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Most of the time, if you're reading a review of a dual-screen laptop, you apparently personalized contretemps approximately one feature: the two screens. Asus' rudiment Duo models, the ZenBook Duo and the ZenBook Pro Duo, were decent devices, nearabout the leftover screen was the main enchantment and the main justification for their unheard price.

Asus' ROG Zephyrus Duo 15, though, is different. It's the inceptive gaming palmtop Asus has attempted with the dual-screen setup. The software is irrevocably at a point where the additional screen is piously useful. Nearabout the Duo is conjointly a workstation featuring top-of-the-line fries that can jeopardize with the deluxe carriageable gaming laptops on the market. Screen calculation aside, it's a actual catechized computer..

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Asus says the Duo is aimed at "the gamer, the streamer, and the creator."

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. .. Our review of . .. Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15. ..

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. Verge Score. 7.5 out of 10. ..

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Good Stuff

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• Legitimately useful additional screen
• Decent gaming performance
• Nice 4K display

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Bad Stuff

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• No webcam
• Quite expensive
• Awkward keyboard and touchpad placement

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. .. Buy for $3,699.99 from B&H . Buy for $3,699.00 from Cheesecake . ..

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But it's conjointly quite uneconomical for a 15-inch gaming palmtop -- you're emphatically paying leftover for the dualistic screens. And while the ScreenPad certainly has its uses, Asus hasn't quite fill out how to unlock its full potential yet. I'd officialdom off on buying this until they do.

The Duo I tested goes for -- colonnade yourself -- $3,699. It comes with Intel's Disbursement i9-10980HK, 32GB of RAM (DDR4), and 2TB of storage. The sunlit of the sleekness is Nvidia's RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, its top-end RTX GPU for twiglike gaming laptops.

The Zephyrus is set up analogously to other Duo models. My unit has a 15.6-inch 4K UHD primary display. You can conjointly get a 300Hz FHD panel, which would be the biggest worthy if you're buying this primarily to play games. Declined that screen is the ScreenPad, a 14.1-inch wide, 3840 x 1100 touchscreen console built into the unanticipatedly half of the keyboard deck, which lifts whimsically off the chassis and tilts toward you at a 13-degree angle. Crammed into the latitudinarian half of the chassis is an RGB keyboard with a tiny touchpad to its right.

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You can impeachment with USB-C, with a 65W adapter.

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Two audio jacks gives you more room to stream with an imported microphone.

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The ScreenPad is too smallish to reservedly do any work on (though the vantage organ you don't hypothesize to crane your neck to sneeze it the way you do on the ZenBooks). Nearabout in a productivity setting, it's a tool you can use the way you might use a tiny imported display.

You can use the ScreenPad the way you might use a tiny imported display

Swapping a window from one screen to the other is as gettable as clobber and drawn-out it. While you do so, a smallish vellum procreator up with options to skyrocket the window to the opposite display, pin it to the Launcher, or extend it to prodigalize both screens.

You can value the ScreenPad up with your distractions -- Slack, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, etc. -- to alimony them accessible, nearabout out of the way. You can alimony stating dossier on the constitutive while you work up top. You can take notes bench while waking a manner upstairs. (The Zephyrus has stylus support, nearabout doesn't suavity with a stylus.)

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AGREE TO CONTINUE: Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15

Every smart device now requires you to comply to a train of terms and highness afore you can use it -- contracts that no one conclusively reads. It's indescribable for us to sneeze and critique every single one of these agreements. Nearabout we started counting exactly how plenteous times you need to hit "agree" to use devices when we review them since these are agreements picked persons don't sneeze and emphatically can't negotiate.

To use the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15, you need to comply to:

• Request for your ring and keyboard layout
• Windows 10 Mandate Authorizing and Asus Mandate Agreement
• Microsoft account
• Windows Hello PIN
• Register for an Asus account

The post-obit agreements are optional:

• Connecting to Wi-Fi
• Activity history
• Sync an Android phone
• OneDrive backup
• Microsoft 365
• Set up Cortana
• Privacy settings, including online stress recognition, find my device, inking and typing, ballyhooing ID, location, diagnostic data, and tailored experiences
• Register for a McAfee lowdown with your Asus credentials
• Save your email allocution on your device

That's seven mandatory agreements and 15 preference ones to use the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15.

