Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED

MSRP $2,000.00

Score Details

“The Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED is the most polished version of its dual-screen concept yet.”

Pros

  • Quite powerful
  • Feels sturdy
  • Larger ScreenPad Plus is awesome
  • OLED looks fantastic
  • Solid speakers

Cons

  • Poor battery life
  • OLED screen is very reflective

You wouldn’t think a product like the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo could last more than a generation. It’s a fun dual-screen experiment, sure. But a successful laptop that would spawn years of iteration? That it is exactly that should tell you this is far more than just a gimmick.

Inhalt

  • Design
  • Häfen
  • Displays
  • Leistung
  • Webcam and speakers
  • Keyboard and touchpad
  • Batterielebensdauer
  • Unsere Stellungnahme
    Show 3 more items

The new model makes some refinements – all for the better. This sleeker, more immersive, and more powerful iteration of the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo continues to double-down on the idea of a dual-screen laptop. And ya know what? It’s still not perfect, but I’m finally starting to come around to the idea myself.

Design

The Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is one unique laptop. Closed, it looks like any other laptop. The redesigned Asus logo graces the lid, but it’d hard to pick it out from a lineup of other black Asus laptops.

But pull the lid open, and you’re immediately greeted by some extraordinary elements – most notably, a secondary screen, built right into the keyboard deck. The ScreenPad Plus, as it’s called, tilts up at an angle, and forces the touchpad and keyboard down below.

None of this is new to the line, of course, but there are a number of improvements that Asus has brought to the table this year. Notably, Asus has made the ScreenPad Plus is a bit larger by removing some of the bezel around the screen. The 32:10 secondary screen now measures 12.7 inches across, with a resolution of 2880 x 864. It also tilts higher, up to 12 degrees, giving you a better view of the screen and more seamlessly connecting it to the main screen above. This results in a more impressive and, ultimately, more useful secondary screen.

ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 Duo Review - OLED + 120 HZ ????
Of course, whether you actually buy into the idea of the need for a second screen on your laptop is up to you. There’s the cool factor of it all, yes, but you’d better have some ideas of your own for how you envision yourself using a feature like this. I say that because Asus doesn’t provide many ideas itself. The only stock ScreenPad applications are a simple calculator, a handwriting app, and some basic navigation. Das wars so ziemlich.

Previous versions of the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo also included an ErgoLift hinge, which propped up the bottom of the laptop. This is now gone, which I am happy about. The ErgoLift was supposed to provide a natural incline for comfortable typing and improve airflow, but between it and the tilt of the ScreenPad Plus hinge, it was rather unsightly. More than that, it felt like a lot of moving parts that could be easily damaged. It’s all been replaced with a simpler and more structurally sound design that sits flat on the table like most laptops do.

The Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is an exceptionally well-built machine. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a weak spot in the design. That’s impressive given the amount of complexity that’s introduced by the ScreenPad Plus.

Even still, Asus managed to keep the chassis fairly trim. It’s 0.70 inches thick – which sits right in between the thicker Surface Laptop Studio and the thinner MacBook Pro 14-inch. In terms of weight, it’s a similar story, sliding into the middle of the pack at 3.74 pounds. Yes, it’s slightly chunkier than the standard Zenbook 14 Duo – but it also manages to be significantly more portable than the Zenbook Pro Duo 15.

Häfen

I love what Asus did with the ports on the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo. With the ErgoLift hinge out of the way, this design puts a few important ports on the rear of the machine – taking a cue from modern gaming laptop design. But unlike those, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo doesn’t feature a large, protruding cap behind the display, like what you’ll find on the Alienware X14 or the Lenovo Legion gaming laptops.

And yet, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo manages to include HDMI 2.1, the barrel power connector, and a Micro SD card slot. Having the HDMI and power accessible from the back is far more convenient and clean than on the side. There’s no wondering which side which port is on or reaching the power cable across the table.

The left side of the device is where you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack. The right side includes all your USB, which includes two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports and one USB-A port. The Thunderbolt port can be used for charging, though the proprietary charger connected to the included 180-watt brick will deliver the best performance.

This would be the perfect setup, if only Asus had swapped the microSD card slot for a full-sized 1. The Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is a laptop meant for creatives, and being able go directly from camera to laptop, like on the MacBook Pro, XPS 15 or Razer Blade 15, would have been ideal.

For wireless connectivity, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo supports the latest Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

Displays

Asus has been on a tear with support for OLED screens, and the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is no different. It features a 14.5-inch OLED panel with an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a resolution of 2880 x 1800. That’s not quite as pixel-dense as the MacBook Pro, but it’s a huge upgrade over the 1080p options. It’s also an attractive alternative to springing for the 4K models Asus sells, which are overly expensive and power-hungry. And besides, this is plenty sharp for this size of screen.

