It feels even thinner whenever you’re utilizing the machine itself. When all you could have beneath your palms is that skinny keyboard cowl, and also you’re not seeing how thick the again of the machine is, it is type of magical, particularly whereas gaming.
That brings me to a different large benefit of the sort of design—the thermals. This factor by no means obtained above 70 levels Celsius internally, even beneath stress testing in Efficiency mode. And it stayed pretty quiet. It’s particularly noticeable whenever you aren’t gaming. The Stream Z13 does an ideal job of retaining quiet and funky when it ought to, which may’t be stated for a lot of gaming laptops. That makes it a fair higher hybrid work/gaming machine.
The superb thermals have the vertical orientation to thank, sucking in tons of air via the consumption vents on the again of the pill, unobstructed by a desk like the underside of laptops. The exhaust vents, in the meantime, are situated proper throughout the highest of the pill, as distant from the keyboard and your arms as bodily potential. That is one other large change over gaming laptops, which frequently spew scorching air at your mouse hand.
A Powerful Promote?
{Photograph}: Luke Larsen
I don’t love the restricted configurations for the Stream Z13. Asus sells solely costly configurations with at the least 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, beginning at over $2,000. It’s a disgrace there is not a lower-tier choice to get that beginning worth down. Not everybody wants that a lot reminiscence and storage. If the beginning worth had been nearer to $1,500, I might see it attracting a bigger viewers. That’s very true for the reason that Stream Z13 isn’t essentially a performance-first machine.
I additionally want the audio system and webcam had been a bit extra spectacular. They get the job finished and are higher than what you discover on many gaming laptops, but when they might match the Floor Professional, they’d have a fair stronger higher hand over even probably the most premium gaming laptops. And I would be remiss with out mentioning the newly launched Nvidia RTX 50-series Laptop computer GPUs. It’ll be a bit earlier than the lower-tier RTX 5050 and 5060 laptops arrive, however after they do, they could make the comparability to the Stream Z13 much less favorable.
The value-to-performance comparability with comparable gaming laptops doesn’t play out within the Stream Z13’s favor. It is going to by no means maintain a candle to its friends on that spec alone. However that’s by no means been the purpose. As a substitute, the Stream Z13 continues to problem the standard concept of gaming laptops, and with the 2025 mannequin, it is surprisingly profitable.