LAPTOPS AND CONVERTIBLES
It’s niche, but Asus takes aim at a certain type of user and hits its target with a wellengineered thump
Asus ZenBook Duo UX482EG
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PRICE £1,250 (£1,500 inc VAT) ) from uk.store.asus.com
Read through our report on this year’s CES ( see p32) and you’ll see that roughly nine billion new laptops were released during this year’s virtual show. Of these, only three offered anything different: the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 i we preview on p36, which builds an E Ink screen into its lid, and two “Duo” laptops from Asus.
You don’t need Sherlock’s observational skills to spot the linking factor between all three laptops: a second screen. But where Lenovo thinks entirely outside the box, Asus is thinking about making the box bigger. Look at either ZenBook Duo and what immediately strikes you is
that almost 75% of the surface area is screen.
This review focuses on the ZenBook Duo UX482EG, but the flagship of the two new dual-screen ZenBooks – by which I mean the most outrageously expensive – is the £3,000 15in
ZenBook Pro Duo UX582 ( see p34).
With a larger chassis, Asus finds room here for a beefy Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU. However, the main physical point of difference is its 4K 15in OLED compared to the Full HD 14in IPS panel in the UX482EG.
Both laptops feature a second IPS panel below (although, again, the UX582 has a much higher resolution), which Asus refers to as a “ScreenPad Plus”. The “Plus” distinguishes it from previous dual-screen laptops such as the 15in ZenBook Pro Duo UX581GV ( see issue 304, p48), which we reviewed almost two years ago.
Asus has made the panel’s dedicated software slicker and more intuitive since then, but the most notable change is that the screen lifts up by 8° to bring it more in line with the primary screen. That may not sound like much, but it makes a world of difference: the two now feel connected. Nor does this result in the ScreenPad Plus blocking out the bottom of the main screen; when viewed from the natural angle on a desk, it’s as if all that separates them is a thick black bezel.
A question of why
It’s tempting g to dismiss the ScreenPad Plus as a stupid gimmick. However, before rushing to this conclusion it’s worth considering whether the advantages it brings to your particular workflow might make it worthy of an investment.
One type of user in Asus’ sights is the creative professional, or even the creative hobbyist. In supported Adobe apps (currently After Effects, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and Premiere Pro), the second screen can act as a shortcut panel allowing you to, for example, scrub the timeline in Premiere or use an onscreen dial to adjust layer opacity. In that sense it’s like a super-charged version of the Apple Touch Bar.
Via its support for active styluses, you can also turn the ScreenPad into a graphics tablet for quickly sketching an image. Or simply use it to add your signature to a document. (Note that Asus bundles its active stylus with the UX582, but not with the UX482EG.)
I was also struck by a comment from an existing owner of the
ZenBook Duo UX481, who described how “in the world of endless Zoom meetings” she was using the second screen as a chat window to answer WhatsApp messages or grab files.
“It’s worth considering whether the advantages the ScreenPad Plus brings to your workflow might make it worthy of an investment”
The latter is possible because, so far as Windows is concerned, the ScreenPad Plus is simply a second screen on an extended desktop. This means you can also stretch a long document across both screens.
Top engineering marks
The second screen uses a hinge mechanism that’s directly linked to the main screen in such a way that it automatically elevates as you lift the lid. Unlike some such mechanisms, the hinge is rock solid: press down on it and there’s no movement whatsoever. Of course, it introduces another point of failure, and if you have young children around then double-check they haven’t stuffed a pencil in the gap before closing the lid, but from everything I can see and feel it’s clear that Asus has done a fantastic engineering job here.
While the ScreenPad Plus uses IPS technology, just like the main screen, there’s an inevitable difference in tone and quality between the two panels. Again, this is despite commendable work by Asus, which has evidently worked hard to deliver the same colour temperature across them: on measurement, both were a whisker away from 6700K.
But you’re fighting two impossible fights. One is simply the eye’s viewing angle: you’re looking at the main panel head on and the second screen from a much more acute angle. That affects what you see, and as you move your head you’ll notice an apparent change of brightness on the second screen. Until Asus can source a panel with even better viewing angles, that’s simply unavoidable.
And, unlike when selecting a 14in Full HD display, Asus doesn’t have a huge pool of suppliers to choose from when picking a 12.6in panel with a 1,920 x 515 resolution. resolution It’s no surprise that this second screen scree isn’t as strong as a colour performer, performer covering a relatively low 59% of the t sRGB gamut with an average averag Delta E (a measure of colour accuracy) acc of
3.38. Compare that to the primary panel’s average avera of
0.35 and 98% sRGB coverage. co
Asus can more easily easi control brightness, though, and it attempts attemp to battle the lower perceived luminance of the second panel
(due to that oblique viewing angle) by boosting boo its peak figure to 425cd/m2, , co compared d to 353cd/m2 for the main panel.
The question is, do the differences in tone between the two screens matter? After all, no one is going to use the ScreenPad for colour-critical work and the only time there’s a disconnect is when you stretch, say, a photo across both screens.
Key question
There’s another side effect of building in a second screen: the touchpad and keyboard must both move from their conventional positions. Indeed, the touchpad shrinks in size and shifts orientation, which means you can’t simply swipe from left to right in one go unless you massively sacrifice sensitivity: instead, I found myself swiping two or three times to move the cursor. It’s undeniably awkward and begs for the addition of a wireless mouse whenever possible.
Then there’s the keyboard, which not only shifts to the bottom – so you lose the normal palmrest – but also to
“Asus’s hardware engineers have clearly been earning their bonuses by choosing top-quality components to create a crisp keyboard”
the left. For some, this may be a shift too far: if you’ve never liked laptops with a number pad because your fingers are typing off-centre, you’ll hate the ZenBook Duo too.
