ASUS ROG Flow Z13 “Kojima Edition” Tested: Strix Halo Tablet With Beautiful Death Stranding Inspired Design

ASUS is no stranger to collaborating with media franchises on special edition releases for their components. Most notably, anything from the ROG x EVANGELION collection becomes an instant collector's classic with a massive premium on the secondhand market. When ASUS UAE first reached out to me looking to sample the Flow Z13-KJP, I assumed it would be similar to those previous ROG collaborations: gear that looked decent and certainly amassed a fan following, but nothing really deeper than a decal slapped on existing components. Boy, was I wrong.

What's In The Box

Inside the box, you'll find the laptop along with a couple of goodies in a rubberized box, as well as the carrying case and 200W charging brick.

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The following goodies are included:

• Sticker pack
• "For Ludens Who Dare" flight tag
• Flow Z13-KJP original concept art card

Additionally, every purchase of the Flow Z13-KJP comes with a copy of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, redeemable through Armoury Crate with a notification on first boot. Two months of Xbox Gamepass Premium may also be included though this varies with region (some may only get one month; here in the U.A.E, we get 2).

The Perfect Platform For Ludens

Before we get into what elevates this collaboration beyond the usual, let's talk specs. Hardware wise, it's identical to the standard Flow Z13:

• Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 "Strix Halo" APU up to 92W
• 128GB LPDDR5X Quad Channel Memory
• 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
• 13.4" 2650x1600 180Hz IPS "Rog Nebula" Touch Screen
• 70 Wh battery
• 2x USB4 Type-C (40Gbps + DP2.1 + PD3.0 with TB eGPU support)
• 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x USB 3.2 10Gbps Type-A, 1x MicroSD card reader

Thematically, this platform makes a lot of sense for the Death Stranding universe. Strix Halo is a portable powerhouse for Porters, offering desktop-class CPU performance with strong GPU performance on the go. You get 16 full Zen 5 cores that run up to 5.1 GHz, with the Radeon 8060s iGPU providing 40CUs of RDNA 3.5 + 32MB of infinity cache, all with 128GB of unified memory.

Design & Build Quality: Truly Excellent

As I alluded to earlier, the design of the Flow Z13-KJP goes much deeper than a decal slapped onto a regular Flow Z13. Covering the left rear heat vent, you get gorgeous, real carbon fiber inlays, while the other vent has a laser-etched design unique to the Kojima Edition. On the top lip of the laptop, the motto "For Ludens Who Dare" is inscribed on a reflective inlay. Overall the CNC milled chassis with its anodized aluminum Decennium Gold finish is a joy to behold and handle.

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The chiclet style keyboard also sports a Kojima Edition exclusive design, with the WASD keys rendered in that same Decennium Gold color. The keys use a Death Stranding inspired typeface, once again unique to the Kojima Edition, and are full-RGB backlit. The keyboard is fully detachable with a pogo-style connector, which means that using the Flow Z13-KJP as a tablet is completely possible thanks to its touchscreen.

Overall, the vision of Yoji Shinkawa as penned on the concept card has really been brought to life in the actualized product, so credit to the design team for an amazing job.

ROG "Nebula" Display: Not OLED, But Still Gorgeous

For all the fancy carbon fiber and laser etching on the chassis, my first impression of the laptop was dominated by the display. I'm a bit of an OLED elitist, but I was pleasantly surprised away by how bright, vibrant, and sharp the 16:10 "ROG Nebula" glossy IPS display on this laptop is, beating my 2nd gen WOLED monitor in some aspects. It boasts 500 nits of peak brightness and 100% coverage of DCI-P3, with remarkable color accuracy out of the box.

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With a resolution of 2560x1600 at just 13.4" - which works out to 225 PPI - the panel is incredibly sharp. Furthermore, as Notebookcheck discovered in their testing, this display doesn't use PWM, another advantage of IPS here. In terms of motion performance, this display excels once again, with Notebookcheck measuring 5.4ms GTG response times (well within the window for 180Hz). You also get FreeSync Premium (VRR) which worked well for fast-paced FPS titles in my testing. There is no observable ghosting at 60Hz or 180Hz, nor any backlight bleed. The main drawback is the lack of HDR support.

Armoury Crate: Granular Power Control and VRAM Allocation

In the Flow Z13-KJP, APU power can be configured a variety of ways via the Armoury Crate utility. VRAM can also be configured from here, with up to 96/128 GB allocatable to the GPU.

