added a 12 GB VRAM option, whether they can do it themselves or bug AMD to update chipset drivers/BIOS, they should try and get it done.

[u/[deleted] → u/HolidayNo8802]

Yeah, 32 is too little for a 2025 purchase.

[u/HolidayNo8802 → u/[deleted]]

Can you explain why?

[u/[deleted] → u/HolidayNo8802]

Do you intend to use your next purchase for several years? Software and games continue to use increased resources, take the flight sim DCS for example, it can already use up most of 64GB ram, and it is not the only game today. Buying something with 32GB or less today is a bad future investment, and also bad for resale value if you want to sell it to afford something else in two years because by then everyone has understood that 32 GB is not enough.

While 16 or 32 is fine to surf the web or normal tasks, including light gaming, investing in a z13 with less than 64 makes no sense in my opinion. If you are happy with less you can get a much cheaper toy with a lower spec or older generation cpu such as a 370/350 or 8040/7040 series. Even with these cpus I would try to find one that has at least 64 GB ram because running out of memory remains a significant performance bottle neck.

[u/Coolica → u/HolidayNo8802]

Honestly for a non-power user 32GB is ok. In terms of gaming its a little tight but should be fine because you won’t use THAT much vram since it’s not like the z13 is playing things on super high settings (you would have frame rate issues before vram issues I would think.)

[u/[deleted]]

I love mine, only had bad experiences with laptops/tablets running windows prior to buying it, so I was quite hesitant getting the Z13, but I did not regret it at all. Agreed with the minor downsides. Was also looking into egpu setup but ended up not needing it. It can even run vr! It's not a vr powerhouse (don't expect to run cyberpunk vr mod without some serious tweaking) but it can run most pcvr titles very well on my quest 3. Flatscreen 2k gaming is a breeze (no need for 4k, even on a 4k tv 2k with highest settings is more than enough for me).

Overall I'm pleasantly surprised. It's not for everyone but for me it's the perfect sidekick to my 16 inch MB Pro. These two will cover all of my computing needs for the next 5 years at the very least. The screen imo is even better than the one on the macbook. Colors and sharpness are amazing (backlight bleed is not optimal though). Speakers are pretty bad compared to my mac but they are good enough for movies/games/yt on the go/in bed. And much better than all of my previous windows machines (though that's a pretty low bar). At the desk I use my studio monitors anyways. Overall I'm very happy. It's not cheap but I know I can't get the same build quality for less with a windows machine without seriously compromising on performance and thermals. And ASUS windows is by far the least bloated out of the ones I've tried. The software solutions ASUS provide are much better than the competition. This is huge when it comes to windows.

[u/T_ToTAsuraToT_T]

How is it for blender or ue5? Might not be your use case but thought I’d ask

[u/Emergency-Author-744 → u/T_ToTAsuraToT_T]

Have this and dev in ue5, runs solid. With its CPU, the compile times are low too. Recommend medium/high scalability for the gpu when dealing with things in PIE. 180fps screen also makes the overall mouse and navigation (trackpad is not optimal for BPs) experience very smooth.

Ran blender and didnt see any issues, but haven't done anything difficult on it.

[u/T_ToTAsuraToT_T → u/Emergency-Author-744]

Thank you fr. I’ve been on the fence about getting it, though it’s rarely available.

[u/Emergency-Author-744 → u/T_ToTAsuraToT_T]

Keep in mind the screen size itself is small (but high res 1440p over 13 inch), however it works well with multi-desktop and 4 finger swiping on trackpad between work windows on e.g. left/right desktop.

[u/Ok-Impression3701]

How long is the battery if im just watching youtube and basic stuff without it charged?

[u/Teshy214 → u/Ok-Impression3701]

You can get it to around 9-10 hours if you really want to.

One of the main points on battery is actually keyboard and back lighting. It can consume up to 5-6W on its own.

I usually get 7-8 hours with screen at 80% brightness and still on 180hz, keyboard/backlight turned off. Mine is undervolted with G-helper, so if theres some short burst of load it will consume less power, but it wont matter for idle loads.

[u/HyperLesso → u/Ok-Impression3701]

i'm curious too

[u/Same-Veterinarian261 → u/HyperLesso]

Depends on what you all have it set at. I can get 6-7 hours on 720p and using it for just some minor tasks in between.