One of the biggest new features of this display is its fast 120Hz refresh rate. When it was announced, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo was supposed to be the first OLED laptop screen with a refresh rate of over 60Hz — but Razer has already announced a Blade 15 with a 240Hz OLED screen. But this isn’t a gaming laptop — and let’s be real: 120Hz is the perfect refresh rate for a laptop of this kind. Animations in your day-to-day are silky smooth, and in lighter games, and you’ll even experience those smooth animations in-game. It’s a fantastic addition to see on non-gaming laptops, following laptops like the Surface Laptop Studio and MacBook Pro. Even Lenovo’s Yoga 9i 14 features a 90Hz OLED panel.

This screen is also killer in terms of image quality. We’re talking as perfect color saturation as you’ll find on a laptop screen (100% sRGB and 100% AdobeRGB). Color accuracy isn’t far behind with a Delta-E of 1.18. That’s accurate enough for professional color grading and photo editing — and you can even adjust the tint to your liking in the MyAsus app.

More than that, you get the true blacks and extreme contrast that only OLED can produce.

Like many OLED laptop panels, though, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo suffers from being overly reflective. If you have some windows at the back of your office, don’t be surprised when they make parts of the screen hard to see.

The ScreenPad Plus has also benefited from some upgrades this time around. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate, which is important for inking. A faster refresh rate means even less lag between the movement of your stylus and the response of the screen. You can feel the difference, and the fact that Asus managed to include two 120Hz screens in this laptop is certainly praiseworthy.

There’s really only one major problem with the ScreenPad Plus: It doesn’t match the primary screen. The most notable difference is that the ScreenPad Plus has a matte surface, while the primary screen is glossy. The reason is obvious, of course – to mitigate reflections from overhead lights, which it is very effective at. Another issue is with scaling. Windows doesn’t allow the ScreenPad Plus to scale beyond 150% – and for whatever reason, the screen scales down all the UI elements. The cursor is itty-bitty down there and poking around the smaller navigation with your finger feels clumsy.

Both of these inconsistencies between the panels lessen the continuity of moving windows between screens or extending one window across both.

There’s also a different visual quality to the colors on the ScreenPad Plus, especially due to the viewing angle created by placement of the screen. It’s for that reason, I assume, that Asus made the ScreenPad Plus much brighter than the primary screen at 547 nits versus 345. Despite being brighter, the ScreenPad Plus appears to match the primary screen in brightness — again, thanks to the viewing angles.

All in all, it’s just the nature of the beast. A screen that’s not flat is always going to have problems in terms of viewing angles, regardless of all the good things Asus has done to attempt to jump that hurdle.

Leistung

The “Pro” in the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo largely has to do with performance. Like many 14-inch laptops, there’s enough room here to include both a powerful processor and a discrete graphics card. Examples include gaming laptops like the Razer Blade 14 and ROG Zephyrus G14, but also professional consumer devices like the 14-inch MacBook Pro, Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Pro, or Surface Laptop Studio. Heck, Asus has even managed to squeeze discrete graphics into 13-inch laptops like the ROG Flow X13.

All that is to say that the Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti included in the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo makes it a powerful little laptop. And that’s important for a laptop with two screens, which many people may imagine themselves using with applications like the Adobe Creative Suite. This Pro model makes that more possible, especially when you throw in the Core i7-12700H, a 14-core processor that’s proven to be an excellent performer in these types of workloads.

I tested that myself, of course, in a few different benchmarks, including Handbrake and PugetBench. I liked what I saw in the results. It’s not a big jump over any of those competitors, but the RTX 3050 Ti and 12th-gen Intel processor make for an impressive one-two punch in a laptop of this size.

Let’s start with the graphics, because the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo outdoes many other laptops with the same RTX 3050 Ti. Chalk it up to the better airflow and thermals, but the system can push the GPU a bit harder than other systems. In fact, when adjusted to Performance mode in the MyAsus app, the system can push up to 85 watts of power to the GPU. But even in the default Standard mode, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo outperforms other RTX 3050 Ti laptops we’ve tested, including the Surface Laptop Studio and Acer Swift X. Sometimes that margin is by as much as 19%.

