Speaking of two-in-one notebooks, Microsoft's Surface Pro series is really a classic, I am also a Surface user, a device can have both the entertainment ability of the tablet and the office ability of the notebook is really good to use when traveling, but its performance is indeed average, there are always times when you want its performance to be better, especially the 3D graphics performance, the performance of the nuclear display is too limited, whether the game or software acceleration performance is not good, The restrictions brought by the crowded interior space of the 2-in-1 device are indeed very large, and the arrival of the ROG Magic X gives 2-in-1 notebook users a high-performance option.
ROG Magic X is a rare high-performance 2-in-1 thin and light book, it is equipped with a 16:10 13.4-inch FHD screen, 120Hz high refresh rate, up to the optional Core i9-12900H plus GeForce RTX 3050 Ti display, as well as Core i7-12700H plus GeForce RTX 3050 unique and Core i5-12500H core display versions are optional.
The detailed specifications of the ROG Phantom X 2-in-1 Thin and Light Book for this test are as follows:
ROG Phantom X main features
The ROG Phantom X 2-in-1 Thin and Light book we have on hand is the top version, it is equipped with Intel Core i9-12900H processor, is the latest Alder Lake-H architecture, has 6 P-Core and 8 E-Core, of which the P-Core's base frequency is 2.5GHz, the maximum turbo frequency is 5.0GHz, and the E-Core's base frequency is 1.8GHz, the maximum turbo frequency is 3.8GHz, and it has 24MB L3 cache. And equipped with 96 groups of EU Ruiju Xe core display, in order to allow the processor to maintain a continuous performance release in the two-in-one device, ROG uses liquid gold instead of common silicone grease as the thermal conductivity agent of the CPU, so that the CPU can maintain 50W long-term operation, the performance is far beyond the general tablet or two-in-one device U series processor.
Magic X uses LPDDR5-5200 memory, so upgrade the memory do not think, but the capacity of 8GB * 2 for many people is enough for a long time, SSD is SN735 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD, and Core i7 and Core i5 versions with SSD only 512GB.
ASUS also crammed a discrete graphics card in this two-in-one device, which is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop, using a GA107 GPU, which is currently only used on mobile platforms, has 2560 CUDA units, the highest Boost frequency can reach 1035MHz, equipped with 128bit/4GB of GDDR6 video memory, the equivalent data rate is 11Gbps, and the basic TGP is 35W. The maximum dynamic TGP can reach 40W, supporting three modes of unique output, mixed output and centralized display mode, which can be switched at will in the Altran Center.
Appearance introduction
The packaging of magic X is very chic, in addition to the conventional outer packaging, there is a small box inside, magic X and its keyboard are put inside, this small box is very exquisite, the surface is silver-white, and it is not a serious rectangle, there is a corner to do the cutting edge, the longitude and latitude coordinates on the box is actually the location of ASUS Taipei headquarters.
The flat panel body of ROG Magic X measures 302*204*12mm and weighs 1.187kg, in order to pursue a high-performance fuselage, it is actually slightly heavier than the average flat or two-in-one device, but within the acceptable range. It is equipped with a 13.4-inch FHD screen with a high screen ratio, both sides of the border are very narrow, the upper border to put the camera and the lower border to adsorb the keyboard so relatively wide.
There is a 720p high-definition camera at the top of the screen for users to use for video conferencing, and there is the word "ROG FLOW" below, which is the English name of magic X, in fact, ROG is quite capable of shaping its own brand image, and there are several ROG logos on the fuselage, and their other products are the same.
Phantom X's cooling outlet is located at the top of the device, one on the left and right sides, corresponding to the CPU and GPU cooling fan and heat dissipation row, because the two-in-one equipment disassembly difficulty is quite high, this time we will not disassemble.
The surface of the screen is covered with Corning Gorilla Glass, which can effectively place scratches, as a two-in-one device, this screen is definitely touch-enabled, and also supports the ASUS Pen that supports 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, but this is not standard, and those who need it can buy it separately.
Phantom X is made of aluminum metal body, in addition to the screen, the four sides of the fuselage and the back cover are basically metal, the back cover is CNC processed, diamond cutting text, the left fan air inlet opening is also made into the word "06", representing 2006, that is, the birth day of the ROG brand, the back cover of the bracket is also metal, which is still rare in the two-in-one equipment.