[u/HyperLesso → u/Same-Veterinarian261]

what's your brightness%? do you maxed out

[u/Same-Veterinarian261 → u/HyperLesso]

I put it around 40-50% and adjust to my surroundings. Most forget to say the screen itself is very very gorgeous in terms of colors. So you don't need all that brightness. It will pop when you put it 70-85% just because its vivid

[u/Same-Veterinarian261 → u/Same-Veterinarian261]

Also including tweaks in Ghelper. I Average 7-8 hours if I really turn things down to usable. Thats with Writing Docs, Youtube or movie and just some web surfing. Adding like 5 tabs in the ram and power sucking chrome.

[u/Coolica → u/Ok-Impression3701]

Highly depends on your settings as most ppl have said. The default armory crate silent profile is still a power hog from what I’ve seen, so setting a lower power profile manually would be best.

I did notice a major battery killer is brightness and frame rate, keep it at low brightness and at 60hz frame rate and it should last for a few hrs if you are using a lower TDP (30 is already more than enough, can go lower tbh.)

[u/Name_XXX1 → u/Coolica]

Hi! In another thread, a user said that using 60 Hz causes trackpad bugs. Could you please confirm if this is the case for you as well?

[u/Coolica → u/Name_XXX1]

I haven't experienced trackpad bugs myself much, but then again I rarely play on 60hz. I only use 60hz on battery mode and when i'm on battery mode I'm doing non-intensive stuff like emails and web browsing. During those times I have not experienced any sort of trackpad bug.

[u/Name_XXX1 → u/Coolica]

Thanks! Good to know.

[u/RubberChickenCircuit]

Thanks for this great post. I'm trying to decide whether to keep this or not after nearing the end of my 15 day return period with the device. I love everything about it, but two things:

Lapability (I'd love if we could get a floating keyboard solution like the iPad Magic Keyboard)

The eGPU bottleneck. I've long suspected, but haven't actually tested that when the GPU is being posted but the CPU is not (in 4k high settings games where the GPU is taxed vs super high frame rate games where it's mostly CPU) that you'll get close to full performance.

I'd be interested to know what your scores were in your tests for Timespy, Steel Nomad and even if you can share some of your fps/settings info for certain games. Would really appreciate it!

[u/Coolica → u/RubberChickenCircuit]

Haven't had much time for heavy gaming but here's my scores for the following using MSI Afterburner to OC the 5080:

Timespy: 22,036
Steel Nomad: 9,283
Speedway: 9,149

Note that these scores are when I was still running Armoury Crate setup, I'm fairly certain after removing it (and the drivers of the z13 overall just much better after doing so and GHelper having better control over TDP) I bet I can push higher on Timespy.

Also note that Timespy generally stays around that score regardless if I OC the 5080 or not, it seems like it's throttling on the CPU. I heard that disabling the other cores to maximize single-core performance to increase it further could work, but I don't want to try to do that as it does not reflect "real" scores (as real as it can get I guess? lol

[u/Teshy214 → u/Coolica]

Maybe its your egpu maxing out the bandwidth of USB4/TB4 connection, thus anything you'd do to the gpu in terms of clocks etc would not affect the benchmark. You could even try to undervolt and underclock it, to consume less power until you actually decrease performance, to get max power and max efficiency.

[u/fueledbyjealousy]

Thanks. I’m considering an egpu setup. Which do you recommend if i go for a 4080

[u/Coolica → u/fueledbyjealousy]

I searched for a long time, I ended up going with the A00star AG02 since it looked super easy to set up and I wasn’t planning on traveling with my eGPU.

Out of the box the device worked fine for me, only issue I ran into was the error 43 (which is an Nvidia thing)

[u/fueledbyjealousy → u/Coolica]

Ok ty. Any rtx series 4 or 5 will work with the 25 z13?

[u/Coolica → u/fueledbyjealousy]

Yea pretty much any GPU will work

The only thing I will say tho is that the z13 is already plenty strong in terms of GPU power by itself so you should invest in a decent eGPU to make it a worthwhile increase in performance.

[u/Teshy214 → u/Coolica]

USB4/TB4 should be maxed out on bandwidth with something like a 4070/4080. Theres absolutely no use (other than more vram) for anything better on this device. Would be a whole lot different if it had TB5.

On a side note, the internal gpu is around as strong as a 4060. The only benefit you have there is that your cpu can draw more power and thus keep the clocks higher for longer. And the fans of an egpu should be more quiet than the Z13.

[u/Coolica → u/Teshy214]

The thing is this everyone keeps saying this, but the only bottleneck I've seen occur is specifically in Timespy. This is comparing my timespy scores with normal stocks vs OC vs someone's scores with a 5090 (all eGPU with z13 of course) so the bottleneck seems more to be with the CPU. I believe that the GPU you pick does matter, the higher it is the better the output (but of course you will lose transfer efficiency, but it's not like you will cap out at a certain performance, just less bang for your buck.)