Geekbench (single/multi) | Handbrake
(seconds) | Cinebench R23 (single/multi) | PugetBench for Premiere Pro | PCMark 10 Complete | 3DMark
—|—|—|—|—|—
Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo
(Core i7-12700H, RTX 3050 Ti) | 94 | 1793/12046 | n/a | 6242 | 5254
Acer Swift X (Ryzen 7 5800U, RTX 3050 Ti) | 99 | 1437/10135 | n/a | 6247 | 4073
Surface Laptop Studio (Core i7-1370H, RTX 3050 Ti) | 179 | 1304/5450 | 417 | 5091 | 4266
MSI Summit E16 Flip (Core i7-1185G7, RTX 3050) | 178 | 1589/5344 | n/a | 5681 | 4138
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 16 Pro (Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3050) | 102 | 1514/5544 | 482 | 6290 | 4223
Razer Blade 14
(Ryzen 9 5900HX, RTX 3070) | 101 | 1434 / 11226 | N/A | 6612 | 6,612

Thanks to those graphics, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is even a decent entry-level gaming machine when it needs to be. You can play Fortnite at 1080p at High settings and still get an average of 63 frames per second (fps). Of course, you can play lighter games and other esports titles at the native resolution too, but the lower resolution will be a much smoother experience.

Not all games are going to play well though. In a heavier, AAA title like Red Dead Redemption 2, which doesn’t scale down resolution at fullscreen, I struggled to get higher frame rates. It’s possible, but it required pulling down texture quality and turning on the highest level of DLSS to average 45 fps.

Then again, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is designed primarily as a work machine — something that can handle both multitasking well using both screens and handle creative applications with some degree of success.

Handbrake is CPU-limited, so the Core i7-12700H is driving the ship there. The Zenbook Pro 14 Duo completed the 4K video encode in 94 seconds, which beats laptops with last year’s Ryzen chips. It’s 6% behind larger laptops like the MSI Creator Z17 that use the same chip. Switching to Performance mode setting sped up the encode by 13%, though.

The 3D modeling benchmark, Cinebench R23, is another good measure of CPU performance — and again, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo impresses. Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake-H chips are still hard to obtain, but the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo shows just how fast they really are.

For a more comprehensive view of the laptop’s performance, I tested the machine in the larger PCMark 10 suite of benchmarks. No surprises here, but the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo is well-suited for most workflows, including photo editing, web browsing, word processing, video editing, videoconferencing, and more. Don’t expect it to feel measurably different in these lighter tasks, however, where last year’s chips already hold up just fine.

Throughout the testing, the system handled cooling quite well. Temperatures spiked in the low 90s and throttle occasionally, but these times were few and far between. Average temperatures stayed around 75 degrees Celsius, even in the middle of an all-core heavy lift like the multi-core Cinebench R23 benchmark. The system does a great job of balancing fan noise and temperatures, and because the keyboard is moved further away from the hottest components of the system, the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo never gets uncomfortably warm to use.

Webcam and speakers

The Zenbook Pro 14 Duo has a very standard 720p webcam. Premium laptops in 2022 have begun the move to 1080p, so I was disappointed to see Asus stick with 720p in this regard. It’ll get the job done for the occasional video meeting, but if your workday is full of Zoom calls, you may want to find something with at least a 1080p resolution.

The speakers were a legitimate surprise on the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo. I expected the same dull and tinny audio that many laptops of this type have. Aber nicht hier. For what they are, these speakers have a bold and full sound profile. The speakers are tuned by Harman Kardon, which didn’t excite me too much. But the soundstage feels wide, and there’s even a decent amount of bass in the mix. I actually found myself enjoying listening to music and in-game audio through these speakers, which can’t be said for the majority of laptops.

Es gibt bessere Redner, wie im MacBook Pro. Aber dies sind eine große Verbesserung gegenüber anderen Zenbooks, die ich gehört habe, und sicherlich über das durchschnittliche Windows Ultrabook.

Tastatur und Touchpad

Ich werde die Tastatur und das Touchpad eines Asus -Duo -Laptops nie lieben. Der Mangel an Palmenruhen bedeutet, dass sich das Tippen nie ganz bequem anfühlt. Dies bedeutet auch, dass Sie weiter zurück vom Bildschirm als normal sitzen. Das ist wahrscheinlich gut für die Gesundheit Ihrer Augen, aber es war eine Anpassung für mich.

Die Tastatur selbst ist identisch mit früheren Duo -Laptops. Glücklicherweise schafft es es, alles, was Sie brauchen, in das kompakte Layout zu stopfen, ohne etwas Wesentliches abzuschneiden. Die Tastaturen enthalten einen bissigen Mechanismus und steife Schlüsselcaps. Sie fühlen sich gut und klingen unheimlich ähnlich wie die alte Schmetterlingstastatur von Apple. Aber keine Sorge – mit 1,4 mm, es gibt viel Reisen, um herumzugehen.