Phantom X bracket can be up to 170 ° unfolding, because it is steplessly adjusted, so it can meet most of the user's use scenarios, the bracket and the fuselage are connected by the metal connecting rods on both sides, all metal parts are quite durable. ROG has designed a piece of red soft glue in the lower left corner of the bracket, which users can easily open the bracket, and there is a red triangle logo next to it to make this area more conspicuous, and the lower right corner of the bracket is labeled with the 12th generation Core i9 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX.
The most special thing about the phantom X back cover is this perspective rear window design, through the CNC milling out of the fuselage perspective rear window, you can directly see the internal motherboard, but also for the components below to leave more space, so that the phantom X can provide gorgeous RGB lighting, which is quite rare in the two-in-one equipment, the back window above the latitude and longitude coordinates and the consistency on the packaging box, is the location of ASUS Taipei headquarters.
The 8-megapixel main camera on the back of the fuselage
The power switch is located on the right side of the magic X, this switch also has a fingerprint recognition function, with Windows Hello to use together, the user can enter the system without entering the password when turning on, even if it is profitable and safe, the volume adjustment key below the power switch is the volume adjustment key.
There is also a USB 2.0 and a 3.5mm headphone/microphone two-in-one interface on the right side, this USB 2.0 port is the only Type-A port of the Magic X, although the designer's intention should be to give a USB port specifically connected to the mouse, but the only Type-A port only gives USB 2.0 the speed is indeed a bit inappropriate.
There is a Thunderbolt 4 port in the middle and upper left of the fuselage, the transmission speed reaches 40Gbps, compatible with the USB 3.2 Gen 2 specification, supports DisplayPort video output, and also supports 100W power input, the upper part of the interface is the power indicator, and the light indicates that the device is charging.
The lower left side of this with a soft rubber pad to cover is the ROG XG Mobile interface, this port is actually a full-featured USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port and a dedicated interface combination, can be used to connect to the ROG XG Mobile graphics card docking station, the interface bandwidth reaches PCI-E 3.0 x8, which is twice as high as the ordinary Thunderbolt PCI-E 3.0 x4 bandwidth, less performance loss, This dock we have already experienced when testing the magic 13, interested friends can read the previous review.
Of course, for most people, the USB port will be more commonly used, this USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port and the Thunderbolt 4 port the same, the same support For DisplayPort video output and 100W power input, you can choose which port to connect to the charger.
A card reader with a microSD card is hidden under the bracket, which is also the most convenient way for this device to expand its storage capacity
The M.2 SSD installation position under the bracket is the easiest place to disassemble this device, and it is risky to completely disassemble this two-in-one device, so we will not disassemble it. This slot space is only enough to install an M.2 2230 SSD (M.2 2242 may also be available, but there is no thing to try), and it has been occupied by the Western Digital SN735 1TB, and friends who want to expand can only directly replace this SSD.
Magic X keyboard is standard, keyboard and fuselage through the bottom magnetic combination, basically the keyboard top of the interface close to the bottom of the notebook two will automatically fit, the 7 copper contacts are the keyboard used to transmit power and signals, the keyboard uses the same Alcantara material as the Surface, the feel is quite comfortable, the key size is also larger than the Surface, but well, this kind of magnetic keyboard is normally used when the bottom is floating, typing when the feeling is still very strange.
This keyboard also has RGB lights, with RGB magnetic keyboard is estimated to be a ROG family, the bottom of the keyboard also has a moderate size trackpad, although the magic X is a touch screen, but the trackpad still has to have, has been using the touch screen will be very tired.
Distribution is 100W PD charger, the charger uses a USB-C port, in addition to being able to charge the magic X can also charge other devices such as mobile phones, due to the use of Type-C charging port, users can also switch to other PD chargers when they go out, see how convenient you are, Phantom X bare machine weighs 1.187kg, plus keyboard after 1.535kg, charger weighs 0.39kg, travel weight 1.925kg, the overall weight is still higher than other two-in-one equipment, 2kg of travel weight is not light.
Screen testing
ROG magic X two-in-one thin and light screen model is Sharp's LQ134N1JW54, is a high brush IPS screen, after actual measurement, the average brightness of this magic X screen is 495.2 cd/m2, the default mode color temperature is 7500K, the tone is a little cold, sRGB coverage reached 91.1%, DCI-P3 coverage reached 65.4%, Adobe RGB coverage reached 68.9%, Before the correction, the average ΔE is 0.84, the maximum ΔE is 2.64, the color gamut coverage is quite excellent, the color accuracy is also quite strong, and asus's factory adjustment is still very reliable.
