Whenever I’m away from my desk and twin screens, it looks like an out-of-body expertise. I’m continuously craving for just a bit extra display house. But if you’re touring, what are you purported to do? Sure, you , however that is sort of cumbersome and largely redundant if you’re at residence. Instead, contemplate the , as a result of after a pair generations of refinement, it looks like Asus is beginning to hit its stride with its funky dual-screened clamshells.

You get a giant 16-inch foremost show with excessive refresh charges, top-notch gaming elements and a 14-inch secondary display for all of your multitasking wants. And whereas I actually would not name it petite, the Zephyrus Duo 16 is not that a lot greater than a standard 16-inch skinny and lightweight, regardless of packing desktop-level efficiency. Really, the principle issue stopping it from being an awesome cell gaming battle station is its value. That’s Because With a beginning value of $2,500 (or nearer to $4,000 for our loaded assessment unit), the Duo 16 undoubtedly ain’t low cost. 

Design

As a part of ASUS’ ROG household of gaming notebooks, the Duo 16 has aggressive styling, although a lot of the fireworks are solely seen when you open the lid. ASUS’ dual-panel setup is a daring transfer at decreasing anxiousness attributable to restricted display actual property. However, it does include some drawbacks. Because the ScreenPad Plus dominates the higher half of the laptop computer’s deck, ASUS needed to shove the touchpad within the backside proper nook. And measuring barely greater than two inches large, issues can undoubtedly really feel cramped. Then you consider half-sized arrow keys, shortcuts and media controls, and there is a lot stepping into not plenty of house.

That mentioned, Asus does its greatest to take advantage of these areas, with the touchpad pulling double responsibility as a quantity pad. All it’s important to do is faucet the shadowy icon within the high left for a second, and voila. 

Still, there is not any hiding the Duo 16’s considerably cumbersome chassis, which weighs over 5.5 kilos and measures 0.8-inches thick. These dimensions are proper on the sting of having the ability to match right into a typical laptop computer sleeve, so anybody planning on shopping for a Duo 16 will need to make certain their bag of selection has loads of room. 

On the intense facet, Asus has loads of room for a wholesome quantity of ports, together with two USB-A, two USB-C, HDMI 2.1, a microSD card reader and even a full-size Ethernet jack. My solely grievance is that due to the ScreenPad’s difficult hinge, the situation of the proprietary energy plug on its left facet could be a bit awkward. I actually want they’d discovered room for that someplace round again.

Display(s)

OK, let’s transfer on to the Duo 16’s shows, which offer a extremely compelling one-two punch. The foremost 16-inch show encompasses a speedy three-millisecond response time. On higher-end fashions like our $4,000 assessment unit, you even get a mini LED panel that places out a powerful 700 nits of brightness. And that is coming from a display with a matte end, which generally lowers mild output a contact. Meanwhile, because of a coloration gamut that Asus claims covers one hundred pc of the DCI-P3 spectrum, the Duo 16’s main show is simply pretty much as good at pumping out vivid colours in video games as it’s replicating correct ones in Photoshop. 

However, the laptop computer’s actual occasion trick is its 14-inch ScreenPad Plus, which helps contact and gives a 1950 x 550 decision on the bottom mannequin, or 3840 x 1100 pixels on upgraded configs. Our assessment unit’s ScreenPad registered 300 nits on our lightmeter, which is not practically as brilliant as the principle display, nevertheless it’s adequate. 

To get essentially the most use out of its secondary show, ASUS packed the ScreenPad Plus with a ton of nifty options together with shortcuts to efficiency and lighting settings, customizable window layouts, and the flexibility to reflect your cellphone’s display, although that final one could be a little janky. Heck, there’s even a secondary numpad instrument, in case the one constructed into the touchpad is not sufficient. And on the Duo 16, Asus upgraded the ScreenPad’s hinge in order that it rests at a steeper angle when open, which improves each ergonomics and cooling. 

Now all that’s good, however for me, the very best use of the ScreenPad Plus is solely offering further room for social media, streaming video providers, or anything you need to maintain in sight, whereas retaining my most necessary apps up high. When I’m gaming, the principle display is the place the motion is at, whereas having Discord and YouTube open down under are nice for chatting with associates and staying entertained throughout loading screens. And if I’m working, the ScreenPad is ideal for stuff like Slack that doesn’t require fixed consideration.

Also, as a result of the ScreenPad Plus is configured in Windows as a generic show, which means you need to use keyboard shortcuts to rapidly transfer apps out of your foremost show to the secondary display or snap them to the facet as wanted. Is it pretty much as good as having a full second monitor? No, nevertheless it’s sufficient to make issues much more comfy. 

Webcam and sound

The Duo 16 makes it straightforward to log in utilizing facial recognition with its 720 webcam and Windows Hello help. Unfortunately, picture high quality is mediocre at greatest, and as I’ve mentioned earlier than, 1080p ought to be the baseline for all trendy laptops — particularly one this costly. 

Thankfully, the Duo 16 boasts a robust six-speaker setup with help for Dolby Atmos, so that you get a efficiency mode in video games that focuses on delivering correct directional sound, together with a bunch of clever and preset EQs for films and music. You even have the flexibility to create customized audio profiles, although, I want the Duo 16 provided only a bit extra low-end thump. 

Performance

While a base Duo 16 solely comes with an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU, our fully-loaded assessment unit options an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX chip and an RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, to not point out 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD. So it in all probability will not be a shock once I inform you this factor is principally the quickest laptop computer we have examined this 12 months. It notched high scores in Geekbench 5’s compute check, 3DMark’s TimeSpy Extreme and extra. 

Naturally, the Duo 16’s gaming efficiency can also be fairly sturdy, hitting 145 fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider on highest settings and 85 fps in Metro Exodus on excessive. And that was with each video games working at 2560 x 1600. So actually, the one limiting issue concerning efficiency is how a lot you are keen to shell out for high-end elements. 

I additionally need to point out that whereas the Duo 16 usually retains its thermals and fan noise in verify, below full load, issues can get a bit raucous. At full blast, you would possibly hear a high-pitched whine coming from the vents that may get just a little annoying. But you may at all times alter that by going into ASUS’ Armoury Crate app. There’s even a customized fan curve setting if you wish to dial issues in manually. Alternatively, you may simply placed on some headphones and make the fan noise another person’s downside, not that I’ve ever completed that. 

Battery Life

The apparent draw back to having a laptop computer this large and highly effective is weak battery life. With each the principle show and the ScreenPad enabled, the Duo 16 lasted simply three hours and 45 minutes on our native video rundown check. That’s an hour and a half lower than the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE and the Razer Blade 15, which themselves aren’t precisely shining examples of longevity. So you higher be sure you save room for the Duo 16’s two-pound energy brick in your bag too.

Wrap up

Look, with a base value of $2,500 that rapidly climbs above $3K when properly outfitted, it should be powerful to suit the ROG Duo 16 in most individuals’s price range. On high of that, it is large, heavy and brief on battery life. But for the sort of people that continuously discover themselves searching for extra display house — particularly when out and about — Asus’ modern setup offers you extra usable show space in much less house than virtually every other laptop computer maker. And whereas its keyboard and touchpad are cramped, combining large efficiency with a really distinctive design looks like we’re seeing an evolution of the desktop substitute pocket book occur in entrance of our eyes. That means this factor might be a fairly area of interest machine, however in the event you’re on the lookout for one thing to remedy your dual-screen FOMO, Asus’s ROG Duo 16 does it higher than anything in the marketplace.