Das Touchpad wird nach rechts in eine horizontale Ausrichtung geschoben. Das wird mir nie seltsam sein. Es gibt gerade genug Platz, um eine Drei-Finger-Geste zu quetschen, aber mein Zeigefinger lief ständig in die Schlüssel, während ich den Cursor navigierte. Glücklicherweise hat das Touchpad selbst eine glatte Glasoberfläche und die Spuren sehr gut. Ich wünschte, Asus würde die gesamte Oberfläche jedoch anklickbar machen, wie es bei fast jedem im Jahr 2022 verkauften Laptop üblich ist -Putten.

In Bezug auf andere Eingaben sind beide Bildschirme auf dem Zenbook Pro 14-Duo berührungsfähig und unterstützen den Asus Pen 2.0, der 4.096 Druckempfindlichkeitsniveaus umfasst. Es ist ein anständiger Stift und ausreichend, um direkt auf dem Screenpad Plus zu veranschaulichen, zu skizzieren und zu schreiben.

Batterielebensdauer

Die Akkulaufzeit ist die Achilles -Ferse des Zenbook Pro 14 -Duos. Es ist einfach nicht gut. Das System leistet eine diskrete GPU und zwei hochauflösende Bildschirme-beide mit hohen Aktualisierungsraten-also, was erwarten Sie? Ich konnte nur drei Stunden und 10 Minuten von der Wand entfernt ziehen, wobei beide Bildschirme auf 100 Lux eingestellt waren. Dies ist die schlimmste Akkulaufzeit, die wir von Asus ‚Duo Laptops gesehen haben, was bei den jüngsten Intel Alder Lake Laptops ein Trend war.

Das meiste, was Sie aus dem Laptop verlassen, sind ungefähr fünf Stunden, aber das ist sehr leichte Ladung. Ich konnte fünf Stunden und 18 Minuten in einem lokalen Video -Wiedergabetest bekommen, was der leichteste Benchmark ist, den wir haben. Sogar einige kräftige Gaming -Laptops halten in diesen Batterietests länger, obwohl sie höhere Aktualisierungsraten und leistungsfähigere GPUs aufweisen.

Theoretisch sollte die 76-Watt-Stunde-Batterie im Inneren für einen Laptop dieser Größe reichlich groß sein. Die Razer Blade und MacBook Pro 14-Zoll haben beide kleinere Batterien. Trotzdem drückt das Zenbook Pro 14 -Duo einfach nicht eine akzeptable Menge an Akkulaufzeit aus, und das ist eine bittere Pille, um diesen ansonsten fantastischen Laptop zu schlucken.

Unsere Stellungnahme

Das Zenbook Pro 14-Duo ist möglicherweise der Höhepunkt des Doppelbildschirm-Laptop-Trends, den wir bisher gesehen haben. Vom Bildschirm bis zur Leistung ist es in jeder Hinsicht besser als frühere Versionen dieses Laptops. Ich wünschte immer noch, dass es mich dazu veranlasst hat, das Screenpad Plus tatsächlich zu verwenden, und der Akku ist immer noch ein technisches Problem, dass zwei Bildschirme immer Schwierigkeiten haben, zu lösen.

Gibt es Alternativen?

Viele der Konkurrenten dieses Laptops werden ebenfalls von ASUS hergestellt. Das Zenbook 14 -Duo hat das gleiche Sekundärbildschirmkonzept, fehlt jedoch die Leistung des Zenbook Pro 14 -Duos. In der Zwischenzeit übersetzt das ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 dieses Konzept in die Welt des PC -Spielens mit besseren Grafiken und einer ROG -Tastatur.

Wie lange wird es dauern?

Die Batterie ist das größte Problem in Bezug auf die Langlebigkeit des Zenbook Pro 14 -Duos. Die Akkulaufzeit verschlechtert sich im Laufe der Zeit, sodass Ihre ein paar Stunden der Nutzung noch einige Jahre später noch weiter reduziert werden kann. Darüber hinaus ist das Zenbook Pro 14-Duo gut gebaut, in Bezug auf die Ports zukünftiges und verwendet die neuesten Komponenten. Es sollte mindestens vier oder fünf Jahre dauern – solange Sie in eine Steckdose angeschlossen sind.

Solltest du es kaufen?

Ja. Wenn die Idee eines Dual-Screen-Laptops immer an Ihnen interessiert ist, fühlt sich das Zenbook Pro 14-Duo nicht mehr wie ein Experiment an. Es ist ein leistungsstarker Laptop, der genauso hoch ist wie andere Laptops in dieser Preisspanne – mit dem zusätzlichen Bonus eines zweiten Bildschirms.