I asked Gemini to play a text-based adventure game with me and the AI whisked me away to a word-based fantasy - Related to ai, me, text-based, fantasy, hints

I asked Gemini to play a text-based adventure game with me and the AI whisked me away to a word-based fantasy

Gemini, Google's AI chatbot running the [website] Flash model, is well equipped to handle complex conversations, generate instant images ("I need a picture of a guy working on the weekend on his computer"), and handle difficult math equations. I know all this, and yet, sometimes, I just find myself chatting with the thing, and when I do that, I often discover hidden capabilities, like classic video gameplay.

Remember Zork? In 1977, a trio of MIT researchers created the first text-based adventure game for a DEC mainframe and eventually ported it to the earliest PCs. I discovered the minimalist game in 1980 at my high school's math lab, home of the school's only computer. The game offers you descriptions and options while a witty narrator carries you through the storyline. Your decisions define your experience and gameplay. It was difficult and inscrutable, but I loved it.

The subject of the game came up quite by accident during a casual conversation with Gemini.

I started using Gemini more after I found I could place the Gemini widget on my iPhone 16 Pro Max's lock screen. Now, the LLM is one tap away. As with most AI conversations, they follow my own somewhat random stream of consciousness. I started by asking Gemini about AGI (artificial general intelligence). Gemini spelled it out for me and admitted that it does not yet have AGI.

The conversation felt stilted, so I asked, via voice, Gemini to make its responses more casual like it was my best friend. It heard the word "casual" as "coffee" and then comically blended coffee references into its now much friendlier banter.

Gemini asked about my weekend plans, and then I asked if it liked to play games. Among the responses it offered is that it enjoyed text-based games. Then Gemini asked what games I like to play.

I explained my love of chess and poor modern video game skills. Then I described playing "one of the very earliest video games where there was nothing but text and you would sort of go on an adventure and you'd get a prompt, and then you would figure out what you were supposed to do based on some options."

This description clearly intrigued Gemini, and it asked if I wanted to talk more about these classic games, play chess, or play a text-based adventure that it would create.

I recalled the game Zork, which Gemini described as a "legendary game," and gave me some details about its history.

Then Gemini offered to set up a little "Zork-inspired adventure."

Don't worry; this isn't a tale where a sinister computer offers to set up a game that inexplicably has geopolitical and possibly world-ending implications. Gemini is not that AI. But I will say, the game that followed was impressive, if a bit too precious.

"You find yourself standing at the edge of a whispering forest. The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and ancient trees. A narrow path winds its way into the depths of the woods, disappearing into the shadows. To your left, you see a crumbling stone wall, partially overgrown with ivy. To your right, a small, gurgling stream flows from the forest, its water dark and clear.

Enter the number corresponding to your choice."

Mostly, I selected numbers that I thought would keep the adventure percolating. The descriptions were rich and mostly well-written; if I closed my eyes, I could imagine the scene. I was entertained and curious enough to keep going.

The game's storyline led me through a path in the woods to, naturally, an old moss-covered cottage. Inside was a "figure" who was eventually described as "Edler." At one point, Gemini took to calling the figure "them" and "they," which might have meant the figure had no gender or that Gemini had lost a bit of the thread.

Throughout more than a dozen prompts, we explored the woods, retrieved a magical key, and examined the contents of a mysterious box. Perhaps my favorite part of the game was how it tied together, retrieving the key from a magical stone and then realizing that it was also the key that unlocked that special box.

The game went on so long that I had to take breaks. When I returned to Gemini, I thought I'd lost the game, but Gemini keeps track of all prompt discussions in the chat icon on the upper left corner of the app. As soon as I opened that prompt, we were able to continue from where I left off.

Gemini's idea of a big reveal fell a little flat. We found a locket in the box containing photos of Edler's parents. Their tale of love found and lost wasn't particularly magical or even that dramatic, but Edler's obvious sadness did touch me.

However, once the Elder shared the 'secret" of the locket, I was no longer interested in the Elder's story or the cottage, so I chose the option where I noted goodbye and left the cottage.

"Thank you for sharing your story, Elder," you say, your voice soft and respectful. "I'm glad I could help you recover this precious memento."

