The chip on that laptop enabled a thinner, lighter form factor, ran cooler, and had a fantastic battery life, so I was excited to test out the new Zenbook Duo. My initial conclusions prove that the performance is just as good; the Duo runs quiet and cool (considering the hardware), and the battery life is solid — especially for a laptop with two OLED screens.
The dual 14-inch 3K (2880 x 1800) Lumina OLED touch displays light up to 500 nits of brightness and communicates everything you need to know about this laptop. They both feature 120Hz refresh rates and the thin bezels on both make for a dramatic look, especially when the device is fully extended.
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET
Asus has been focusing on customizability for its creative-oriented laptops, and the Zenbook Duo is no exception. In addition to the ability to set custom gestures, users can configure the buttons on the stylus, set task groups, pin apps to different displays, and arrange their apps’ windows in the display.
Instead of manually dragging apps from one window to the next, you can “flick” the top of the window to snap it in place in the desired window. This takes a minute to get used to, as dragging windows around can result in apps that are half in one display and half in the other.
As with any device with a complex range of customizations, there are certainly quirks and adjustments regarding how to best use it, especially if you’re not fully familiar with how to navigate all the options. Windows or apps can frequently be banished to another window, get lost behind other apps, or get stuck halfway.
I also had some concerns with the logistics of putting an OLED display on the same part of the laptop’s body that houses the CPU and memory. Conventional wisdom would imply that this would be a recipe for extreme heat, but Asus designed the device with this in mind, avoiding any direct contact with the components and separating them with a heat spreader.
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET
However, the battery didn’t burn itself into the ground the way I assumed it would in my testing, even when I really pushed it, running some demanding video editing tasks, using both displays with full brightness while connected to an external monitor. Yes, I got much less juice out of it, but I still managed over five hours.
I would recommend this laptop to creatives who are committed to using it the way it is designed: activating the dual displays, switching up the configurations, grabbing the stylus, and exploring new avenues of productivity. If these things don’t excite you, I would recommend a creative-minded laptop with a more traditional form factor, like the Asus ProArt P16 or the MacBook Pro M4.
