Almost every major PC maker has dabbled with the idea of a dual-screen laptop at some point. Back in 2011, it sported not one but two 14-inch screens. Then at CES 2017, Razer showed off what increased the number of panels to three before showing off something a little less extravagant a year later. Fast forward to 2020, when Dell dazzled us with the . Even Apple gave the previous category a chance, only to reverse course and.
Lenovo, meanwhile, has an entire family of devices dating back to the original and culminating most recently in the , and the latter is very close to turning the promise of dual-screen laptops into a truly attractive option. But now, after several generations of its own devices, ASUS has put everything together with the It's a super sleek machine with two screens that are barely larger than a similarly sized case. There's also a detachable keyboard and built-in kickstand for maximum adaptability. And starting at $1,500, the Zenbook Duo doesn't demand a huge premium for something with a lot of extra utility. So while it's been quite a journey to get here, ASUS has finally created a dual-screen laptop that proves once and for all that two screens really are better than one.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
With a starting price of $1,500 and dimensions that aren't much larger than traditional ones, the ASUS Zenbook Duo is the first dual-screen laptop you'd actually want to buy.
- Elegant design
- Magnificent screens
- Built-in kickstand
- Good port selection
- Solid battery life
- Slightly more expensive than a traditional clamshell
- Windows 11 is not yet optimized for dual-screen laptops
Design
One of the most impressive things about the Zenbook Duo is that it doesn't feel like some kind of Frankendeivce. It's just a normal looking 14-inch laptop. Even after opening it up, things still look normal with a physical keyboard and trackpad, not to mention a good selection of ports on the outside (two Thunderbolt 4, a USB 3.2 Type-A, and a full-size HDMI 2.1 connector). A small part of me wishes ASUS had found room for some sort of SD card reader, but I understand if there just wasn't room.
It's only after removing the keyboard that things get interesting because as soon as you do, the Duo's second screen comes to life. From here, you have a ton of options. Tapping the bottom panel with three fingers activates a floating touchpad. Alternatively, eight fingers bring up a virtual keyboard, which you can keep sliding up to reveal a traditional keyboard/trackpad combination. But the nice thing is that because these are all virtual substitutes, it's easy to change a new layout (like for other languages), move the touchpad to the side, or activate a numeric keypad if you need to enter data. . There's a lot more flexibility when half of a laptop's interior isn't taken up by a rigid set of physical keys.
But things keep getting better, because at the bottom of the Duo there is a flap that folds out to form a stand. This allows you to shore up the system and use both screens as proper displays, sort of like a portable dual-monitor setup, but all in a single self-contained system. And because the detachable keyboard connects wirelessly via Bluetooth, you can place it in front of you (or wherever you want) like a desk. The only slight drawback to this design is that if you rotate the Duo's screens into portrait orientation side by side, the design of the stand means there's no way to adjust how far it tilts. This greatly favors the stacked setup with a screen on top, which is fine because I find that arrangement to be more useful in most situations.
Another pleasant surprise is that for a device with two screens, the Zenbook Duo isn't much larger or heavier than a typical clamshell. It weighs 3.6 pounds and measures 0.78 inches thick versus 2.82 pounds and 0.59 inches for a standard Zenbook 14 OLED. And compared to something like a Dell XPS 14 (3.7 pounds and 0.71 inches thick), both systems are practically the same size.
My only complaint is that ASUS' dark gray paint color doesn't help the Duo stand out. It's almost like someone who wears subdued colors to avoid attracting attention. But this design is fantastic and I wish ASUS would give this laptop (and the engineers who designed it) the flowers it deserves.
Screens and software
The centerpiece of the Duo is its pair of 14-inch screens, which are an absolute delight. The corresponding OLED panels not only offer intense brightness (around 500 nits), but also emit rich and accurate colors (100 percent DCI-P3). But the real magic is when you use both panels together.
Moving apps from one screen to another is as simple as dragging and dropping or using the handy menus that appear at the top of the screen. Additionally, there's a floating button at the bottom left for ASUS' ScreenXpert software, which provides shortcuts for adjusting brightness (separately or in pairs), disabling specific panels, or opening useful widgets for things like a control panel, a handwriting recognition tool. , news and weather and more. If the goal was to get the most value out of the Duo's two screens, I think the ASUS software does a pretty good job.
The downside to all this is that, despite ASUS's best efforts, Windows 11 and many apps are still not fully optimized for systems like this. For example, when I played a round of Team fighting tactics and I wanted to see some game stats on the bottom screen, I ran into an issue where the virtual touchpad stopped working. It was only after setting the game to borderless windowed mode, closing the game, and restarting everything that it started working again. Of course, situations like this were rare, but it's important to remember that when you use a cutting-edge device, there may be some bugs or awkward interactions.
Performance
The Zenbook Duo comes with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. While you can upgrade it with double the memory and a faster Ultra 9 chip, I found the base configuration to be quite fast. In tests like Geekbench 6 and PCMark 10, the Zenbook Duo returned identical results to similarly equipped clamshell devices, including . This is great because it means there isn't a huge overhead due to the addition of a second screen and even when set to desktop mode, dragging apps from one screen to another feels snappy and responsive. The obvious drawback is that unlike some 14-inch systems like the XPS 14, there's no room for a discrete GPU, making the Zenbook Duo better suited for general productivity than more demanding tasks like editing. video.
Battery duration
You might think that a system with two screens would consume a lot of battery, but the Zenbook Duo fared better than expected. With just one screen on, it lasted 13 hours and 12 minutes in our video summary test, which is roughly equivalent to (actually a little longer than) the Zenbook 14 OLED (12:43). And with both screens on, the Duo's time only dropped to 10:17, which is more than enough to get you through a full work day.
Wrap
Okay, so the Zenbook Duo delivers on the promises of dual-screen laptops. But a question I get often is who are devices like this really for? The most obvious application is for people who carry a portable monitor while traveling. But more generally, this is aimed at anyone who appreciates multiple monitors and wants a system that can recreate that experience in a more travel-friendly way, something the Zenbook Duo does with aplomb. However, the best thing is that it doesn't make big sacrifices to do so, because thanks to its detachable keyboard, it can function like any other clamshell when space is limited (like on an airplane).
When you have room to relax, it transforms into a portable workstation with plenty of screen space for a project on top and extra space for Slack, email, video calls, or anything else you might need below. It has ample ports so you don't need to carry a dongle, and thanks to its gorgeous OLED displays, your work (or play) always looks great. The Zenbook Duo can do everything a traditional laptop can do and more. Yes, the software experience could be a little more polished, although that's not entirely up to ASUS. We still need a new version of Windows to provide better OS support for dual-screen machines. But considering all the struggles and multiple generations it took to get here, the Zenbook Duo is a wonderful torchbearer for a new class of portable PCs.
