Asus ROG Flow X16 laptop in review: 1,100 nits mini-LED display in gaming convertible with Ryzen 9 6900HS

A mini-LED display in a gaming laptop that is also a convertible: The Asus ROG Flow X16 combines an RTX 3070 Ti from Nvidia with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1 terabyte SSD.

How good is the display with DisplayHDR 1000 certification, which is also Pantone-certified (factory-calibrated)? This may bring about a small revolution for gaming, since HDR content has never really made it onto a notebook screen until now. HDR 400 was certainly unable to do so.

In fact, our review shows that there is hardly a better screen for HDR gaming that offers both quick response times and a 165 Hz refresh rate. It is equally well suited to creative tasks with its touchscreen and stylus. The black is similarly rich as in OLED panels, and the contrast ratio is already very high in SDR mode. The resolution of 2560x1600 offers high levels of sharpness on the 16-inch screen in 16:10 format. 

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is able to utilize up to 125 W of TGP, which is also permanently sustained thanks to a sophisticated cooling system consisting of three fans and foam elements that direct the airflow. Hence, the compact 2-in-1 gamer even outperforms several other classic gaming laptops and most multimedia notebooks. The existing MUX switch also contributes to this. At the same time, the convertible operates more quietly than traditional gaming behemoths, especially in the Balanced mode of Asus' Armoury Crate software, which also allows for overclocking the GPU. 

A stable case with elements from the ROG Flow 13 and Zephyrus M16, 100-watt Power Delivery, good upgradeability (2x SO-DIMM + 2x M.2 slots for SSDs), an RGB-backlit keyboard with 1.7 mm travel, and good speakers all result in a balanced package overall. Only the battery life of under 6 hours is rather mediocre, but is typical for this laptop class. USB 4.0 is not (yet) available, but Asus' own xGM port has twice the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3/4, namely 64 GBit/s @PCIe 3.0 8x, which is intended for the Asus graphics dock.

Our review model is a pre-production model that is not yet widely available. Depending on your location, identical (i.e. identical hardware with a region-specific keyboard layout) or slightly different configurations may be available at varying prices, usually starting around US$2500.00. For example, a near-identical configuration (with 16GB RAM instead of 32) is available in the USA for US$2,699.99 via Asus' ROG website (price as of 06.08.2022).

Many more details and in-depth benchmark results can be found in our full review of the Asus ROG Flow X16.