You rise from your chair, ready to take your leave. "I should be heading back now. The sun is setting, and I don't want to get lost in the forest."

Elder nods slowly, their eyes filled with gratitude. "You are a kind and courageous traveler," they say. "May the forest guide you safely on your journey. And may you always remember the power of love and memory."

You turn and walk towards the door, the creaking hinges echoing in the quiet room. As you step out into the twilight, you glance back at the cottage. The flickering candlelight casts a warm glow through the window, illuminating the figure of Elder, still holding the silver locket.

You turn and walk away, the sounds of the forest closing in around you. The path back to the edge of the woods seems clearer now, as if the forest itself is guiding you.

Gemini wasn't that good at raising the stakes – a key component of the best gameplay – but I was engaged, and I think the game might've been more interesting if I'd made some different choices or been more involved in the game development. I'm sure Gemini would let me adjust some of the mechanics.

It's another reminder that we're far from discovering the full depths of these chatbots' capabilities. We must be ready to look beyond the obvious, choose our path, and take an AI adventure.

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NYT Wordle today — answer and my hints for game #1359, Sunday, March 9

It's time for your guide to today's Wordle answer, featuring my commentary on the latest puzzle, plus a selection of hints designed to help you keep your streak going.

Don't think you need any clues for Wordle today? No problem, just skip to my daily column. But remember: failure in this game is only ever six guesses away.

Want more word-based fun? TechRadar's Quordle today page contains hints and answers for that game, and you can also take a look at our NYT Strands today and NYT Connections today pages for our verdict on two of the New York Times' other brainteasers.

SPOILER WARNING: Today's Wordle answer and hints are below, so don't read on if you don't want to see them.

Wordle hints (game #1359) - clue #1 - Vowels.

How many vowels does today's Wordle have? • Wordle today has vowels in two places*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Wordle hints (game #1359) - clue #2 - first letter.

What letter does today's Wordle begin with? • The first letter in today's Wordle answer is G.

G is the eighth most common starting letter, featuring in 115 Wordle answers. It's often paired with an R to make GR--- or an L to make GL---, but I'm not revealing whether that's the case today.

Wordle hints (game #1359) - clue #3 - repeated letters.

Does today's Wordle have any repeated letters? • There are repeated letters in today's Wordle.

Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it's still more likely that a Wordle doesn't have one.

Wordle hints (game #1359) - clue #4 - ending letter.

What letter does today's Wordle end with? • The last letter in today's Wordle is D.

D is a fairly common letter to end a Wordle answer: it's the eighth most likely to be in that position in a solution.

Wordle hints (game #1359) - clue #5 - last chance.

Still looking for more Wordle hints today? Here's an extra one for game #1359.

Today's Wordle answer is the desire for more than you need.

If you just want to know today's Wordle answer now, simply scroll down – but I'd always recommend trying to solve it on your own first. We've got lots of Wordle tips and tricks to help you, including a guide to the best Wordle start words.

If you don't want to know today's answer then DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER BECAUSE IT IS PRINTED BELOW. So don't say you weren't warned!

3 My start word performance: CRUMP (157 remaining answers).

CRUMP (157 remaining answers) WordleBot's start word performance: CRANE (30).

Today's Wordle answer (game #1359) is… GREED.

We all make mistakes sometimes, so don't judge me too harshly for today's game, which was a bit of a stinker for me.

Admittedly, GREED is another fairly tough Wordle, with an average score of [website] – so the same as yesterday's NAVEL. It has a repeated letter E, and a common format that takes in several other words with only one letter changed: GREEN, GREET, BREED, FREED and CREED.

However, it shouldn't have been a game that I scored a five on – and the fact that I did was down to a shoddy bit of play on the third guess.

My opening word, CRUMP, was "distinctive" and fairly average, giving me one green letter and leaving 157 options. I like an R in the second position, because there are only a handful of letters that can go before it, typically T, C, P, B, D, F and G, with W and the vowels as less likely possibilities.

