Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 Review: Dual Screens, If You Need It

Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED review: Two screens when you need them

RRP $ 3,000.00

"The Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED is a fantastic laptop for the creative when you can use its second screen."

advantages

• Useful dual screen design

• Excellent workmanship

• Nice OLED displays

• Strong performance in creative apps

• Keyboard action is comfortable

• Active pen is precise and responsive

disadvantage

• Clumsy keyboard and touchpad

• Battery life is awful

• Expensive

Asus doesn't do without dual screens. The company has some laptops with second screens embedded in the touchpad, but last year it released the more extravagant ZenBook Pro Duo UX581, which positioned a second large display under the primary panel. For such a futuristic idea, the laptop was remarkably well made.

But Asus hasn't rested on its laurels and recently launched the ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582 and made several significant changes to this experimental design.

I have a well-stocked configuration of the ZenBook Pro Duo with an Intel Core i9-10980HK CPU of the 10 x 2160) OLED panel and a second OLED screen at 3840 x 1100.

However, this is an expensive $ 3,000 machine. Is the dual display functionality enough to compete with the best laptops for video and photo editing?

design

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Close the lid of the ZenBook Pro Duo and it looks like a chunky 15-inch laptop with a light industrial design in a Celestial Blue color scheme and the usual Asus concentric swirl on the lid. The edges are angled for aesthetic and functional reasons, especially the rear edge that houses the new ErgoLift AAS (Active Aerodynamic System) hinge that supports the lower chassis for better airflow and more comfortable typing upwards.

It bears a vague resemblance to gaming laptops due to the aggressive ventilation on each side, but overall the design is more function than form. A look at the ZenBook Pro Duo gives a clear impression that it is a working device. Compare that to the Dell XPS 15, which is far slimmer and adds a touch of elegance, making it a more attractive laptop. Another laptop with a different design, which also presents a pure work aesthetic, is the Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel with its foldable display design – not surprising that this device is also aimed at creative people.

There is nothing slim and light in the ZenBook Pro Duo.

Open the lid of the ZenBook Pro Duo and the second display rises at an angle – the previous version remained flat and less comfortable to use. Since both displays are OLED, there are tons of bright colors and deep blacks to stare at, and at least it looks cool. This angle is not only helpful for use in the east; it also provides additional airflow over the lower chassis for theoretically improved thermal performance.

The main display hinge is pretty tight and it takes some pressure to lift the second display. Despite the heavy weight of the underside, you need two hands to open the laptop, but everything feels sturdy and gives you the certainty that after a lot of opening and closing you won't have any problems with the second display in the long run.

Asus constructed the ZenBook Pro Duo from a mix of aluminum and magnesium-aluminum alloys, so the feeling of durability is carried over to the rest of the laptop. I would rate it with the best laptops for its rigidity without bending, bending, or twisting on the machine. It corresponds to the Dell XPS and Latitude and Lenovo ThinkPad lines, which are some of the toughest laptops built today. This quality is a common characteristic of Asus laptops – we rarely come across one that is not rock solid.

While the ZenBook Pro Duo isn't thin and light, it's not as big as you'd expect given the second screen. It's 0.83 inches thick and weighs 5.16 pounds, compared to the XPS 15 at 0.71 inches and 4.5 pounds. The ZenBook's bezels are larger at the top and bottom, making the case larger overall – not to mention the impact of the second display, but it's by no means a huge laptop. The Acer Concept D 7 Ezel is thicker and heavier at 1.13 inches at its thickest point and 5.6 pounds, and this device feels bigger than the ZenBook Pro Duo.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The ZenBook Pro Duo comes with a palm rest extension that slides up on the bottom of the case. That makes up for the fact that there is no palm rest built into the device and typing without the extension is uncomfortable (more on the keyboard later). Adding the extension pushes the laptop back onto your desk, which means it takes up quite a bit of space when fully configured. The extension has a pass-through for the LED on the bottom that shows the battery status, which is a nice touch.

There is no doubt, however, that you will be reconfiguring your desk to make everything fit, and the expansion is another thing to take with you if you want the convenience of using the ZenBook Pro Duo on the go. I would have recommended adding a magnetic link to keep the extension in place; As it is, it slides around while you work and that can be distracting.

Finally, Asus also offers an ErgoLift stand that further supports the back of the ZenBook Duo Pro. You can achieve a 12 degree angle by using the stand that attaches to the bottom of the chassis so you can always have it with you. I found it a bit clunky to use, but then I didn't attach the stand to the test device.

