Our first encounter with the dual-screen laptop was when we reviewed the Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED. The laptop punched above its class enhancing multitasking and dual productivity. This time we have a similar laptop from Asus - the latest Asus Zenbook Duo. It brings two 14-inch OLED displays together and adds a detachable keyboard to present a next-level multitasking experience. Supported by powerful specifications like Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor 185H, Intel Arc iGPU and Intel AI Boost NPU, 32GB RAM and 2TB of storage, the laptop is well positioned to be one of the favourite dual-screen laptops.
Design
The name of the laptop in itself gives away the essence of design. With the lids closed the new Asus Zenbook Duo appears to be a regular laptop but the magic unfolds once it is open. What makes the Zenbook Duo particularly impressive from a design perspective is just how refined and well-executed the dual-screen implementation is. The main display can tilt up to 180 degrees, making it easy to share content or use the laptop in various modes like desktop or presentation mode. An integrated kickstand props up the laptop at angles between 40-70 degrees in dual-screen mode or 95 degrees in desktop mode.
Asus Zenbook Duo | Photo Credit: Haider Ali Khan
The detachable keyboard connects to the laptop via pogo pins or Bluetooth and has a surprisingly good typing experience for its size, with decent key travel and a touchpad that’s smooth and responsive. Small touches like an LED battery indicator and dedicated hotkeys for functions like swapping content between displays add to the overall premium feel.
Zenbook Duo ports | Photo Credit: Haider Ali Khan
In terms of connectivity, the laptop offers a decent array of ports given its compact size - two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a full-size HDMI 2.1, and a 3.5mm combo audio jack. I/O is rounded out by the latest WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity. Also, the laptop comes with an Asus Pen 2.0, a pressure-sensitive stylus designed to function with both of the laptop’s touchscreens.
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The company has complemented the unique design of the laptop with MIL-STD 810H military standards for reliability and durability.
Display
The dual 14-inch OLED displays are the star of the show on the Zenbook Duo, and they don’t disappoint in terms of quality. With 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage, HDR support, and stellar contrast, both panels offer vibrant, punchy colours and inky blacks that really pop.
The text looks razor-sharp thanks to the dense 1920x1200 resolution on both screens, and we didn’t notice any backlight bleed or other uniformity issues. Asus’ software also lets you easily switch between different colour gamut presets like sRGB, DCI-P3, or Display-P3 depending on your needs.
Asus Zenbook Duo | Photo Credit: Haider Ali Khan
The OLED panels get sufficiently bright at 500 nits for comfortable indoor use, though they can look a tad dim outdoors in direct sunlight. We also appreciated the inclusion of Gorilla Glass to protect against scratches and help with glare.
One area where OLED still lags behind is response times, with the 60Hz panels exhibiting some perceptible ghosting/smearing in fast motion compared to high-refresh LCDs. But for general productivity tasks and even content consumption, the stellar contrast and colours make OLEDs a great choice.
Asus has also implemented various software features like pixel shifting and scheduled panel dimming to help mitigate risks of OLED burn-in or uneven wear from static UI elements.
Furthermore, Asus has developed the ScreenXpert software utility to help manage and optimize content across both displays. It allows you to easily move windows between screens, tile them in various configurations, and even includes handy features like a virtual touchpad and an on-screen calculator.
The built-in kickstand and ability to lay the laptop flat in “sharing mode” further enhance the flexibility of the dual-screen setup for presentations or collaborating with others. You can mirror content across both displays or keep different apps open on each screen in this mode.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and Audio
The included detachable keyboard is quite good considering its compact size and travel with the laptop. Key travel is 1.4mm which is decent, and the keys offer a crisp typing feel with their membrane scissor mechanism. There are handy backlighting and dedicated shortcut keys to invoke features like swapping window positions, summoning the virtual numpad, etc.
Asus Zenbook Duo | Photo Credit: Haider Ali Khan
The touchpad is smooth and responsive as well, thanks to its large size and premium coating that ensures a glassy glide. It supports all the usual multi-touch Windows gestures you’d expect.
As for audio, the Zenbook Duo produces pretty good sound for a laptop, with speakers tuned by Harman Kardon and support for Dolby Atmos spatial audio. Volume levels and clarity are impressive, though bass performance is understandably lacking compared to a dedicated speaker setup. You also get an AI noise-cancelling mic array that does a good job of isolating your voice on calls.
Camera
The Zenbook Duo includes an ASUS AiSense camera setup. It features an FHD infrared (IR) sensor that enables quick and secure face login on Windows Hello. But the camera assembly also packs an ambient light sensor and a colour sensor. The ambient light sensor can automatically adjust display brightness levels based on the lighting conditions for an optimal viewing experience. The colour sensor allows the camera to detect and optimize colours more accurately during video calls or when using the laptop’s built-in background blur and appearance touch-up effects.
Performance
The Zenbook Duo is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 i9-13955HX processor, 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. It comes preloaded with Windows 11 and Microsoft Office. Performance is strong across the board, thanks to Intel’s latest hybrid architecture that combines high-performance and efficiency cores. The Zenbook Duo can handle demanding workloads like video editing, 3D modelling, coding, and even some gaming reasonably well with its integrated Intel Arc graphics.
That said, this laptop isn’t really intended as a gaming or workstation-grade machine for intensive tasks like 4K video editing or 3D rendering all day. Its thermal solution with dual fans and heat pipes does a decent job of keeping temperatures under control, but the compact chassis does limit sustained performance compared to larger laptops.
Where the Zenbook Duo particularly excels is in providing snappy performance for day-to-day office, productivity, and light creative workloads thanks to its fast SSD, ample RAM, and powerful CPUs with AI acceleration via Intel’s Neural Processing Unit.
The dual screens come in handy for juggling multiple tasks and streamlining research, writing, coding, or any other workflow that benefits from an extended display area. At the same time, trying to leverage both screens requires some adjustment and conscious effort to organize your windows and truly take advantage of the additional real estate.
Battery
Despite having two 14-inch OLED displays to power, the Zenbook Duo manages fairly respectable battery life for its class. In our web browsing test, the laptop lasted around 7.5 hours, while more intensive workloads like video playback drained it in around 5-6 hours. These runtimes are aided by the laptop’s 75Wh battery capacity and power-efficient Intel processors, making it feasible to use the Zenbook Duo unplugged for basic tasks when you’re on the go.
Verdict
Starting at a price of ₹1,59,990, the new Asus Zenbook Duo occupies a unique niche in the laptop market with its innovative dual 14-inch OLED touchscreen design multiplying multitasking manifold. By doubling the screen real estate and offering new form factors enabled by the detachable keyboard and kickstand, it envisions enhanced productivity and new use cases compared to traditional clamshell laptops.
But at the same time, the Zenbook Duo’s niche dual-screen design limits its flexibility and portability to an extent. You really need to use it on a flat surface to take advantage of the secondary display and kickstand.
