Conceptually, it’s very close to what Lenovo did with the Yoga Book 9i last year, complete with shortcut gestures that help you bring up a virtual keyboard or touchpad, extend the screen to fill both displays, or add content “scroll” from one screen to another. . This is all pretty easy to understand. For the most part, working with the Zenbook Duo is no different than working with two monitors on a standard PC.
Many previous dual-screen laptops have suffered performance hits, and while the Duo hasn’t set any records, it’s quite capable across a wide range of benchmarks. Business applications load and run quickly, and graphics capabilities are acceptable despite the lack of a discrete graphics processor. Even the AI-focused performance was reasonably good (even considering there’s no GPU to boost it). The downside is the battery life. I only got 6 hours and 48 minutes of YouTube time when one screen was active, and with both live screens it was only 5 hours and 13 minutes. None of the scores are that great.
The muscle behind it is an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU with 32GB of RAM and a 1 terabyte solid-state drive. Port selection is fine, if a little limited, with two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A port, and a full-size HDMI output jack.
The Zenbook Duo is quite compact due to its design, with a thickness of 25mm, with or without a keyboard in the middle. The entire package weighs 3.5 pounds, or 2.8 pounds without the keyboard. That’s a little heavy, which is to be expected, but less than some traditional 14-inch laptops I’ve tested in recent years.
Even though the dual-screen concept is getting better, there are still some growing pains. I occasionally had problems with the screens not automatically switching from portrait to landscape. And the device had the same problem with third-party chargers that I had with the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED: It left AC mode and switched to battery power and back again almost randomly.
Photo: Asus
My biggest complaint, however, concerns the design. Unlike the Yoga Book 9i, the Duo’s screens don’t fit flush together when the screen is unfolded flat. Instead, one sits more than an inch behind the other, creating a staggered stair-step effect. This displeases the OCD side of my brain, which insists that adjacent screens be aligned on the same plane.
That said, two screens are a game-changer when it comes to mobile productivity, even if they’re a little cheesy. In my daily life, I’m used to working on two screens when I’m desk-bound, but when I’m on the go and have to switch to working directly from a single laptop screen, my productivity is lost.
The Duo is priced at $1,700 – and that’s for the fully loaded configuration. That’s not exactly cheap, but it’s far cheaper than most other dual-screen laptops and even competitive with many that have a single display. Ultimately, if you’re like me and find that a single, small screen limits and slows you down, I’m hard-pressed to find a reason not to recommend this device.