Certainly, it offers a more comfortable angle for both viewing the second screen and typing, with your palms resting more naturally on the desktop in the latter case. In theory, you could also use the palm rest extension, but it doesn't fit properly with the stand attached, and so it seems like one thing or the other. It's also another complication in setting up the laptop as you move from place to place.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Connectivity is decent for a laptop as thick as the ZenBook Pro Duo. On the left is a proprietary connector for the 240 watt power adapter, a full-size HDMI port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right side there are two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support and one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port. It is noticeable that there is no SD card slot, which would have made sense for the ZenBook Pro Duo in the creative market. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 offer wireless connectivity.

perfomance

My test device was 10th with an Intel Core i9-10980HK eight-core / 16-thread CPU. Asus paid a lot of attention to thermal performance, with lots of airflow, as mentioned above, two 97-blade fans and a whopping six heat pipes, including one for the power supply module. There's also a G-sensor that detects when the display is closed at an angle of less than 80 degrees. At this point the power will be reduced to limit consumption and extend battery life.

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Asus offers a performance optimization utility that switches between standard and performance modes. I found the utility inconsistent – it raised the Cinebench R23 multi-core score to 9968, making it one of the fastest laptops we tested, but it didn't affect our Handbrake test of a 420MB video in H. converted .265.

It also raised Geekbench 5's multi-core score to 7542, placing it higher in our peer group. In our gaming benchmarks, the utility either had a minimal positive impact or reduced performance; I will discuss this below. The utility had no influence on the PCMark 10 score, which was particularly strong in the area of ​​content creation and is one of the fastest devices.

Overall, the ZenBook Pro Duo was a fast laptop, but maybe not quite as fast as you'd expect given the Core i9 CPU. I can imagine that despite all the efforts Asus put into heat treatment, the CPU still struggled to maintain full speed. The fans would certainly spin up, especially in performance mode, and a lot of heat was blown out of the side ventilation slots. In general, it can do CPU-intensive tasks and has managed to keep up with or outperform the latest Ryzen 7 CPUs – something we haven't seen on a lot of Intel-based laptops.

Given the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, the ZenBook Pro Duo does well with apps that can use the GPU. It scored 647 in the PugetBench Adobe Premiere Pro benchmark, which is the fastest score we've seen on a laptop. The closest thing is the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro gaming laptop with a Ryzen 7 5800H and an RTX 3070 that managed 622. Anyone using Adobe's suite will be delighted with the performance of the ZenBook Pro.

	Geekbench (single / multiple)	Handbrake (seconds)	Cinbench R23 (single / multiple)	PCMark 10
Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED (Core i9-10980HK)	1266/6918	106	1236/8326	5769
Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel (10875H)	1301/7949	114	N / A	N / A
HP Envy x360 15 (Ryzen7 5700U)	1198/6790	116	1258/8131	5419
Asus ZenBook 13 OLED (Ryzen 7 5800U	1423/6758	124	1171/7824	6034
Dell XPS 15 (Core i7-10875H)	1314/7549	122	N / A	N / A
HP Envy 15 (Core i7-10750H)	1274/5542	139	N / A	N / A
MacBook Pro 13 (M1)	1707/7337	N / A	1487/7547	N / A

Gaming was a mixed bag, perhaps due to the Nvidia Studio drivers installed on the ZenBook Pro Duo. These are designed to ensure consistent and reliable performance in creative apps rather than hardcore gaming, which appears to have impacted gaming performance. Either that or the GPU had thermal issues at times, as I suspect that happened to the CPU.

Additionally, as I mentioned above, the Asus Performance Utility only increased frame rates by a few or decreased performance. Civilization VI, for example, saw significant frame rate drops in performance mode. 3DMark scores rose, with the ZenBook Pro Duo hitting 8,763 in Time Spy and 17864 in Fire Strike in performance mode, but that increase didn't result in gaming.

The ZenBook Duo Pro did well in Fortnite on Epic graphics at 1080p, Civilization VI on Ultra graphics, and Assassin's Creed Vahalla on Ultra High graphics, but fell behind in Battlefield V on Ultra. The performance decreased disproportionately at 4K, whereby the ZenBook Pro Duo lagged far behind the crowd at this resolution. I haven't been able to test at 1440p, but it's possible you can run games there if you dive into Nvidia settings and enable that resolution.

The bottom line is that while the ZenBook Pro Duo doesn't always live up to its components as a gaming laptop, it is still quite usable for modern 1080p and maybe 1440p titles. You may get better performance if you remove the Studio drivers and install the regular Nvidia drivers, but then you lose the benefit of better creative application performance and reliability. This is likely not something that the laptop target market will go for.