Performance testing
Whole machine performance test
For general PC usage scenarios that cover a variety of simple tasks, the official recommendation for the PCMark 10 test program is to achieve a common basic function score of 4100 or higher; for typical office work and light media content work, the official recommendation is to achieve a productivity score of 4500 or higher; and then for editing photos, videos, or other digital content processing, the official recommendation is to achieve a digital content creation score of 3450 or higher. From the test results, it can be seen that ROG Magic X has more than the recommended score in these aspects, which is enough to perfectly cope with the above application environment.
Performance comparison in different modes
The CPU power consumption settings of different cooling modes are shown in the table above, and can be adjusted using the Ultron Center that comes with the notebook, it should be noted that the power plan of the notebook is different when using AC power and using built-in battery power, and there is no enhanced mode in battery mode.
We used CINEBech R20 to simply compare the CPU performance in different thermal modes, enhanced mode performance is naturally the best, performance mode CPU single-threaded performance will be reduced by 5%, while multi-threaded performance will be reduced by 20%, single-threaded performance in silent mode will be reduced by 25%, multi-threaded performance will be reduced by nearly 60%, after all, at this time the power limit of the CPU and the U series of low-voltage processors are no different.
Through the 3DMark CPU Profile test can be seen that the performance of the enhancement and the performance mode in the single/double thread load is still very close, from 4 threads the gap gradually widened, and the maximum thread test results are relatively close to the reason that this test is the first to run, most of the time is still in the PL2 time period, the silent mode due to the power consumption setting and the other two modes gap too much, so the performance gap is obvious.
Next, we use 3DMark Time Spy to test the performance of graphics cards in each mode, the performance of the graphics card is actually not affected too much by the power plan, the silent mode can still play 90% of the performance, and the performance of the enhanced mode and the performance mode graphics card is very close.
Game testing
ROG magic X is equipped with RTX 3050 Ti Laptop, hardware acceleration for work is more significant, but the performance of the game can actually be, at least much stronger than those nuclear display and entry-level unique display, its 3DMARK test results as shown in the figure above, from this result to run some of the lighter requirements of the game no problem, and the graphics card also supports DLSS, can further improve the smoothness of the game, light chase can be experienced, but the fluency is not guaranteed.
Game performance is actually OK, like CS: GO such e-sports games to open the highest picture quality is still no problem, the frame rate is still quite high, Tomb Raider: Shadow can open the highest quality in DLSS quality mode, "Forza Motorsport: Horizon 5" and "Dust 5" if you want to be smooth, you can't open the highest quality, RTX 3050 Ti's 4GB video memory is indeed not enough, "Total War: Three Kingdoms" this kind of frame number is not sensitive to the maximum picture quality is actually OK, the frame number of more than 30fps is enough.
Storage performance testing
ROG magic X is equipped with dual-channel LPDDR5 memory, the memory frequency reaches 5200MHz, so the bandwidth of the memory is about 8% higher than DDR5-4800, but the latency of LPDDR5 is much higher than that of ordinary DDR5 memory, the timing is 60-48-48-112, and the JEDEC standard DDR5-4800 reference value is 40-40-40-76, the gap is quite large, so the memory delay of the magic X reaches 108ns.
The SSD model used by ROG Magic X is the Western Digital SN735 1TB, which is actually the OEM version of the SN750 SE, and it is M.2 2230 specification, using the Group E19 master control with Western Digital's own 3D TLC flash memory, supporting PCI-E 4.0 x4.
CDM real-life performance test, continuous read and write speeds are 2237/2355 MB/s, 70% read 30% write mixed test speed is 2322MB/s, 4K random read delay is 66us, random write delay 11us, in PCI-E 3.0 SSD can be regarded as high-end, but in the PCI-E 4.0 SSD can only be regarded as a mainstream product.
Peak test, QD8 continuous read and write speed is 3622/2829MB/s, mixed read and write speed is 3151MB/s, QD32 random read and write IOPS are 190K and 150K, although it is a PCI-E 4.0 SSD, but this peak performance is actually a little higher than the upper limit of PCI-E 3.0 x4.
