THE ASUS ZENBOOK PRO 14 DUO OLED: A WORKING DUAL-SCREEN LAPTOP
Asus was the one who accomplished it. It's created a
dual-screen laptop that's actually very excellent, and I never imagined I'd say
that.
Asus has been producing dual-screen laptops for a while, and
the $1,999.99 ZenBook Pro Duo 14 OLED offers certain features we haven't seen
before. The keyboard deck has a large 14.5-inch screen on top and a smaller
12.7-inch screen on the rear, just like earlier Duo versions (the ScreenPad
Plus). The keyboard (which reaches all the way to the front of the deck) lies
below that screen, with a tiny touchpad jammed to its right.
However, the business has made a little adjustment that has
made the experience substantially more pleasant: the secondary screen has been
elevated by 12 degrees.
Everything has changed now. The additional screen on last
year's 14-inch Zenbook Duo model was only cranked up seven degrees. The model
for 2020 was even more svelte. I was continually craning my neck to bend over
when I wanted to view something on the second screen in both occasions.
On paper, the rise to 12 degrees doesn't seem like much, but
it's finally — finally — raised the screen to the point where I don't have to
crane. I'm now reclining back in my office chair as I type this. I'm actually
slouching a little. I can clearly view the content of the Pro Duo's major
screen as well as the content of its secondary screen. On the secondary screen,
I can read the words.
There are a number of other changes that make the secondary
screen much simpler to view from a distance than it was previously. For
starters, it's brighter than last year's, with a brightness of 500 nits. It has
a greater resolution as well (2880 x 864). There's also a new "anti-glare
etching" that prevents it from reflecting ceiling light, which was
previously an annoyance.
People, the second screen is suddenly... truly helpful. In
prior versions, it was simply a place to put distractions like Slack and
Twitter while working on the upper half. Now we'll be able to have reference
materials down there to look at and read while working.
Is this to say that the advantages ultimately exceed the
trade-offs needed to get there?
Does this suggest that the advantages ultimately outweigh
the trade-offs made in order to put a second screen on this laptop? No, not for
me. But we've gotten to the stage where it's just a choice for keyboard
placement. Everything else has been addressed by Asus.
ScreenXpert, for example. This software allows the Duo's two
screens to function together, and it's a far cry from the glitchy, unresponsive
mess it was previously. This device's new edition (ScreenXpert 3) appears to be
far more professional than prior versions. It's all really quick to use, and
the windows resize like they should. And, other than having to hit a button a
few times to get things to open, that was the extent of my problems. It's
simple to use and has a low learning curve, which isn't usually the case with
ScreenXpert software.
There's a taskbar (which looks like a floating Windows
taskbar) with fast buttons for things like brightness, phone mirroring,
launching an app navigation screen, locking the keyboard, and letting all the
windows on the ScreenPad vanish to reveal the desktop background. I was
prepared to rail against some of them for their dubious value, but it turns out
that the Control Center Settings panel, which I discovered after some digging,
allows for considerable tweaking. You may also move the taskbar to the bottom
or either side by dragging it.
I'm still a fan of the task groups feature (also available
from this taskbar), which allows you to "store" a configuration of
tabs and programs in a certain order to launch later. This is a feature I
frequently employ on Duo devices.
The touchpad is the other issue with which I'm really
pleased. The touchpad on the Duo 14 is so little that it's almost unusable. For
every potential circumstance on prior devices, I just used a stylus. That's
exactly what I was doing until I came across TouchPad mode.
Touchpad mode transforms the ScreenPad into a large
touchpad. It's as simple as tapping it with three fingers. You tap an X in the
top-right corner to return it to a ScreenPad. The touchpad works wonderfully
and responds to all of the different movements just as a conventional one
would. Of course, there are drawbacks. For starters, there is no method for
clicking but tap-to-click does work well.
You're also using it by reaching across the keyboard, which
is a little strange (but something I got used to). And because the touchpad
interface is opaque, you can't see the other stuff on the ScreenPad when it's
open. I hope Asus can make it even slightly more transparent in the future, but
I'm still glad to have this function on the device.
The Intel Core i7-12700H CPU inside is a mainstream chip
that we've primarily seen in high-end gaming laptops and workstations, such as
Alienware's X14. In addition to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, my device
features 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. According to Asus, it will cost
$1,999.99, which is a reasonable price given the specifications.
In my normal business use situations, the performance was as
good as you'd anticipate. On either screen, I'd have Chrome tabs layered on top
of Zoom calls or YouTube broadcasts with no problems. The RTX 3050 Ti isn't
meant for AAA gaming and isn't as powerful as other laptop GPUs at this price
point, but it can play older, lighter games.
While the keyboard did get warm at times, I never felt
intolerable heat there or on the device's bottom. This looks to be due to Asus'
new cooling system (dubbed "IceCool Plus"), which consists of two
12-volt fans with 97 and 93 blades, respectively. When using the Whisper Mode
cooling profile, Asus states that the tablet maintains under 28 decibels, which
appears to be accurate as far as I can tell. I hardly heard the fans even when
I wasn't in Whisper Mode.
The battery life was a mixed bag. I worked for around five
hours straight on both displays at medium brightness. That's certainly not a
whole day, but given that this gadget is operating two high-resolution
displays, it's not a bad outcome. With the same workload, the basic Pro Duo
lasted a little over two and a half hours, but the gaming-oriented and
significantly more costly Zephyrus Duo 15 lasted one hour and 48 minutes. You
may quickly switch off the ScreenPad using a shortcut on the keyboard if you
require a lot of power.
The primary panel has a 16:10 aspect ratio (yay!) and is one
of the first (if not the first) 120Hz OLED screens on a laptop. Two Thunderbolt
4 ports, a full-sized HDMI 2.1, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, and SD Express 7.0 card
reader, and a combination audio jack round out the port options. I'm delighted
to see this gadget keeping the HDMI and SD card slots since many other premium
14-inches have abandoned these in favor of USB-C. (And this machine shouldn't
be short on ports because I've never wished to connect an external keyboard and
mouse to anything else.) There are a few Asus-specific connectivity
capabilities as well, such as Wi-Fi SmartConnect, which allows the device to
connect to the internet automatically.
All of this is fantastic, which makes it all the more
frustrating that I still don't enjoy using it. Essentially, the Pro Duo 14 has
persuaded me that even the finest dual-screen form factor won't be able to
compensate for the fact that I can't stomach having a keyboard in this
position. I know some folks who adore front-mounted keyboards, and I will never
understand why. This is also a fantastic keyboard. The keys are clicky and have
a solid 1.4mm of travel, which is normally a feature that makes me swoon.
n Asus has gone to great lengths to create a decent,
practical, and useable dual-screen system with the Pro Duo 14. Most problems
that may have been resolved have, in my opinion, been resolved. "There is
a superb laptop buried inside the raw clay," Chaim Gartenberg noted in our
somewhat scathing review of the first-generation Zenbook Duo. After three
years, Asus has resurrected the laptop. This is fantastic.
From here on out, the story with Duo laptops may boil down
to whether you enjoy having a keyboard on the front of your deck. Given how
many other problems these gadgets have had in the past, this is a promising
omen for their future.
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