Laptop	3DMark time spy	3DMark fire strike	Assassin's Creed Valhalla (1080p Ultra High)	Battlefield V (1080p Ultra)	Fortnite (1080p Epic)	Civilization VI (1080p Ultra)
Asus ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED (RTX 3070)	7998	16932	74 fps	78 fps	102 fps	111 fps
Razer Blade 14 (RTX 3070)	8605	19673	60 fps	96 fps	96 fps	84 fps
Asus ROG Strix G15 (Radeon RX 6800M)	10504	26800	77 fps	109 fps	108 fps	91 fps
Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (RTX 3070)	9175	21033	61 fps	73 fps	101 fps	101 fps
MSI GS66 Stealth (RTX 3080)	9097	19175	70 fps	97 fps	140 fps	140 fps

Primary display

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The primary display of the ZenBook Pro Duo is a 4K OLED panel with DisplayHDR 500 support that looks just brilliant. OLED excels in that it usually highlights colors without becoming oversaturated and creates blacks that look incredibly deep, and the panel Asus selected for the ZenBook Pro Duo does both.

My colorimeter agreed with my subjective impression. First, the display was quite bright at 369 cd / m², well above our 300 nit threshold. That's less than the OLED display on the HP Specter x360 15, which registered 426 nits, and the Dell XPS 14 4K IPS display, which reached 442 nits, but is still bright enough for most indoor environments. The contrast was typical for OLED displays at 368,610: 1, compared to the Specter x360 15 OLED at 426,180: 1 and the XPS 15 4K at 1480: 1 (good for an IPS display).

The colors were wide at 100% of sRGB and 99% of AdobeRGB, with the Specter x360 15 OLED hitting 100% and 98%, respectively, and the XPS 15 4K hitting 100% of both color gamuts. Accuracy was good with a DeltaE of 1.25 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent) and was close to the 1.21 of the Specter x360 15 OLED, but not as good as the spectacular 0.65 of the XPS 15 4K.

Simply put, the display on the ZenBook Pro Duo was a joy to use. Black text appeared on a white background, the colors were vibrant and beautiful, and Netflix was a dream thanks to the 4K resolution and HDR support. This is a display that everyone will love including the creative professionals who demand wide and accurate colors.

The sound is driven by two downward-facing speakers, which ensure a clear sound and hardly sufficient volume. I want things to get a little louder, but it's good enough for the occasional YouTube video. The mids and highs are fine, but there is no bass. You will need a pair of headphones for Netflix bingeing and music sessions.

Secondary display

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The second display of the ZenBook Pro Duo, called ScreenPad +, is also OLED and runs at 3840 x 1100. Like the primary display, it is bright and colorful with deep black tones. I couldn't position my colorimeter properly to get a formal reading of its quality, but it seems to be on par with its bigger brother. Speaking of size, the second display is big enough to be useful, though the extreme widescreen format means any maximized apps can look a little funky on it.

This laptop is designed with the creative in mind, and it is these users who will get the most out of the second display.

Asus has packed a lot of functionality into the second display, all of which are accessible via a ScreenXpert Control Center menu that can be pinned or left floating on the left, right, or bottom of the display. The menu provides access to Brightness, an App Navigator utility that makes it easy to move windows from one screen to another, a button to lock or unlock the keyboard, a button to view the ScreenPad + desktop, a button to open the MyAsus App, a button to open the Launcher app that provides access to ScreenPad + apps and setup.

Useful ScreenPad + apps include a Quick Key utility that provides quick access to features like copy and paste, a handwriting app that converts ink to text, a virtual numeric keypad, a Spotify control center, and a Corel Multicam utility. There are also buttons to open an AppDeals app and the MyASUS app, and a button to open the Asus Control Panel app (see below).

There are several ways to use the ScreenPad +. You can turn it into a massive touchpad, which is less useful than it seems as it is positioned above the keyboard and therefore not very comfortable to use. It can host app windows, so it can act as a typical external display. Asus has developed a new Control Panel app that supports Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop and Lightroom Classic, and has several commonly used functions for each app.

The app is fully customizable and is designed to optimize the use of the supported applications. One final way to use the secondary display is to move control windows out of the way in apps like Premiere and Photoshop to make more room to view and edit a video or photo. Note that the Control Panel app can start automatically and take away this functionality.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Overall, I found the ScreenPad + to be a useful addition, but mainly for certain users who can use the app-specific functions. That's fine, because this laptop was designed for creative people, and it is these users who will get the most out of the second display. Personally, I probably wouldn't use it for much more than dragging down windows that don't clutter my main display or that I want to see separately, like the Netflix app or a YouTube window. That might make the ScreenPad + a niche component, but a useful one nonetheless.

Touchpad and keyboard

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

On its own, the ZenBook Pro Duo’s 3-tier, backlit keyboard is a good one. It has a lot of travel and comfortable key spacing, and the switches provide precise action with a nice click. My only complaint is that the ground movement is a little abrupt and therefore has a harrowing effect that can be tiring during long tip sessions. I would rate it a step or two behind the great keyboards of the HP Specter x360 15 and Dell XPS 15. The biggest problem with the keyboard is that there is no palm rest.