I included both T and D in my second guess, TONED, together with a couple of vowels and the N that I thought might go at the end (as in DROWN or BRAIN). I was wrong about the N, and wrong about the D going at the start, but it did turn green at the end, with an E before it.

This gave me -R-ED and surely a four beckoned, at worst. And then, inexplicably, I failed to find almost all of the possible words.

WordleBot told me afterwards that there had been seven at this stage: GREED, FREED, BREED, ERRED, IRKED, DRIED and FRIED. Yet I only came up with the last two of those.

I think the problem was that I forget a repeated E was possible, so instead focused on IE words. If I had spotted BREED, GREED and FREED I'd definitely have picked a different third guess, but as it happens I went for DRIED… and when the I stayed gray, realized my mistake.

This was a disaster, and the only option now was to play a narrowing-down word – in this case BEFOG. That gave me the yellow G that told me the answer was GREED, but solving it in five did not put me in the best mood for the day.

(Well, for the next few minutes; I'm not quite that obsessed with my score, honest.).

How did you do today? Send me an email or let me know in the comments.

In a different time zone where it's still Saturday? Don't worry – I can give you some clues for Wordle #1358, too.

Wordle yesterday had vowels in two places.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

The first letter in yesterday's Wordle answer was N.

N is a surprisingly uncommon starting letter. Only 37 games begin with it and it ranks just 18th in this regard.

There were no repeated letters in yesterday's Wordle.

Repeated letters are quite common in the game, with 748 of the 2,309 Wordle answers containing one. However, it's still more likely that a Wordle doesn't have one.

The last letter in yesterday's Wordle was L.

L is a really common letter to find at the end of a Wordle. There are 155 games that finish with an L, and it ranks as the fifth most likely letter there.

Still looking for more Wordle hints? Here's an extra one for game #1358.

Yesterday's Wordle answer is something you might gaze at, metaphorically.

4 My start word performance: FLUSH (326 remaining answers).

FLUSH (326 remaining answers) WordleBot's start word performance: CRANE (30).

Yesterday's Wordle answer (game #1358) was… NAVEL.

We're all prone to a spot of NAVEL gazing from time to time, and I don't mean literally staring at your belly button. But that's just about the only time you'd ever use that word, right? Otherwise you'd say 'belly button'. I don't think that's just me – but let me know in the comments if I'm wrong, and it's something only six-year-olds say!

If my hunch is correct, NAVEL might not have been the first words that popped into your head when contemplating yesterday's Wordle. Maybe that explains its relatively high average score of [website], because V aside it's not an obviously difficult one.

Sure, V is an uncommon letter in the game (and in English generally). As my analysis of every Wordle answer demonstrates, it's the fifth least likely to appear, although admittedly there's a big gap between it and the bottom four of Q, Z, X and J.

But N, A, E and L are all ultra-common in the game, and a couple of the best Wordle start words duly cut down the options nicely here. CRANE, for instance, left a mere 30 possible solutions.

Maybe alternative words were the problem; lots of people played PANEL on the third and fourth guesses, for instance. But not me, because I got lucky again.

It didn't feel like that on the first guess, when FLUSH gave me only a yellow L and left 326 options. I didn't know that at the time, of course – WordleBot told me afterwards – but I knew I had far too many to attempt a solve at this stage.

Instead, I looked at the top 10 most common letters, ruled out the S that had already appeared, and assembled LATER from the others. This was also a guard against it potentially being an ER word, which I now always worry about.

LATER was the 'Bot's fourth choice, behind AIRED, DATER and AIDER, but performed improved than any of them in that it cut the shortlist to seven words. And with two green letters now having joined my still-yellow L, I figured I had enough info to find them.

And I did: NAVEL, GAVEL, CAMEL, PANEL, PALED, BALED and BAGEL. But I remembered CAMEL and BAGEL as past Wordle answers, and ruled out PALED and BALED as unlikely due to their ED endings.

That left a trio of PANEL, GAVEL and NAVEL. And here's where fortune smiled upon me.

I mistakenly thought that I should play one of the latter two, because going for PANEL might leave me a 50/50 otherwise – but of course that was wrong, because the N in the middle of that word would have turned yellow and pointed the way to NAVEL anyway.