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The Operating Modes configure total APU power consumption based on numerous power limits. Power is dynamically allocated between the CPU and GPU as needed. fPPT (Fast Power Package Tracking) limit defines the maximum 10-second burst power, and sPPT (Slow Power Package Tracking) limit and SPL (Sustained Power Limit) are the 2-minute and steady-state power limits respectively. The operating modes available in Armoury Crate adhere to the following values for each power limit:

Power Limits	fPPT (10-sec)	sPPT (2-min)	SPL (Sustained)	dbA (noise target)
Silent	55 W	40 W	35 W	32 dbA
Performance	71 W	52 W	45 W	37 dbA
Turbo	86 W	70 W	60 W	42 dbA
Manual	45 - 93 W	32 - 92 W	28 - 80 W	48 dbA (@ max)
Silent (Battery)	30 W	27 W*	27 W*
Performance (Battery)	60 W	52 W*	52 W*

While on battery, steady-state power consumption for Silent is 27 W, while Performance mode is 52 W. Turbo mode is only available when plugged in to the wall. Note that in practical usage, SPL never seems to apply, as only two power limits are observed whilst in any mode: a brief spike to fPPT, followed by steady-state power consumption at sPPT. The only exception to this is in maximum manual mode, in which case 92 W SPPT cannot be maintained and therefore 80 W SPL is steady-state power consumption.

*Unclear whether steady state power consumption is sPPT or SPL in this case. Regardless, just as when plugged in, only two power limits are observed in practical usage.

Battery Life

My general recommendation would be to use Silent mode for gaming while on battery. Silent mode heavily prioritises the GPU, allocating it the majority of the 27W power budget. In my Doom: The Dark Ages benchmark pass, this resulted in a significant efficiency advantage for Silent mode compared to Windows mode (efficiency plan) or Performance Mode, both of which needlessly fed the CPU with quite a bit of power. Even Windows mode on energy saver is not immune to this behavior.

Operating Mode	CPU clock	GPU clock	Power Consumption	FPS
Windows	3.5 - 4 GHz	1 - 1.5 GHz	40 - 50 W	42
Silent	0.9 - 1.2 GHz	1.1 - 1.7 GHz	27 W	38
Performance	3 - 4 GHz	1.5 GHz	40 W	40

These figures were recorded in the fixed benchmark Siege - Part I, with the following settings:

• 1200P FSR 4.0.2 Performance (INT8 via Optiscaler)*
• Medium Preset.
• Shadow and Lighting Quality set to Low.

*Note that FSR 4 lowers performance by 20% compared to FSR 3.1 here, due partly to the costly translation layer from Vulkan to DX12.

To test battery life, I decided to use the Windows default plan, as it provides a slightly more consistent experience thanks to the higher CPU clocks. I used the following settings to ensure a stable 60 FPS experience:

• 1200P FSR 4.0.2 Ultra Performance
• Low Preset
• Shadows and Lighting Quality set to Handheld
• Texture Filtering Quality and Geometric Quality set to Medium
• 75% screen brightness

APU power consumption in this configuration hovered between 40 - 50W, which enabled 56 minutes of run time. Out of curiosity, I tested the same settings with Silent mode, and sure enough it held on to 60 FPS well enough, while only using 27W. Battery life with Silent mode was around 93 minutes. Granted, the nerfed CPU performance did result in slightly more stuttering than with the higher power budget.

The 200W charging brick was able to replenish battery capacity from 0 to 50% in just 23 minutes.

CPU and Synthetic Benchmarks

The 16 Zen 5 "dense" cores in the Flow Z13-KJP are wickedly fast. What's more, they scale well with power. This allows the Z13-KJP to put out desktop level performance from its CPU.

The following benchmarks were conducted with the Z13-KJP in Turbo mode, while plugged in (67 W).

• Cinebench R23 (Higher is better)
  • Single Core: 2012
  • Multicore: 30463
• Cinebench 2024 (Higher is better)
  • Single Core: 619
  • Multicore: 6713
• Geekbench 6 (Higher is better)
  • Single Core: 2976
  • Multicore: 19553
• C-Ray 2.0 (Lower is better)
  • 1080p: 30.5 seconds
  • 5k: 224.45 seconds

iGPUs are notorious for overperforming in synthetic benchmarks due to lower memory bandwidth requirements compared to real games, but these tests still serve as a useful indication of raw compute power. Naturally, the "Strix Halo" APU in the Z13-KJP performs strongly in synthetics.

• 3DMark TimeSpy (Higher is better)
  • CPU: 11,397
  • GPU: 10,183
  • Overall: 10,348
• 3DMark Speedway (Higher is better)
  • Score: 1,937
• Steel Nomad (Higher is better)
  • Score: 2,027

Gaming Performance

The regular Flow Z13 is one of the highest performing Strix Halo laptops on the market, and the Z13-KJP is no exception to that.

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach is a beautiful title, with stunningly detailed environments paired with near photorealistic characters. Achieving 60 FPS in this title is possible with the Z13-KJP, but requires use of the Turbo Mode or higher to give the CPU enough power. Since the CPU performance can be a limiting factor, the ideal settings for each operating mode vary quite a bit. Here's my recommendations:

• Max Power Manual Mode (Plugged In) - 80 W:
  • 2560 x 1600 resolution
  • FSR 4.0.2 INT8 Performance
  • Medium Preset with Low Shadow Quality, LOD
  • Good for 59.6 FPS on average in opening scene.
• Turbo Mode (Plugged In) - 60 W:
  • 1920 x 1200 resolution
  • FSR 4.0.2 INT8 Quality
  • Medium Preset with Low Shadow Quality, LOD, Low Reflections
  • Good for 56 FPS on average, but requires lock to 50 FPS for frametime consistency
• Silent Mode (Plugged In) - 37 W:
  • 1920 x 1200 resolution
  • FSR 4.0.2 INT8 Performance
  • Medium Preset with Low Shadow Quality, LOD, Low Reflections
  • Good for 48 FPS average (with poor frametimes), plays best at 45 FPS lock

Adding FSR 4.0.2 to this title is very easy, and doesn't even require the use of Optiscaler. Simply replace the dll for FSR 3 with the one for FSR 4.0.2. FSR 4.0.2 will then show up as an option in the upscaler settings.