When using the laptop alone, your wrists rest on the desktop and your fingers are at an awkward typing angle. As mentioned earlier, Asus offers a palm rest extension that solves this problem, but the ZenBook Pro Duo extends further back on a desktop and it's another piece to take with you. Also, as mentioned above, you can attach the ErgoLift stand and that helps too, but again, it's another piece to play around with.

The touchpad, on the other hand, is just terrible. I hate being this negative, but it's tiny, vertically oriented (which is weird to use), and placed to the right of the keyboard where it's annoying. It includes Asus' virtual LED numeric keypad which is great for those who would use something like this, but that doesn't make up for its size and placement. It's a Microsoft Precision touchpad, so it works well enough. It's just terribly uncomfortable.

Both displays are of course touch-enabled and support the supplied Asus active pen, which can be magnetically attached to the lid. The pen works well and ensures fluid and precise coloring and control on both displays.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Finally, the passwordless login of Windows 10 Hello is supported by an infrared camera and facial recognition. It's quick and accurate, and I had no problems signing in. The webcam is a disappointing 720p as some vendors start configuring 1080p webcams in response to the pandemic-inspired surge in video conferencing.

Battery life

Asus has increased the battery of the ZenBook Pro Duo compared to the previous generation by 29.5% to a capacity of up to 92 Wh. That's a lot of battery, but that's a lot of machine, so I didn't have extremely high expectations.

I was on the right track. The ZenBook Pro Duo doesn't do well in any of our battery benchmarks. In our web browser test, for example, it didn't quite make four hours, a meager score that even gaming laptops tend to outperform. The previous version lasted about 5.5 hours, but that was with the second screen turned off. I ran my tests with the second screen on, assuming that most users would want this feature in battery life as much as when plugged in. According to Asus, the second screen should reduce battery life by about 1.5 hours, which I've seen and which suggests that the updated version doesn't show better longevity, at least in this test, despite the larger battery.

In short, the ZenBook Pro Duo has terrible battery life.

Note that the Dell XPS 15 4K ran for seven hours and the HP Specter x360 15 ran a little over six hours. I realize I've picked a few comparison devices that aren't much better than the ZenBook Pro Duo. The latest laptops last around 10 hours in this test, but of course most of them don't have OLED displays and such powerful components.

In our video looping test, which repeats a Full HD Avengers trailer, the ZenBook Pro Duo reached six hours, compared to the XPS 15 with 20 minutes more and the Specter x360 15 with 6.5 hours. Again, other modern machines last much longer, usually over 13 hours or so. I also ran the PCMark 10 gaming test, where the Asus lasted less than two hours; This isn't all that bad, and the test itself is likely more of a measure of how aggressively a laptop is running on battery life than how long its battery lasts.

In the PCMark 10 application test, which is the best indicator of battery life, the ZenBook Pro Duo achieved 5.5 hours, which is about half of what most other laptops can do. We didn't test the XPS 15 with these benchmarks either, but the Specter x360 15 lasted three minutes less in the gaming test and two minutes less in the applications test.

In short, the ZenBook Pro Duo has terrible battery life. Of course, this is not unexpected in the design of the machine. This means that if you are on the road for a full day at work, you have to carry the powerful 240-watt power brick with you. Add that to the palm rest extension and ErgoLift stand, and your backpack will feel pretty full.

Our opinion

The ZenBook Pro Duo 15 OLED UX582 (www!) Is a great laptop for anyone who really benefits from adding a second display to the device, not to mention a powerful CPU and GPU that can handle demanding tasks. This includes creatives who use their laptops with apps like Adobe Premiere Pro and Photoshop, which makes sense because that's exactly what Asus is aiming for. In this regard, the company has succeeded in producing a laptop that meets special requirements.

For most other users, however, the ZenBook Pro Duo is too heavy, too complicated and suffers from a short battery life. It's also expensive at $ 3,000 when you can get equally powerful and much more portable laptops for the same or less money.

Are there alternatives?

The Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel is another differently designed laptop tailored for creative types. It's also very fast, very heavy, and has a very short battery life. It's even more expensive, too, but if you're a creator and need its flexibility, the Acer is a great alternative.

The Dell XPS 15 is a cheaper device for developers because it's fast (though not as fast as the ZenBook Pro Duo), has its own great display, and is far more portable. If you don't need the second display, it's a viable option.

Otherwise, the ZenBook Pro Duo is in a class of its own. You won't find any other device with the same type of second screen, and if that matters to you, the Asus is your only option.

How long it will take?

The ZenBook Pro Duo is extremely well built and feels tough enough to withstand years of use. Its components also keep up, so that your investment pays for itself. You will be disappointed with the one year warranty, which is industry standard but not long enough for such an expensive product.

Should you buy it?

Yes. When you need a second display, the ZenBook Pro Duo isn't just your only choice. It's a great choice, period. If you don't, your $ 3,000 will likely be better spent elsewhere.

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