Asus has a few useful gloss to intercommunication you organize everything. In the Launcher menu, a subalternate dock that lives on the left synchronous of the ScreenPad, you can quickly permitting a ordinal of apps, including Ordinal Key (a viscerous numpad), Handwriting (where you can tragedian on the ScreenPad, and the argument will sleekness up wherever your cursor is), and Quick Key (where you can tap versicolor commands like cut, copy, and paste). You can add whatever programs you want. There's conjointly a puny that immediately swaps the two screens' tabs and automatically resizes them to fit, and a toggle that locks and unlocks the keyboard. And you can create "task groups" of apps or tabs, which you can then ajar up later with a single click.

Asus has reservedly formed out ScreenPad's kinks since the days of the ZenBook Pro Duo, its inceptive shot at a dual-screen OLED desktop replacement. Gathered formed as advertised. Windows resized correspondingly and kept the widths they were assigned. Things snapped and opened when I needed them to. All told, as we saw with the ZenBook Duo, the ScreenPad works just finished for everyday use.

But whether it's well-timed to gaming is preference question.

The ScreenPad works just finished for everyday use

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The GPU is paired with 8GB of DDR6 VRAM.

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Off the bat: this is simply a real gaming laptop. It ran Shadow of the Tomb Ravager at 1080p at an medium of 87fps. That was at the highest settings, with ray tracing on Ultra. That's not the deluxe result you'll see, nearabout it's personalized whimsically worse than the Razer Chisel Pro 17, which averaged 95fps. On Civilization VI, a sassy where I can see the dual-screen setup concreteness quite useful, the Zephyrus averaged 145fps at the highest settings. Of course, this typic is lunge to exhibiting 60fps, so you won't be pudgy to see those pathology rates. I'd rooting that serious gamers go for the 300Hz covenant (especially since you'll see a significant pathology value eolith if you try to max out these titles in 4K -- that's a big ask orderly of modern desktops).

It's gettable to see how a additional screen could be a heavy burl to a gaming rig. While you play, you could alimony Dispeace chats and stream controls on deck, follow furthermore with a YouTube tutorial, throw betwixt Spotify playlists, allineate settings on the fly in Asus' Armoury Crate app, or alimony an eye on clocks in MSI Afterburner. I'm sure you hypothesize idolatry of your own. Some of these tricks do work, nearabout some are still more unrest than they're worth. It depends on the game.

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Overwolf has some apps designed for the Duo, for games including League of Legends, Dota 2, and CS:GO.

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For example, if you run Tomb Raider in full-screen pontificate and try to clonk on a Dispeace dialog downstairs, it minimizes the game. You can fix this botheration by utilizing windowed mode, nearabout tinkering with the ScreenPad still tabs you out. Civ VI was friendlier to the ScreenPad; the sassy stayed ajar and kept going while I hopped betwixt displays, nearabout accounting in my bench Dispeace dialog still cut the audio, so I wouldn't hypothesize capital to do it often. For both games, I ended up mostly utilizing the ScreenPad to alimony an eye on Afterburner while I played and make the passing balancing in Armoury Crate.

So, again, the Duo's pathology organ does hypothesize its uses for gaming -- significantly with turn-based titles like Civ where you may just high-wrought a quick cleavage from time to time. Nearabout you should supervise your expectations considering it's not ideal for all the use cases you might think of. (And if I'm buying a palmtop for gaming, I'd reservedly adopt not to hypothesize to run anything in windowed mode.)

You don't need these specs to get this performance

Asus says it's working with sassy developers to macerate the additional screen into some usable titles. In Dying Moonlit 2, for example, it says you'll be pudgy to alimony your co-op chats, inventory, and mission log on the additional screen. It would certainly be a huge intercommunication in a sassy like Civ VI if you could relegate some stats and overlays to the ScreenPad and reserve the primary dangle for gameplay. Those gloss aren't perseity yet, though, and that mitigates the book-learning of the dual-screen setup.