Endurance test
The endurance test runs in silent mode, the graphics card also switches to the mixed output mode, the screen brightness is adjusted to 100nits according to the requirements of PCMark, PCMark 10 modern office battery test runs for 7 hours, the battery life is actually very long, the performance score is 4986, compared to the performance mode Running score does have a decline, but this score is not bad, considering that in the battery power mode is usually not in the home or office, basically there will be no too high performance requirements, Longer battery life is actually more needed.
Thermal test
Here the AIDA 64 FPU single baking CPU is used for CPU single baking test, the 3DMark Time Spy pressure test is used for GPU single baking test, and the AIDA 64 FPU and 3DMark Time Spy pressure test are run simultaneously for double baking test, and HWinfo is used to record data, and the room temperature is 25 ° C during the test.
Measured AIDA 64 FPU roaster process peak CPU Package power consumption can reach 95W, the temperature will slowly rise in the PL2 stage, the peak is 92 °C, and then Tau exhausted into the PL1 stage, the power consumption will remain at about 50W, the temperature is near 79 °C, the temperature performance is quite good, the grill process, The peak frequency of P-Core can reach 3.9GHz, E-Core can reach 2.9GHz, and by the PL1 stage, the P-Core frequency can be stabilized at 2.9GHz, and the E-Core can be stabilized at 2.3GHz.
GPU, ROG phantom X equipped with RTX 3050 Ti Laptop peak power consumption up to 46W, graphics card in the initial load power consumption are basically stable above 40W, but after a period of time began to fluctuate, but the fluctuation range is not large, temperature, it is not more than 70 ° C, power consumption and temperature is actually not high.
The frequency/power consumption curve of the GPU is shown in the table above, the maximum frequency can reach 1320MHz, and the frequency of the graphics card will fluctuate between 1100MHz and 1300MHz with the load condition.
When double baking, you can see that the power consumption of the GPU is 5W lower than that of the single baking, and the power of the linear CPU with a longer load in the middle is 50W, while the power of the GPU is 35W, but the double baking is obviously very hot for the two-in-one device, and the temperature of the CPU and GPU is significantly higher than that of the single baking.
The above picture is the thermal imaging map of the front and back of the phantom X when the double baking, to be honest, the screen surface can feel the obvious heat at this time, the top hottest spot can reach 46 ° C, the central temperature of the screen is 42 ° C, the temperature at the bottom and both sides is much lower, and the hottest position on the back should be the area where the CPU is located, but seriously if the phantom X really has this load, you will not hold it in your hand, and how hot the two-in-one tablet body is when the desktop is erected will not affect the keyboard.
Summary of the full text
How to evaluate the ROG magic X? In the same kind of two-in-one tablet it is certainly the best performance, with a unique two-in-one tablet is few, and most of the similar products are using Intel's 15W U series low-power processors, and the magic X directly put the H series processor into it, the highest is still difficult to choose Core i9-12900H, with RTX 3050 Ti Laptop solo display, There is also a 120Hz 13.4-inch FHD screen, which is not the same route as the traditional two-in-one tablet, and the performance is definitely much better.
But this is also a price, ROG phantom X is obviously heavier than the traditional two-in-one tablet, the travel weight has been close to 2kg, and the traditional notebook is almost the same, portability is indeed not good with the traditional two-in-one tablet, but it uses the PD charger, when traveling with other devices can share a multi-port fast charge, in order to reduce the weight of luggage, phantom X plus keyboard after the weight is 1.5kg, the weight is a little, but also than other two-in-one weight is not too much.
Who is right to buy a Phantom X? The first is people who want a two-in-one tablet, and they are not so sensitive to the weight of the device, and they also have a pursuit of the performance of the device. Seriously, people who have used the two-in-one tablet will sometimes want their device performance to be better, after all, the performance of the U series processor in some occasions is really not enough, the performance of the nuclear display is also limited, want to play the game can only endure lower image quality and fluency, and even some things can not be played directly, at this time, with the H series processor also with a unique illusion X is very suitable.
We tested this Core i9-12900H with RTX 3050 Ti's top matching fantasy X price is 13499 yuan, to be honest, the price is not high, and the Core i7-12700H version with RTX 3050 only needs 11499 yuan, this cost performance is good, but the SSD only 512GB may not be enough, in addition to a Core i5-12500H display version only needs 8999 yuan, It is more suitable for those who do not pursue 3D game performance but want to have a high-performance processor friends, after all, the core i5-12500H performance will definitely crush the same kind of U series products, seriously, let's go to see the price of Microsoft Surface, and then look at the Core i5 magic X, you will find how cost-effective this magic X is.