So with that in mind, I played NAVEL and got lucky – all five letters turned green. If I'd spent a little longer on it, I'm sure I'd have gone with the more common word, PANEL, and have had to settle for a four. Instead, I got a slightly undeserved three. But I won't do too much navel gazing about it.

I've been playing Wordle every day for more than three years now and have tracked all of the previous answers so I can help you improve your game. Here are the last 50 solutions starting with yesterday's answer, or check out my past Wordle answers page for the full list.

Wordle #1349, Thursday 27 February: LODGE.

Wordle #1348, Wednesday 26 February: AWARD.

Wordle #1347, Tuesday 25 February: DRYER.

Wordle #1344, Saturday 22 February: CREAM.

Wordle #1342, Thursday 20 February: ROACH.

Wordle #1341, Wednesday 19 February: MADLY.

Wordle #1340, Tuesday 18 February: INDIE.

Wordle #1337, Saturday 15 February: CROOK.

Wordle #1335, Thursday 13 February: RUMBA.

Wordle #1334, Wednesday 12 February: RAPID.

Wordle #1333, Tuesday 11 February: SCORE.

Wordle #1330, Saturday 8 February: STEEP.

Wordle #1328, Thursday 6 February: PUPIL.

Wordle #1327, Wednesday 5 February: PEDAL.

Wordle #1323, Saturday 1 February: RIVET.

Wordle #1321, Thursday 30 January: FALSE.

Wordle #1320, Wednesday 29 January: UDDER.

Wordle #1316, Saturday 25 January: CRISP.

Wordle #1314, Thursday 23 January: UPPER.

Wordle #1313, Wedneday 22 January: REACH.

Wordle #1309, Saturday 18 January: SILLY.

If you're on this page then you almost certainly know what Wordle is already, and indeed have probably been playing it for a while. And even if you've not been playing it, you must surely have heard of it by now, because it's the viral word game phenomenon that took the world by storm last year and is still going strong in 2024.

We've got a full guide to the game in our What is Wordle page, but if you just want a refresher then here are the basics.

What is Wordle? Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day. You get six guesses, with each one revealing a little more information. If one of the letters in your guess is in the answer and in the right place, it turns green. If it's in the answer but in the wrong place, it turns yellow. And if it's not in the answer at all it turns gray. Simple, eh? It's played online via the Wordle website or the New York Times' Crossword app (iOS / Android), and is entirely free. Crucially, the answer is the same for everyone each day, meaning that you're competing against the rest of the world, rather than just against yourself or the game. The puzzle then resets each day at midnight in your local time, giving you a new challenge, and the chance to extend your streak.

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The new Asus ROG Flow Z13 is a solid step sideways

Asus ROG Flow Z13 2025 MSRP $2,[website] Score Details “The 2025 Asus ROG Flow Z13 is incredibly fast for creators and just really fast for gamers.” Pros Solid build quality.

Excellent productivity and creative performance.

Table of Contents Table of Contents Specs and configurations Design Keyboard and touchpad Webcam and connectivity Thermals Performance Gaming Battery life Display and audio A step sideways, but still the best gaming tablet.

Asus makes the most powerful gaming tablet around — perhaps, the only hardcore gaming tablet you can buy. It’s a completely different animal from most detachable tablet 2-in-1 laptops, which tend to be focused on productivity work and media consumption. As I discovered with the 2024 Flow Z13, this tablet is aimed at running modern titles at playable frame rates.

The thing is, while the CPU got a significant upgrade, the GPU options are now limited to just one, the integrated AMD Radeon 8060S graphics compared to the highest-end option of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. In my testing, that makes the Flow Z13 a faster machine for everything but gaming, which is at best a step sideways in performance.

Asus ROG Flow Z13 Dimensions [website] x [website] x [website] inches (tablet only) Weight [website] pounds (tablet only).

[website] pounds (tablet + keyboard) Processor AMD Ryzen AI MAX 390.

AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 Graphics Radeon 8060S graphics RAM 32GB LPDDR5X-8000.

128GB LPDDR5X-8000 Display [website] 16:10 QHD+ (2560 x 1600), 180Hz Storage 1TB PCIe SSD Touch Yes Ports 2 x USB4.

