Asus Zenbook Duo

A while back I reviewed Lenovo's mildly impressive Yoga Book 9i, a laptop that may not have presented us with an exciting, foldable new future, but still offered an endlessly ambitious take on the whole concept of a laptop.

You can't possibly give Asus the same credit here, because Lenovo has been behind the concept of a laptop frame but with two screens instead of one screen and keyboard (or 'deck' as it's also called) almost from the start. But sometimes there's a trick to following in the slipstream of a pioneer and turning their missteps to your advantage. That's exactly what Asus has done, and their Zenbook Duo is a refined version of Lenovo's idea. And that's why it's the one I'd recommend.

The concept is actually quite simple, especially if you're already familiar with the Yoga Book 9i. Instead of a single display, both top and bottom consist of 14" OLED panels, and although you can conjure up a touch-based keyboard on the bottom, it comes with a kind of lid with keyboard and trackpad that can be added on to emulate the functionality and shape of a regular laptop. Already here, Asus presents a central solution to perhaps Lenovo's biggest problem. Instead of the keyboard just being... well, a keyboard, and that you have to use the OLED glass panel as a kind of pseudo trackpad, Asus gives you an entire deck that fills the entire bottom, effectively disguising the Zenbook Duo's unique functionality if you don't want it.

Plus, there's no need for the origami cardboard that comes with a Yoga Book 9i, which needs to be assembled into a stand to hold the machine if you want to use both displays as dual monitors. No, Asus has a built-in kickstand in the bottom chassis, so the whole shebang really does fold up into a conventional laptop, and can become so much more if you want it to.

The construction itself is a bit on the thick side, but it's not much heavier or thicker than an average laptop, which in itself is pretty awesome. You have three main ways to use it; standard laptop with the magnetic keyboard deck on top of the bottom display, where POGO switches provide a stable connection and charging. Then you can use both displays using the stand, remove the keyboard and have a combined 28" of space in a portable form factor or place the displays vertically with the keyboard completely disconnected on Bluetooth. All three are relatively seamless to access.

There's no real sacrifice elsewhere, either. There are two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, there's a USB-A 3.2 port, HDMI and audio jack, WIFI 6E, a pretty comfortable keyboard with a large trackpad, and a pretty respectable battery life of about seven hours with a standard workload. Not bad at all, and far, far better than the Yoga Book 9i.

You can get several Intel Core Ultra CPUs, as well as RAM up to 16GB and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. In terms of GPU, there's apparently no option to get a dedicated card, so you'll have to make do with Arc, but for Photoshop, mild video editing and perhaps most importantly a myriad of tabs open in Chrome or other word processing tools, there's really nothing the Zenbook Duo can't do. Each display is also a fairly saturated 1920x1200 OLED, and while it's 60Hz, which is a shame in this 120Hz era, it's actually hard to find anything to complain about.
It must be said that under fairly average workloads, we did experience the machine getting a little warm, which is to be expected when two OLED panels are at work. But beyond that? Well, you have to be convinced that you'll be using the Zenbook Duo in its unfolded state, otherwise it really doesn't make sense to throw extra money at this functionality. But if you can see yourself becoming more efficient on the go, and therefore more versatile, then the Zenbook Duo is in a class of its own, and seriously worth the £1,500 price tag.