Personally, I didn’t mind. I even surprised myself by getting used to the loss of a palmrest. It helps that once again Asus’s hardware engineers have clearly been earning their bonuses by choosing top-quality components to create a crisp and quiet keyboard, which comes close to matching the quality of the ThinkPad we review on p48. They’ve paid equal attention to the trackpad, which may be small but is coated with smooth glass to make it more responsive. The physical mouse buttons also make a welcome change from regular trackpads with their integrated “diving board” buttons.
Speed time
When it comes to the ZenBook Duo’s s specification, Asus has followed wed a more conventional process. ess. This is an all-Intel affair, with the h quite uite literal core component being the Core ore i7-1165G7 processor. It’s a fine chip, hip, with four cores and eight threads h ds that run comfortably at 2.7GHz Hz under load.
Geekbench eekbench 5 offers an excellent d demonstration nstration of this chip’s power, with h a single-core score of 1,527 some distance nce ahead of any AMD equivalent. valent. For instance, it trounces the 1,080 080 of the ThinkPad T14s with a Ryzen n 7 4750U inside.
The he story becomes less rosy for Intel when you shift to applications that take ake advantage of more cores and threads, h ds, at which point eight-core Ryzen n chips such as the 4750U not only catch up but overtake it.
Notably, otably, the ThinkPad scored
5,817 in the multicore element of
Geekbench 5 compared to a (still commendable) 5,497 for the Asus ZenBook UX482EG.
The gap became even clearer in
PC Pro’s own benchmarks, which include a Handbrake videoconversion task that thrives on multiple threads (another factor in the Ryzen’s favour is that our benchmarks include a dedicated multitasking test too). While an overall score of 127 demonstrates that this is a fast laptop, compare it to the 226 of the ThinkPad.
Asus will be shipping the ZenBook Duo with GeForce MX450 graphics, but I had to settle for the integrated Intel Xe accelerator in my early review sample. While the phrase “integrated Intel graphics” might make you shudder, that’s no longer fair: for instance, at 1080p and High settings this laptop raced to a 56fps average in
Metro: Last Light and 52fps in F1 2020, with 3DMark’s Time Spy returning a 1,769 score. It’s only when pushed in more intense games such as Shadow
of the Tomb Raider that Intel’s graphics chip falters; it could only complete the Low quality benchmark at 1080p, where it averaged 32fps.
The best news came in our battery life tests. With the second screen on, and a video playing on the primary panel, the UX482EG lasted for 9hrs 1min. Switching the second screen off, to make it a fairer comparison with other laptops, i
11hrs 18mins. it kept going for
That brings us to t another plus point po for the ZenBook Duo, because Asus packs two screens and a big b battery into a portable design. design I measured it at 1.58kg, which is actually 20g lighter than its official 1.6kg weight.
While that is heavy compared to a typical 14in laptop – 200g heavier than the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s – it isn’t fair to compare the two for screen size. Instead, you should arguably consider the total number of square centimetres of screen area, which is closer to a 17in laptop – and these usually weigh around 2kg. The only obvious exception is the LG Gram 17 ( see issue 311, p56), which, through a modern-day miracle of engineering, weighs 1.33kg.
Even LG can’t break the laws of physics, though, and its 380mm width is much more than the 324mm of this
Asus machine. Asus also does its best to keep the design sleek, with the middle area of the chassis 16.9mm thick, but the hinge mechanism means that rises to 18.9mm at the rear. It’s a tight fit when you squeeze the Zenbook Duo into the bundled leatherette travel pouch, but I suggest you do so when you’re on the move: not only does it add protection, but there’s a handy loop built in for a stylus.
This attention to detail extends to o the whole physical design. The ZenBook’s dark-blue finish is sombre to the point of boring, but ut the quality of construction nstruction is excellent ellent with unyielding lding metal alloy surrounding ding the whole base. The only y interruption is for two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left-hand side, while Asus provides the added convenience of an HDMI output (also on the left) with USB-A, a microSD card slot and a 3.5mm jack on the right.
Even the lid design is clever, with a ridge at the bottom that acts as a pivot to lift up the base and provide a slight angle when typing. Some might criticise the fl ex in the lid, but this can be misleading: it can be useful to have fl ex when an object
“Even the main lid design is clever, with a ridge at the bottom that acts as a pivot to lift up the base and provide a slight angle when typing”
strikes, and it’s metal rather than plastic, which offers an extra degree of protection.
Buying decision
As I stated right at the beginning of this review, the ZenBook Duo isn’t for everyone. But then again there are literally thousands of conventional laptop designs that
“everyone” can choose from.
Instead, the Duo is targeted at that clutch of users who will find a second, large, integrated touchscreen useful. If you want more power or a bigger screen then I suggest that you await the arrival of the 15in ZenBook Pro Duo, but if not then this is a well-engineered laptop that I have no hesitation in recommending.
Four-core 2.1GHz (4.7GHz burst) Intel Core i7-1165G7 32GB 4,267MHz LPDDR4X RAM dual Intel Iris Xe/Nvidia GeForce MX450 graphics 14in 1,920 x 1,080 IPS touchscreen 12.6in 1,920 x 515 IPS touchscreen 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD 720p webcam 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5
2 x Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort and power delivery) microSD card slot 3.5mm jack USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 HDMI 1.4 70Whr battery Windows 10 Home
324 x 222 x 16.9mm (WDH) 1.6kg
1yr RTB warranty