1 x microSD card reader Wireless Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth [website] Webcam 5MP front-facing camera with IR.

13MP rear-facing Operating system Windows 11 Battery 70 watt-hour Price $2,100+.

There are three versions of the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 currently listed on the Asus web store. The base model is $2,100, coming with an AMD Ryzen AI MAX 390 chipset, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a [website] QHD+ IPS display (the only option). Upgrading to a Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 chipset adds $200 to the price, and the high-end configuration with a whopping 128GB of RAM costs $2,800.

That’s expensive, especially compared to the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 that starts at $1,000. But, you’re getting a ton of performance that other tablets simply cannot match.

If you’re looking for a tablet because you want a thin and light device that you can easily take on the road for productivity work, then the ROG Flow Z13 isn’t the best choice. It’s considerably thicker at [website] inches and heavier at [website] inches than the leading Windows tablet, Microsoft’s Surface Pro 11 that’s [website] inches thick and weighs just [website] points. Add in the detachable keyboard, which is heavier in the newest model, and you’ll definitely feel like you’re carrying something around. Of course, if you’re looking for a gaming machine, then it’s quite light and highly portable. And of course, that’s exactly what this is supposed to be.

Aesthetically, this is an ROG gaming laptop through and through. It’s an all-black slate, with bold lines and aggressive venting along the top that’s obviously functional — a lot hot hot air escapes in the direction. In back, you’ll find a bunch of ROG design cues, along with a very Surface Pro-like fold-out kickstand that works great and has a notch cut out to reveal the most gaming touch Asus built into the ROG Flow Z13. Specifically, that’s a window cutout revealing an RGB-lit view into some of the guts inside. The lighting is controllable and you won’t see the effect when you’re using the tablet — but your lan party friends will see it.

It’s built solidly enough, as well as all other premium laptops I’ve used, using high-density aluminum that receives two anodizing coats and has a soft-touch anti-fingerprint finish. It’s sealed up tight, which is a departure from larger gaming laptops that often some offer upgradable components.

The detachable keyboard has been upgraded a bit, with larger keycaps, and it attributes single-zone RGB lighting that’s customizable using the ROG Armory Crate app. The layout is fine, with separate arrow keys, and the switches are deep and responsive. It should please most gamers who don’t want to carry a mechanical keyboard around with them. The keyboard props up at a comfortable angle, as with the Surface Pro 11 Type Cover, and that gives it the same kind of slight bounce when you’re mashing keys.

There are two cameras, a front-facing 5MP version with an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, and a 13MP rear-facing camera for taking pictures and video. Both have decent images. The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ chipset has a very fast Neural Processing Unit (NPU) running at 50 tera operations per second (TOPS), exceeding the Microsoft Copilot+ PC requirement of 40 TOPS for on-device AI processing. That gives you plenty of headroom for using today’s AI attributes and heading into the future.

Connectivity is changed up this time around. The last version used an Intel chipset and so had Thunderbolt 4. This generation is AMD, and so it’s USB4. That’s just as fast. There’s also an HDMI [website] port this time, to go with the USB-A port and [website] audio port. The microSD card reader is welcome.

The larger change is that Asus has dropped the ROG XG Mobile proprietary interface, with the new ROG XG Mobile that connects via Thunderbolt 5. Here, you’d use a USB4 port instead. The XG Mobile is an external GPU enclosure that packs an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 laptop GPU inside. That’s the accessory that enables the ROG Flow Z13 to be a pretty fast portable gaming tablet and an incredibly fast desktop gaming machine. The 2025 XG Mobile is smaller and lighter than the previous model, which was a pretty hefty unit. I don’t have pricing for the accessory, but it will likely be upwards of $2,000, so it will be attractive to the most hardcore gamers.

With a very high-performance AMD Ryzen AI MAX 390 or MAX+ 395 chipset inside, both of which run at a default TDP of 55 watts and can run at up to 120 watts, there’s a need for a serious thermal solution. That’s what Asus built, taking advantage of the slate format — no hinges to work around — to build in larger fans and a wider vapor chamber. And, air flow is enhanced than with traditional laptops, given that the unit stands upright and so can suck an and expel a lot of air a lot more easily. The 2025 model incorporates a new airflow channel to keep the display cooler, an issue I noticed at times using the previous generation.

