ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo (UX581) Review: Tomorrow’s Laptop Indeed

ASUS has come up with an interesting design for its new laptop Zenbook Pro Duo (UX581) with two 4K screens in its professional laptop. The second 4K screen is called ASUSScreenPad Plus. The secondary display runs through the entire width of the machine. ASUS has put much thought of how the consumer can use alternate display like this. With powerful 15 inch laptop, ASUS has tried to change the way laptops look. ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo (UX581) is priced at INR 2,09,990/-.

Usually laptops are not that much innovative in their design. But the design of ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo looks different and interesting for us to use. But the drawback is that when we open the box and lift the laptop, we feel that the laptop is heavy compared to other laptops we get these days. This laptop feels bulky with the dimensions of 0.94 x 14.13 x 9.68-inches (2.4 x 35.9 x 24.6cm) and a weight of 2.5kg. The extra weight is due to the presence of the second screen. Zenbook pro Duo is made of aluminium with the celestial blue colour and ASUS logo present on the right side of the back in the center.

When you lift the lid, we can see the secondary 4K UHD OLED screen immediately. The second screen turns on only after you login to windows. We can see that the second screen runs the full length of the keyboard deck. The screenpad plus has a matte finish. Even with the matte finish the screenpad plus attacts fingerprints. The full-size keyboard resides in the space typically reserved for the palm rest. The touchpad / Num Pad is present in the lower-right corner of the laptop. It will take a while to get used to the touchpad position as we are usually see touchpad below the keyboard.

The screenpad plus acts as a secondary monitor for your laptop. We can drag the apps we want and arrange them as per our need. You can hit a button to swap everything between the two screens. The display of the Zenbook Pro Duo can be accessed by touch. So you can easily touch and navigate the screen. A ScreenPad Plus launcher hides along the left edge of the lower screen, and can be slid out by tapping a persistent translucent button. If you are a person who uses various workspaces to work, zenbook pro duo is for you.

We can see very few ports for a laptop of size like this. Even while having a thicker and heavier chassis, Zenbook Pro Duo has few ports. On the right side we can find USB Type-C, Thunderbolt 3, 3.5 mm combo audio and USB 3.1 Type-A Gen. 2. On the left side we can see AC adapter, HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.1 Type-A Gen. 2. It is quite a surprise to see that there is no micro SD card reader in the laptop. Zenbook Pro Duo comes with the latest Intel Wi-Fi 6 with Gig+ (802.11ax).

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo comes with Intel’s 9th-gen octa-core i9-9980HK CPU, NVIDIA’s RTX 2060 GPU and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. It also comes with 1TB storage. It is built more for heavy-duty content creation than gaming. We can see that some games were not that good in the Zenbook Pro Duo. We can find that Asus ZenBook Pro Duo is a pretty speedy laptop that can easily handle most tasks. During the time we used the laptop we could see that the apps opened very quickly and there is no pause when we drag the apps between the screens.

The biggest selling point of Zenbook Pro Duo is the dual screen it has. The top of the screen possess 15.6-inch 4K UHD NanoEdge OLED HDR touchscreen. The OLED technology coupled with the 3,840 x 2,160 resolution results in good image quality. We can see that the colours are vibrant and the contrast is good. The bezels are thin with only 5mm on either side. This gives more modern look.

Comparing the top screen, the second Screenpad Plus screen looks a bit dull. Even when you increase the default brightness of the screen the display is not that much good.

The Screenpad Plus is treated by Windows 10 as a second monitor. As we drag the mouse cursor to the bottom of the top screen, it moves and appears on the bottom screen when you move the mouse to the top of the second screen, it appears on the bottom screen. So we can easily drag some apps to the bottom screen. But the apps are little cramped in the bottom screen.

We can use our fingers to select and open apps as the Screenpad Plus is a touchscreen. We can also use the stylus provided by ASUS. But wee dind not find the Screeenpad Pls to be that useful when we were using the laptop. The Quick Key allows one-tap automation of complex keyboard sequences, and Handwriting lets you input text intuitively. There are also useful quick controls such as App Switcher, ViewMax and Task Swap for intuitive interactions between the main display and ScreenPad Plus. Task Group lets you lock into work mode by opening multiple tasks with a single touch.

We can find it difficult to use the Zenbook Pro Duo while playing games in full screen. If we move the mouse cursor onto the second screen and accidently click the second sceen, it minimises the game we are playing.

Screenpad Plus is an interesting addition. We may be excited for first few days. But we can see that the second screen is more hindrance than useful.

Zenbook Pro Duo comes with ASUSSonicMaster stereo audio system with surround-sound. The sound quality of the laptop was pretty good.  We can also find that the Amazon Alexa is integrated with the laptop. We can see a little light bar at the front lip of the laptop. But we have to download Alexa app from the windows store and then use. If Alexa is present out of the box it would be good.

 We can see two fans and five heat pipes between them for cooling the Zenbook Pro Duo. There is also the Cool-Air express system in the laptop. This uses four heat pipes, which are shared between the CPU and GPU, with the fifth running the length of the chassis. Both of the fans have 71 blades for better airflow, and there’s generous venting. Also we can find the ErgoLift design, which uses the slightly elevated position not only to improve the typing experience but also to allow for better airflow for cooling the laptop.

As the Zenbook Pro Duo has two screen we may wonder how much hours the battery may last. Thee battery life of the laptop is approximately 5 hours as the dual screens drains the laptop battery. This means we should always plug the laptop in the power socket. This is not good for a laptop.

The Zenbook Pro Duo(UX581) is bundled with a stylus, laptop stand for better viewing and a palm rest.

Here are the specifications of ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo.

Specifications: 

Verdict

ASUS has tried something new with its Zenbook Pro Duo (UX581). The build quality of the laptop is good and the performance of the laptop is good with Intel’s 9th-gen octa-core i9-9980HK CPU. But the drawback is that Zen book Pro Duo is bulky with the two screens and the poor battery life.  If you are a person who travels a lot with laptop, this laptop is not for you. The price of the laptop is  INR 2,09,990/-