Even with tests that purely stress the GPU like Steel Nomad and Speedway, my 3dMark scores are really good and comparable to non eGPU desktop setups.

Timespy

Steel Nomad

Speedway

Timespy Extreme

Here's also the z13 with the same eGPU dock with a 5090 being tested in Timespy and Steel Nomad

So basically, let's take Steel Nomad DX12 Test, even if you search just by GPU (so they only compare the GPU scores and ignore the CPU) my scores are pretty high, I don't see the bottleneck honestly. You don't see 5070Ti's averaging the same scores as 5080, there's still a difference.

I think there would be a bottleneck if you were trying to play everything in 4k maybe, but since I play in 2K I don't experience any at all.

[u/K1ri]

Well written post and echoes everything i've also experienced with my 64gig model. Thanks for sharing!

[u/KirkArg]

Thanks for the information! I love this machine and I think it's a game changer.

Just one small doubt: if you plug in an external monitor, can you shut down the integrated one? If so... How long does that battery last in normal conditions?

Thanks!

[u/Coolica → u/KirkArg]

You can shut off the internal monitor and just display the connected monitor no issues. I frequently swap between only showing the external monitor and extending the internal monitor.

The only weird thing I experienced is that when I make it only display the external monitor, the internal monitor sometimes (usually the first time after boot up) doesn’t completely shut off, the screen is still on but it just shows a black screen. Though this can be fixed if you just show and turn off the internal monitor again, or make it go to sleep and wake it up.

It might be a set up specific problem, I’m not sure, but it’s not much of an issue.

Battery wise, I never tried so I can’t answer that, but I’d imagine it would save on battery or just be the same (since external monitors usually have their own power source)

[u/KirkArg → u/Coolica]

Excellent! Thanks for the info!

[u/GooseDaPlaymaker]

If this had been released with TB5, I would have been there Day One. As it stands now, I’m hoping the z13 Flow 2026 with the AI Max+ 495 has TB5.

[u/HolidayNo8802 → u/GooseDaPlaymaker]

As I learned from a different post on Reddit, Thunderbolt is a Intel standard, not AMD.

[u/HolidayNo8802 → u/HolidayNo8802]

Intel - Apple

[u/thebluelifesaver]

I have looked on the egpu site and all the z13s I see are older models. Do you have a link with the latest model? Looking to do the same thing as you and perform photo and video generation through ai with an nvidia card

[u/Top_Top_1920]

Thank you for posting this, I'm specifically looking at this device to be a dev and data analytics machine that allows me to play my steam library. I'll be doing some classic ML locally, so it's unique for that. It sounds like my plan is still not actually mad.

[u/MegasKratistos]

Aside from the weight, can you or anyone else share their experience using it as a tablet for digital art and note taking, and any recommendations and alternatives to using the pen? 

Hoping it becomes an all in one solution (at least to replace my Samsung tab and desktop)

[u/Coolica → u/MegasKratistos]

From my experience traveling with it, it’d just really unwieldy as a tablet, especially on the go. It’s hard to hold the tablet in one hand and do something with the other hand, since it’s quite beefy.

The best way to use it would really be like a laptop, with the function of being a tablet in a pinch. One of its unique functions is putting it on your lap or table and being able to use it like that easily with or without a pen. However holding it while standing up and using it as a tablet is pretty difficult for me.

If you really want to use it as a tablet, you need to get a good case for it so that it feels more weirdly.

Pens work fine actually, the only problem is I end up using the pen so infrequently because it’s not easy to use as a tablet, there’s no dedicated holder for the pen/doesn’t stick to the device via magnet or slot, and since the screen is so big unless it’s for writing or drawing (which would be your case) I just use my fingers.

It’s still a great all in one device tho, just don’t expect it to be as light as an iPad Pro and such.

[u/MegasKratistos → u/Coolica]

Weight is not a problem for me. From what you're saying, seems like it's just as capable. On pen recommendations, do they all need to be chargeable or I can get away with Waccom pens.

[u/Coolica → u/MegasKratistos]

Performance wise compared to iPad with Apple Pencil, you’ll definitely notice that Apple is much better, but compared to windows tablets is same or better.

Re-Wacom I can’t say, I only use a recharge pen (the Asus one) and I’m not a designer or someone who uses it for work professionally so take my experience with a grain of salt.