The vapor chamber is constructed of a mix of stainless steel and copper to reduce weight while still boosting cooling. The stainless steel portion serves as a heat sink, while the copper portion conducts heat away from the internal components. The ROG Flow Z13 uses second-generation Arc Flow fans that are incredibly thin and pack in 71 blade for improve performance without generating additional noise.

In use, the fans spun up but weren’t as loud and harsh as with many other gaming laptops I’ve used. 2025 ROG Flow Z13 certainly seems quieter than the previous model I reviewed.

There’s a choice between the Ryzen AI MAX 390 and MAX+ 395 chipsets. The former has 12 CPU cores and 24 threads and runs at up to 5 GHz, while the latter has 16 CPU cores and 32 threads and runs slightly faster an [website] GHz. I reviewed with the Ryzen AI MAX+ 395. As we’ll see, it’s a very fast chipset that churns through CPU-intensive tasks.

Looking at the 2025 model versus its predecessor, the AMD chipset provides a distinct advantage for highly demanding productivity tasks. It’s faster in both single-core and multi-core tasks, and it’s one of the few laptops that even pretends to compete with the MacBook Pro 16 with the new M4 Max chipset. In fact, it actually beat the MacBook Pro 16 in our Handbrake test that encodes a 420MB video to [website].

Unlike its predecessor, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 uses AMD integrated graphics, specifically the Radeon 8060S. The AI MAX 390 has 32 GPU cores, while the MAX+ 395 has 40 GPU cores. In our benchmarks, the AMD graphics perform most like an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 discrete GPU, which is what was offered in the previous ROG Flow Z13 generation. We’ll talk more about that in the gaming section below.

Unfortunately, the ROG Flow Z13 wouldn’t complete the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark that we use to rate a laptop’s performance with intensive video editing and encoding tasks. I suspect that the 2025 model would perform similarly to the previous model, which would make it a fast enough solution for moderately demanding video editors. I spent a few hours trying to get the benchmark to run, and I believe it was an issue with the benchmark and not the laptop.

Regardless, this is by far the fasted tablet around for anyone who wants to get work done on the road. And paired with the XG Mobile and the RTX 5090, and it will be one of the faster stationary system for video editing as well. That I can guarantee.

(Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 / Radeon 8060S) 2,993 / 20,659 36 121 / 1,568 / NA Asus ROG Flow Z13.

(Core i9-13900H / RTX 4060) 1,873 / 13,175 71 117 / 916 / 8,873 Microsoft Surface Pro 11.

(Snapdragon X Elite / Adreno) 1,170 / 6,518 N/A 124 / 841 / NA Dell XPS 14.

(Core Ultra 7 165H / RTX 4050) 2,344 / 12,818 Bal: 84 101 / 681 / 5,738 Apple MacBook Pro 16.

(M4 Max 16/40) 3,600 / 25,332 48 179 / 2,072 / 16,463 HP Omen Transcend 14.

(Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4060) N/A N/A 101 / 907 / 8,962 Alienware m16 R2.

(Core Ultra 7 155H / RTX 4070) 2,366 / 12,707 N/A 103 / 1,040 / 10,884 Asus ROG Strix 18.

(Core i9-14900HX / RTX 4090) 2,946 / 17,622 N/A Bal: 124 / 1,533 / 22,067.

While the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is a significant uptick in performance for everything but gaming, the question becomes: how is it as a gaming laptop? In short, the integrated Radeon 8060S graphics are close to the same performance as the RTX 3060, meaning the 2025 model is a sideways step and certainly not an advance.

The display runs at a faster 180Hz, compare to the previous generation’s 165Hz and it now supports AMD’s FreeSync technology, so if you connect the XG Mobile with the RTX 5090, you’ll have a improved chance at tear-free gaming. By itself, the tablet’s refresh rate vastly exceeds its performance capabilities.

