The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED laptop is aimed directly at creative professionals and according to Asus addresses all the concerns with the previous generation of Duo models. With it comes a new design which is not only functional but also looks great and offers added cooling to the laptop.
Design
The laptop looks nothing special when closed but when opened it smacks you straight in the face with its two beautiful OLED displays – the lower one of which is tilted slightly to allow better viewing angles when using that one. The angulation of this second lower display also allows air circulation underneath it through vents, thereby helping the laptop to cool.
Also helping the laptop cool are the vents underneath along with more vents on either side of the laptop. Seems like overkill but this laptop is built for the high-end creative professional who will likely be pushing the laptop to its limits with various programs, rendering, processing and more. When you open the display the hinge also tilts the laptop towards you, allowing for more air to circulate underneath the laptop.
Yet another cooling solution offered by Asus is the strange stand that comes with it that you can use underneath the laptop to tilt it up even more and allow even more air underneath the device.
With all these cooling solutions you’d think there would not be any heating issues and you’d be right. I pushed this laptop rendering video while also watching video and doing other creative-type work and did not have any issues at all.
The keyboard and palm rest
The issue with the design lies in the location of that second display. It sits where the keyboard would normally be and thus the keyboard is moved to the edge of the lower shelf and the touchpad tucked in next to it. While the keyboard is slightly smaller than a normal keyboard it doesn’t feel that much smaller when using it. What is uncomfortable about it is its location.
For it to be not only pushed to the bottom of the laptop but also off centre to one side to allow for the touchpad to be located somewhere. This makes it difficult to type, especially if the laptop is sitting on your lap. The laptop is also quite heavy so I think the term for this one should be a portable desktop rather than a laptop. The other issue with the keyboard location is the lack of a palm rest when used as is. Asus has included one in the box and after trying to use this laptop on my lap I decided the palm rest is required while typing for any period of time – take the included palm rest with you wherever you go.
The touchpad is tucked to the right of the keyboard and is rotated to portrait rather than the usual landscape. I’m not a massive fan of that and even after using it quite a bit I found it, although accurate, uncomfortable. If you are going to be using this laptop for creation though there is no doubt you would and should be using a decent mouse or external touchpad. If you are relying solely on this touchpad and keyboard for your input methods, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
The touchpad is not all bad though. It is responsive and accurate, but its size is disappointing – but I’m not sure how they could make it bigger without affecting the keyboard size which is already cramped enough. Asus also has included the option of turning the touchpad into a numpad by pressing and holding on the top right icon on the touchpad which brings up a touchpad in the form of lit keys on the touchpad. While sliding on the touchpad at this time still functions as a touchpad, tapping the lights will input numbers. I’m not a fan of numpads as they have very little to do with the way I work and the work I do so this is not a massive addition for me.
As mentioned above, the left side of the laptop houses an air vent but wait, there’s more. It also has a full-sized HDMI port along with a headphone or microphone jack. The right side, along with its air vent houses a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports. I used them to connect to my Thunderbolt monitor and it ran it just fine without any issues. For those after a faster experience, there will be an update to this laptop this year to include an 11th Gen Intel chip and Thunderbolt 4 ports.
Hardware
Of course, when talking about hardware with this laptop we need to talk about the displays but I will leave them to their own discussion below. Let’s talk about the webcam located above the display.
Disappointingly, the webcam is just 720P – which is likely why Asus list it as a HD camera and not the actual specs. At a time when most manufacturers are including a 1080P webcam in their laptops Asus seem to have missed the boat and in 2022 is it inexcusable. Sure its *decent* but that’s it. This is not a cheap laptop but instead a powerful, expensive beast of a laptop and thus deserves a 1080P webcam.
720P was just okay for basic video calls but if you are doing any recording while out and about 720P just won’t cut it. If you think you’ll be recording using the laptop at any time I would suggest purchasing an external webcam for better quality but then that adds yet another item that you will have to lug around with you.
The webcam does include IR for Windows Hello logins and that worked as it should, without delay – I’m not sure I’d buy a webcam or laptop without this IR for easy login these days.
The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo also comes with an active stylus which is supported by both displays. The response is accurate and without any lag with the stylus powered by a AAA battery inside. The battery life is expected to be months, but it is still disappointing that the stylus is not rechargeable. Maybe after a few months of using it, stick a spare AAA battery in your laptop bag just in case it runs out of battery while you are out and about.
When the laptop is closed there is nowhere to attach the stylus to – no magnetic strip of any such thing to keep it stowed away. While the laptop is open though the keyboard is magnetic so the stylus will stick to it.
Underneath the hood, the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo comes with either an Intel Core i7 or Core i9 alongside either 16GB or 32GB of DDR4 RAM. The chipsets are 10th Gen Intel processors which is not the latest and greatest but certainly good enough in this case.
Graphics are important in a laptop designed for the creative professional and Asus has included a decent graphics card in the ZenBook Pro Duo in the form of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU, Boost up to 1440MHz at 90W (110W with Dynamic Boost) and NVIDIA Max-Q with 8GB GDDR6. With this graphics card you could also use the laptop for gaming should you so desire – but it is not the primary purpose of the ZenBook Pro Duo. The graphics card is a beast considering it’s in a laptop and there’s a good reason why – the displays it is pushing.
The displays
The main 15.6-inch, 3840 x 2160 OLED display is bright, vivid with the colours popping out at you – something Asus has started doing with their creative laptops with OLED displays. The 550nits display also includes DCI-P3 of 100% (according to Asus but other sites have measured it at a score beyond this that exceeds all other similar laptops), is VESA Certified Display HDR True Black 500 along with a few other high-end certifications.