Performance in Forza Horizon 5 is excellent. No upscaling or frame generation of any kind is required to hit high framerates. At 1600p native, using the Ultra Preset, even Silent mode (plugged in) is good enough for a 60 FPS experience, which enables a "one preset fits all" approach.

An interesting quirk here is that although Performance mode uses the same 52 W power budget whether plugged in or on battery, the actual framerate was substantially lower while on battery. I triple checked this behavior and it was repeatable, but only affected Forza Horizon 5. Regardless, the experience is still excellent, but my recommendation would be to use Silent mode while on battery and enable FSR 3.1 Quality for a stable 60 FPS experience with longer battery life.

In Turbo mode, the Flow Z13-KJP can handle Cyberpunk 2077 with ease. However, as this title is more CPU demanding than Forza, performance with the lower power budgets isn't as good, since the GPU is power-starved. Therefore, there is no "one preset fits all" approach to the quality settings.

As you can see, the framerate takes quite a beating at lower performance modes. Here's some recommended settings for achieving near 60 fps in all power scenarios.

Operating Mode	Resolution	Upscaling	Preset	Power Consumption	FPS
Silent (On Battery)	1920 x 1200	FSR 3.1 Balanced (or 4.0.2 INT8 Performance)	High	27 W	53
Silent (Plugged In)	1920 x 1200	FSR 3.1 Quality (or 4.0.2 INT8 Balanced)	High	40 W	59
Performance (On Battery / Plugged In)	1920 x 1200	FSR 3.1 Quality (or 4.0.2 INT8 Quality)	Ultra	52 W	65

Since FSR 4.0.2 integration in Cyberpunk 2077 is fairly straightforward (just drag and drop the 4.0.2 dll in the game's directory), I decided to test Ray Tracing + FSR 4.0.2. Once again, power scaling plays a big role here, so the optimized settings for each operating mode vary quite a bit. Obviously, Ray Tracing is a bit too much for Silent Mode while on battery as it allows for a mere 27 W, so it's excluded from this testing. Again, this is targeting a 60 FPS experience at a range of power settings.

Operating Mode	Resolution	Upscaling	Preset	Power Consumption	FPS
Silent Ray Tracing (Plugged In)	1920 x 1200	FSR 4.0.2 INT8 Performance	RT Low	40 W	55
Performance Ray Tracing (On Battery / Plugged In)	1920 x 1200	FSR 4.0.2 INT8 Performance	RT Medium (Low RT Lighting)	52 W	61
Turbo Ray Tracing (Plugged In)	1920 x 1200	FSR 4.0.2 INT8 Performance	RT Medium	67 W	60

In Doom: The Dark Ages, the Z13-KJP comfortably holds on to 60 FPS when in the Turbo operating mode.

Running Massive LLMs With 96GB Dedicated VRAM

The Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 APU is a veritable powerhouse, with 16 full fat Zen 5 cores and 40CUs of RDNA 3.5 bolstered by 32MB of infinity cache. All of that compute horsepower is fed by 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory running at 8000 MT/s in quad channel, which gives the Radeon 8060s iGPU enough bandwidth and VRAM to run even 120B parameter LLMs.

Using LMStudio, it's easy to quickly get set up with the latest AI models. I elected to test the 35B parameter variant of Qwen 3.5 as well as the 122B parameter variant. With 96GB of VRAM allocated to the iGPU, even the 122B variant comfortably fits in the GPU's memory.

With Qwen 3.5 35B, the Z13-KJP achieved 48.47 tokens/seconds, which made for a pretty responsive chatbot experience. But you can run Qwen 3.5 35B on relatively inexpensive consumer GPUs; what makes Strix Halo with 128GB so appealing is the ability to run larger parameter models.

Although the responses aren't super snappy - we've slowed down to 22.53 tok/sec for this larger model - the main advantage here is that this model is a lot more capable than the 35B one. Roughly matching GPT-5-mini, it is genuinely capable, and would be a great choice to use as a local agent for coding. Prompt processing is a weak point of Strix Halo right now, but it wasn't too bad here either.

Conclusion: The Ludens Will Love This

After spending two weeks with this device, I'm deeply smitten with it. In fact, I shed a couple of tears while handing it to the courier to ship back to ASUS. I'm not even a big Death Stranding fan, but it really is that cool. I mean, what with the genuine carbon fiber inlays, beautiful (but not gaudy) Decennium Gold finish, and literal plethora of stickers, this is a true collector's dream - but also, just a really great laptop.

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