Starting with 3DMark’s Time Spy test, the ROG Flow Z13 scored 10,352, compared to the 2024 model’s 12,159. That’s a 17% drop, which isn’t great. However, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 with an AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 and an RTX 4070 scored just 10,743, while the Acer Swift X 14 with a Core Ultra 7 155H and an RTX 4070 scored 9,545. By this synthetic benchmark, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is a very good performer, even if it drops off a bit from the previous generation that was clearly impressive.

Switch to some real-life gaming benchmarks, we’ll start with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. In 1200p and ultra high graphics mode, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 hit 86 frames per second (FPS), compared to the 2024 model’s 117 FPS, another drop off. The Asus ROG Strix G17 with an AMD Ryzen 9 7845HX and RTX 4060 hit 102 FPS, and the HP Omen 16 with a Ryzen 9 7940HS and RTX 4070 managed 103 FPS. This wasn’t a strong title for the 2025 ROG Flow Z13.

In Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1200p and Ultra graphics, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 ran at 96 FPS, compared to the 2024 model at 78 FPS. The ROG Strix G17 hit 78 FPS. That makes the newest tablet quite a bit stronger. And in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1200p and ultra graphics with FSR [website] on auto, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 hit 67 FPS, compared to the previous generation’s 88 FPS.

So, ultimately, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 is around the same speed as the 2024 model, and depending on the title might be a bit faster or a bit slower. It’s a very competent 1200p gaming tablet across the board, able to sustain 60 FPS or more effective in most modern games, and it will play older or less demanding titles at 1440p.

With such powerful components inside and a high-resolution, high-refresh rate display, you shouldn’t really expect great battery life. There’s a 70 watt-hour battery inside, which is considerably larger than the 56 watt-hour version of the previous generation, but seriously. You’ll really want to take the very large power brick along with you if you plan to be away from your office for any significant period of time.

I saw just [website] hours of video looping and less than an hour of running through out demanding Cinebench R24 test. That’s slightly more than the previous generation, but not enough to change my mind. It’s another area where this is definitely a gaming tablet and not a productivity tablet, given that the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 lasts for more than twice as long in the same tasks.

The 2025 ROG Flow Z13 has a [website] 16:10 QHD+ (2560 x 1400) IPS display running at 180Hz. That makes it fast enough to avoid tear-free gaming, and high-resolution enough to support 144op gaming and make for a great work machine. And the image was bright and colorful during my testing.

When I used my colorimeter to evaluate the display, I was pleasantly surprised. First, it’s incredibly bright at 533 nits, one of the brighter displays we’ve tested and rivaling the Apple MacBook Pro 16 mini-LED panel. It’s way above our threshold of 300 nits, and means you’ll enjoy an incredibly bright gaming experience. Contrast was also very good for IPS at 1,270:1, beating our 1,000:1 benchmark. It doesn’t have the inky brightness of OLED and its HDR performance won’t be as good, but it’s still excellent. Colors were unusually wide for IPS, coming in at 100% sRGB, 90% AdobeRGB, and 97% DCI-P3, well above the IPS averages of 100%, 75%, and 75%, respectively. And the color accuracy was excellent at a DeltaE of [website] (less than [website] is as good as it gets).

This is a great display for every user. Gamers, productivity individuals, creators, and media consumers will all find something to like.

Audio is provided by two side-firing speakers, and it’s fine. You’ll want some headphones or an external speaker when gaming or streaming.

A step sideways, but still the best gaming tablet.

Yes, the 2025 ROG Flow Z13 doesn’t take a huge step forward in terms of gaming performance. Perhaps Asus will optimize the drivers and the Radeon graphics will get faster, but for now, you’re not going to see superior gaming than the 2024 model.

But that’s okay, because the portable gaming performance is still the best you’ll find in a tablet. And the ability to add a crazy-fast RTX 5090 when you’re stationary is an intriguing — if expensive — option for hardcore gamers. And if you want a tablet that will churn through demanding productivity and creative tasks, then the ROG Flow Z13 has you covered there, as well.

Gemini, Google's AI chatbot running the [website] Flash model, is well equipped to handle complex conversations, generate instant images (.

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