09.10.2019 
I haven't been this excited to test a laptop in a long-time, and when ASUS told us that they wanted to ship their new ZenBook Pro Duo for review, I immediately said yes. That's because ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is a laptop which innovates in a market crowded with similar devices that do not bring anything new, except for updated hardware. Read this review, and see what you get from a premium laptop with two screens, excellent hardware, and some interesting twists to what it means to be productive:
ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo: Who is it good for?
This laptop is an excellent choice for the following users:
- People who are interested in the latest innovations, and can afford their premium price
- Content creators, artists, software developers, and gamers
- Users who want the fastest WiFi connections possible on a laptop
Pros and cons
There are many positives about the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo:
- The two screens are gorgeous, and useful
- The laptop enables new user experiences
- Well built, with high-quality materials
- Excellent hardware and performance
- Support for Wi-Fi 6 means fast network connections
- The ASUS Pen is useful for artists and content creators
- The high-precision trackpad doubles as NumberPad
There are also a few downsides to consider:
- The battery life is underwhelming
- Typing on this laptop, while holding it in your lap, is not a comfortable experience
- The price is not for everyone
Verdict
ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is an innovative laptop that looks impressive, and feels well built. Its two screens are gorgeous, and they allow people to do things that weren't possible on previous generations of laptops. The performance you get is excellent, no matter what you do, from running Office apps, video editing, software development to gaming. If you do not mind the premium price, and the weak battery life, ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is one of the best laptops that you can buy.
Design and hardware specifications
As soon as you take the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo out of the box, you are impressed by its sleek design. The only clunky aspect that you won't like is the huge 230W power adapter that is required to power this beast of a laptop. It is both large and heavy.
ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is constructed from aluminium, and it has a beautiful Celestial Blue color. When you open the lid, the ErgoLift hinge raises the keyboard deck to a 4.5-degree angle, offering you a pleasant viewing experience and a more comfortable typing experience, while helping with the cooling of the laptop.
On the bottom of the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo you find the air vents that allow the cool air to enter and the warm air to exit the laptop, as well as the speakers, which are certified by Harman Kardon.
One of the unique features of this laptop is the fact that the keyboard is placed in the space where you would typically find the palmrest and touchpad. Also, the touchpad can be used as NumPad, when you need one.
The keyboard and the NumberPad are LED-illuminated, so that you can see them with ease during the night.
The brightness can be adjusted to make the keyboard as visible as you want. On the bottom of the front edge of the laptop, you can also find the Alexa light bar, which signals when you are interacting with the virtual assistant.
In terms of ports, the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo offers the basics you would expect. On the left side you have the power input, an HDMI 2.0 port, and a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.
On the right side, there is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port, a Thunderbolt 3 port, and an audio jack.
What truly sets the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo apart from other laptops is the dual-screen setup. The main touch display uses a 15.6" OLED panel, and 4K resolution (3840x2160). The bezel is 5mm-thin, and the screen-to-body ratio is 89%. The screen is Pantone Validated, and it can reproduce 100% of the DCI-P3 color space used by the American film industry. The second touch display is named ScreenPad Plus. It has a size of 14", and a resolution of 3840x1100 pixels.
The hardware inside the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is a beast. This laptop can be equipped with an eight-core Intel Core i9-9980HK or a six-core Intel Core i7-9750H processor. Our test unit had the Core i7-9750H processor seen below. The laptop can also be equipped with 8 GB, 16 GB or 32 GB of DDR4 memory, and an SSD drive with a storage capacity of 256 GB, 512 GB or 1 TB.
There are two graphics cards on this laptop: the onboard Intel UHD Graphics 630 that is built into the processor, and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6 GB of GDDR6 memory. You can see its hardware specifications in the screenshot below.
Another interesting feature is that this laptop has Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, through its Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 wireless network card. It also has Bluetooth 5.0 support for connecting things like speakers, headsets, or mice. ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is powered by a 71Wh 8-cell Rechargeable Li-Polymer Battery, and it promises an autonomy of up to 7.5 hours. This seems like a lot for a laptop with two screens but our real-life experience has not been close to this promise.
Last but not least, ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo meets the MIL-STD 810G military standard for reliability and durability, undergoing a test regime that includes extended tests for operation in harsh environments, including extreme altitudes, temperatures and humidity. This is quite a feat for a laptop that is so innovative.
You can get the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo with Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Home. However, considering its target audience, Windows 10 Pro should be the default choice for you.
If you want to know more details about the technical specifications of this laptop, visit: ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo Tech Specs.
Read the next page of this review to see the user experience you get, what is bundled with the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo, and the results that we measured in benchmarks.
