Hello everyone, so we’ve had our hands on the ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo for a good number of days now and here is our full review of it. But before knowing more about our experiences, let’s get familiar with its pricing and where you can get it from.
UX581 MSRP Starting Price: 514,200
UX481 MSRP Starting Price: 227,900
UX434 MSRP Starting Price: 189900
Okay, let's get started with the main selling point of this device, the display. And we can confidently say that this is one of the best, or probably the best display we have ever laid our eyes on. The primary screen is a 15.6- inches 4K OLED panel The display is HDR compatible and has 100% DCIP3 color gamut coverage and % SRGB. The second display is a 14- inch 4K-ish matte IPS display with touch support.
We say 4k-ish because it is not tall enough to be considered true 4K. ASUS calls it Screen Pad Plus. The primary screen is a glossy one but the bottom one is a matte panel which is a good design choice because it won’t be reflective and being a matte panel, it is, writing on it won't result to many scratches.
So, how productive is the dual display? Well, it would’ve had been better if this magnificent piece of hardware was accompanied by solid software.
There are minor complaints that we had, for instance, if you put your laptop to sleep with tabs open in your second screen, they shift to the top when you trying it back on. And Adobe suite applications could have been better optimized or smoother operation.
Having said that, editing photos, videos, etc using the entire primary screen with the tools and timeline on the second screen is a lot of fun. Also, multitasking is super fun and super easy now, as you won’t have to use split-screen. Instead, you can have one app/s open on the top and the other/s on the bottom.
Okay now, let’s talk about the design. The entire design of it is made mostly of Aluminum. It weighs 2.5kgs and the device is very sturdy and well built. The laptop has an inclined design for better airflow and heat dissipation.
About the ports on the ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo, on the left, you get the DC power-in, a standard HDMI 2.0, and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port, while there’s one Thunderbolt 3 USB-C, an audio jack, and another USB 3.1 Gen 2 port on the other side. So, No LAN connection, and more importantly no dedicated SD card reader. In terms of wireless connectivity, the ZenBook Pro Duo comes with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0.
The performance of it is handled by the Intel- Core i9-9980HK. On to the graphics, you get the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB of GDDR6 VRAM. Similarly, the unit I reviewed has 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
About the gaming performance, we tried playing games like tried Battlefield V, Apex Legends, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Battlefield ran at around 35 to 40fps under 4K resolution in Ultra settings while it went to 60fps when lowering the resolution to 1080p. Apex Legends gave around 30 to 35fps in Ultra settings at 4K resolution and about 90 to 100 fps at 1080p.
The trackpad is fine too, it is made of glass and the buttons are clicky and responsive too. The trackpad also doubles as a NUM pad. Additionally, it features a bottom-firing stereo audio system, which is certified by Harman Kardon.
About the battery, it has a big 8-cell 71Wh battery whose battery life ranges between 3-5 hours during normal usage with the secondary display’s brightness et to 50%. On the charging front, the power adapter is big and heavy too, which takes about 2 hours to go from 0 to 100.