Using the display you can see why it rates these certifications – and to add cream to the pie, it is also a touch display with stylus support. Using the stylus on the main display though is a bit awkward given that the laptop does not open 180 degrees to a flat orientation.
Obviously one of the most important things in a creative professional’s laptop is a bright, colourfully accurate display and the ZenBook Pro Duo excels here with its main display. Whether creating on the laptop or just watching media it was a joy to use.
The secondary ScreenPad+ display tilts up for a much better viewing angle and experience. As discussed above, the tilting up also provides for additional air flow and cooling through the guts of the laptop. The ScreenPad+ is a 14-inch 4K (3840 x 1100) display was extremely handy moving windows and applications off the main display for multitasking. Some software also supports using the additional display for timeline editing – handy with video editing as I found out (especially Adobe software of which three months of use is added in with the purchase of the laptop). Other uses induce music editing, 3D animating and more.
So was the ScreenPad+ actually essential? It depends on the software you use for editing. If Adobe is your go to then this is great but I tend to use Camtasia for my video editing and it was less useful for that.
Audio
The ZenBook Pro Duo does come with dual bottom-firing Harmon-Kardon speakers but you should not expect them to provide a high-end audio experience. If you are creating music or media yourself and require decent audio output a decent set of headphones should be used. For basic listening to a soundtrack while working or consuming media such as YouTube or Netflix, the speakers are decent enough – like most laptop speakers.
They didn’t have the biggest range of sound I’ve heard but they are certainly far from the worst. There is some depth and bass to the sound but of course not the best quality sound you can get from other speakers. Chances are that if you are specifically attached to high quality sound you are going to have a decent set of headphones with you and won’t be relying on small laptop speakers.
Performance and graphics
As you would expect with some high-end specs such as these with the large amount of RAM combined with a Core i9 processor and a GeForce RTX 3070 8GB graphics card it is going to be able to handle anything you can throw at it.
Whether it was the video editing and encoding or playing a graphic-intensive game there were no issues at all with the performance of the ZenBook Pro Duo.
Heating can often be an issue with a premium laptop but Asus seem to have solved the issues with this in the current generation. The myriad of cooling vents along with the tilting ScreenPad+ display allow for a lot of air flow throughout the laptop and although it got warm (as you’d expect) it did not get HOT and certainly did not affect performance.
Battery life
Battery life on the ZenBook Pro Duo isn’t amazing. Using both displays at once it chews through the juice and lasted a tick or two over five hours with just basic typing and web surfing. Turning off the ScreenPad+ did extend this a few hours but you will not be getting 10 hours plus with this laptop. It is a beast but that beast needs to feed, and feed on your battery it does.
Carry your AC adapter with you if you are going to be out and about using this laptop – let’s face it too, to get full use of this laptop you will want the display nice and bright to take advantage of that beautiful display. Plug it in and enjoy that OLED goodness.
Software
Asus include a few of their own software apps and tweaks – MyAsus and ScreenXpert. ScreenXpert is where you alter all your ScreenPad+ customisations for various apps — Adobe apps included. They allow you to create touch controls for various functions within each app.
You can use the ScreenPad+ an extended display, a touchpad itself – handy considering the size of the touchpad included, a task manager, app navigator and control panel for various apps. These tweaks make that extra display incredibly useful – especially for the creative professional. As someone who is NOT a creative professional (my video editing usually consists of removing my drink break during a lecture recorded on the PC) I did not have much use for it in my day-to-day work but if you do a lot of editing then this is the laptop for you.
Conclusion
The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo is designed for the creative professional and it hits just about every single high point expected of such a laptop. The main OLED display is a 4K touch display that achieves great brightness while also providing accurate, crisp colours. The touch display also has the addition of being stylus compatible which is included with the laptop in the box.
The secondary display adds functionality to the laptop space, allowing for easier multitasking and editing while on the go on your laptop. Even if just using it as a secondary display it has great functionality but for the creative professional, I can see you using this for easier and faster control of your Adobe apps (and other supported apps).
The battery life on the laptop is not great but it could be improved by turning off the ScreenPad+ secondary display and lowering the brightness of the main display but if you are creating on the go you will want this at its optimum levels so I’d suggest taking the power cable wherever the laptop goes (assuming you want more than five hours or so of battery life.
The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo at the moment only comes with Windows 10 but a Windows 11 update is coming this year sometime — along with a slightly higher specced machine. The newer 11th Gen Intel chip (Thunderbolt 4-supporting) ZenBook Pro Duo will still operate the same and have all the same advantages of the 10th gen version but will be slightly faster and offer slightly better battery life (in theory). When that releases that could be the time to buy this current version as clearances often offer much better pricing.
The keyboard is off centre and the touchpad small and as such if you plan to do a lot of typing on it you may find it a bit cramped and uncomfortable — especially if working with the laptop on your lap. As I said above, this laptop is for the creative professional who is more about creating media and not written word.
If you are a serious creative professinoal I can wholeheartedly recommend you check out the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo. I’ve tried their other creative laptops and this one blows that out of the water. The secondary display is that useful for you creative types. The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo in the reviewed spec will set you back around $4,500 while a slightly lower i7 16GB RAM spec comes in at around $4,200 which may extend your budget more than wanted. Grab it from wherever good laptops are sold.