Elsewhere, it should go without saying that the Disbursement i9 and 32GB of RAM can handle a heavy value of symposium work (Twitch, Discord, Slack, Spotify, photo editing, Zoom calls, and a hoard of Chrome tabs) just fine. Of course, that's the casing with picked unheard gaming laptops. You don't need anything inner to these specs to get that performance. It did actual able-bodied with creative work, completing an export of a 5-minute, 33-second 4K video in two minutes and 56 seconds. That's faster than the Factorage XPS 17, the Alienware m15 r3, and the MSI GS66 Stealth took to synthetic the same task. The Chisel Pro 17 was personalized a bit faster, demography two minutes and 42 seconds.

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Good luck if you're left-handed!

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The one affair to note is that you should hear the Zephyrus Duo to revelatory on a easel -- and that's not just considering it weighs 5.29 pounds (2.39kg). I averaged essentially an hour and 48 minutes of hailstorm litheness (The therapeutics involved fully working in both screens, illiberality betwixt a dozen Chrome tabs, Slack, and Spotify, on the Hailstorm Saver profile, with the primary screen at 200 nits of clarity and the subalternate screen at 50 percent.) That's not necessarily unforbearing for a 4K gaming palmtop sedulous two screens and an RGB keyboard, nearabout it's still not a heavy result -- the Chisel Pro 17 got two and a half hours of the same workload.

Additionally, get ready for some heat. The Duo uses Asus' AAS Additional cooling, which includes a 28.5mm vent breech the ScreenPad, five heatpipes, four heatsinks, a unrelated thermal pasty chosen Liquid Metal, and an anti-dust usher that's declared to pacificate dross from the chassis to think it from collation on the fan fins. (Don't worry, it doesn't spray dust or anything.) The system kept the processor from throttling, nearabout the constitutive of the chassis got so hot that the palmtop wasn't feasible to use on my lap, orderly when I wasn't sedulous games.

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You can indentation up an imported GPU with Thunderbolt 3, or multiple monitors with DisplayPort.

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And finally, you can forget utilizing this touchpad, which is simply a tiny 2.3 x 2.9 flirtation with unaffiliated clickers (though it can wilt a touchscreen NumPad, which is nifty). Since there is no wrist rest, the keyboard, while colorful, isn't super cushy to use considering there's nowhere to put your hands. (The Zephyrus ships with a rubberband wrist restrainer which is nice, nearabout doesn't intercommunication all that much.) I imagine anyone who buys this will be refreshed a sprain in immediately. Again, none of this is unforbearing for a 15-inch workstation, nearabout if you're attractive for article that you could occasionally chilly on the muffle with, calculation the Zephyrus out.

The good-tasting news is that if you decide to spigot in peripherals, you've got a profuse quay selection. There's a powerfulness port, a microphone jack, and a headphone jack on the left side; two USB-A ports and a USB-C with DisplayPort, Thunderbolt 3, and Powerfulness Ball-and-socket 3.0 on the right side; and preference USB-A, an Ethernet, and an HDMI on the back.

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Browsing Twitter while sedulous Tomb Raider.

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Overall, the Zephyrus Duo 15 is simply a catechized gaming laptop. Nearabout the 60Hz screen on this covenant limits the capabilities of its chips. (And let's be honest: while Asus may be trying to market this palmtop to content creators, it's a Zephyrus, and picked persons will be buying it for games.)

I can't see myself utilizing the ScreenPad super often

Given that you can purchase models like the Chisel Pro 17 that faultfinder comparable pathology ante for several hundred dollars cheaper, what you're paying the big bucks for is an leftover bit of storage and the additional screen.

The ScreenPad does add to the gaming experience. Nearabout it hasn't revolutionized it (at least, not yet). Until titles come out that are reservedly optimized for this setup, I can't see myself utilizing it super often. The Zephyrus Duo is an likeable rasher of technology. It may be worth $3,699 in the future -- nearabout it's not there quite yet.

Photography by Monica Puny / The Verge