Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED (UX8402)
The best dual-screen laptop yet: if you have a compelling need for that second display, buy it
SCORE
There are two obvious reactions when you see the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED for the first time. “Whoa, what is that? I want it and I want it now.” Or: “Whoa, what is that? Who in the heck would want such a ridiculous design?”
I’m not here to advocate for second screens in laptops, and doubt that I could persuade the doubters anyway. But as we’re now in the third iteration of this design, it’s clear that a bunch of people do indeed want it; otherwise Asus would surely have stopped production long ago.
There are numerous ways to take advantage of the second screen. If you use Adobe Photoshop, Premiere or Lightroom, you can load up the pre-selected tools – such as a virtual scrubbing wheel for Premiere – on the ScreenPad Plus while having the source material on the main screen.
Or use the supplied stylus to scrawl notes during a video call (the 720p webcam is a fine example of its type, with excellent mics too). Or bash away at code on the bottom screen and preview the results on the main display. Or you can simply use the ScreenPad Plus as a second screen, with email or Twitter or Google Maps.
Asus adds its own software overlay for the ScreenPad as well. You can fill the bottom quarter with quick shortcuts (buttons appear for cut, copy and paste, but you can choose your own), open up a virtual clipboard or even use it as a giant touchpad. It takes some time to get your head around the options, and Asus doesn’t always help with its often clunky interface, but there are huge potential time savings if you get the setup right for your needs.
Given a lift
Asus made a big leap last year by physically lifting the bottom screen to better connect with the main display. That was an 80 lift and this year that increases to 120. What may surprise you is how solid that second screen feels. Press down on it and there isn’t a hint of movement, such is the rigidity of the mechanism. It’s a great technical achievement. Asus has also worked hard to minimise reflections, with a matte finish that means even harsh overhead lighting won’t get in the way.
Both screens support active styluses, and Asus provides its own Pen 2.0 in the box. There’s nowhere to stow this on the laptop, but the bundled slip case includes a handy loop to keep it safe. One thing that hasn’t changed is the difference in colour profiles between the displays, a challenge that has become even harder with the main screen’s switch to OLED technology. Despite the fact that the ScreenPad Plus goes up to 650cd/m2 brightness and covers 97% of the DCI-P3 colour space, it looks dull next to an OLED panel. That’s why it doesn’t really make sense to stretch windows across both displays; for example, a white background looks jarringly different between the two.
Perhaps it doesn’t help that the main screen is so good. It covers 99% of the DCI-P3 space with an average Delta E of 0.39, but it’s the richness of the colours that whack you between the eyes. Technically it’s not particularly bright at 350cd/m2 , but with DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification you can be sure you’ll see every detail in films. They will sound great too, thanks to one of the best speaker systems in the business. For example, the drums in Amon Tobin’s Bridge bang out with real gusto.
Gaming prowess
The main panel benefits from support for 120Hz refresh rates, which has obvious benefit in games. And where last year’s ZenBook Duo made do with a weak GeForce MX450 chip, this year’s Zenbook Pro 14 Duo features full-fat GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics.
This brings proper gaming into play, and we saw some cracking scores as a result. At 1080p with High settings, Metro: Last Light averaged 169fps, Metro Exodus returned 53fps and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (with DLSS and ray tracing) sailed along at 92fps. Even switching to the main panel’s native resolution doesn’t kill the possibilities, with those three games averaging 79fps, 32fps and 49fps respectively. However, the graphics card’s 4GB of memory meant Dirt 5 only played well at 1,920 x 1,200 with Low settings, where it hit 105fps.
Asus ships the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo with Nvidia’s Studio drivers, as befits such a creative laptop, so if you’re more interested in graphics acceleration in apps such as 3ds Max than Wolfenstein 3D, 3D stick with them. Otherwise, download Nvidia’s Game Ready drivers.
It isn’t only graphics that have had a major boost, with Intel’s 12th generation Alder Lake processors now in place. That means phenomenal speed, whether you buy the Core i9
“Press down on the second screen and there isn’t a hint of movement. It’s a great technical achievement”
version of the Zenbook or the £2,000 Core i7 option. Asus sent us the Core i9 model, so it should be no shock at all that it shredded most of our benchmarks.
Take PC Pro’s own, for starters. These thrive on cores, and the 14 inside the Core i9 pushed to it to a stellar result of 443. By comparison, the Zenbook Duo scored 121. It’s a similar story in the multicore section of Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23, with results of 12,441 and 15,189 respectively – more than twice as fast as its predecessor.
It helps that Asus uses a Gen 4 SSD, which can read at 5,329MB/sec and write at 2,679MB/sec. And naturally it comes with DDR5 memory, in this case either 16GB LPDDR5-4800 for the Core i7 version or 32GB as tested here.
Packing it in
This becomes all the more impressive when you consider that Asus has packed so much power into a laptop measuring less than 20mm tall and weighing 1.8kg; and bear in mind that weight includes two screens, not the usual one. If anything, the styling is too understated. The “ASUS” of previous editions has been dropped from the lid, with an offset triangular logo the only relief across the dark blue (almost black) swirling metal.
Asus takes a less minimalist approach to connectivity, with the stars being two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the right-hand side. A more humble USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port sits next to them, with a 3.5mm jack on the left and all the other connectors at the rear: HDMI 2.1, a microSD card slot and a DC jack for the chunky 180W power supply.
This will take you from 0% to around 50% in half an hour, and unfortunately you will probably need this quick-charging ability as battery life is not this laptop’s forté. Our video-rundown and office-based tests saw results of 6hrs 20mins and 6hrs 31mins respectively, while the best-case scenario (as shown by PCMark 10’s idle test) is 7hrs 40mins.
Those results are with the main screen on but the ScreenPad Plus off. Sticking to idle, and with the ScreenPad on, its time dropped to 7hrs 1min. I can’t help feeling that Asus would have been wise to include a larger battery than 76Wh.
Having fought my way past ten Torx screws, I prised open the base to discover that Asus had little flexibility for a bigger battery within the physical constraints. Most of the room is occupied by the fearsome cooling system, with the memory embedded onto the motherboard and only the 1TB SSD easy to replace.
The other obvious sacrifice is the positioning of the keyboard and trackpad. The keyboard’s sheer quality compensates for the loss of a wristrest, and I can confirm that it’s still possible to hit high typing speeds here, but you do need a table to support your wrists. In fact, I recommend that you keep this laptop well away from your lap anyway, as the base becomes hot to the touch during games.
Then there’s the tiny trackpad, which is coated with glass for smoothness and includes two handy physical keys – but let’s face it, you need a mouse to use this laptop effectively for a prolonged period.
Screens of joy
There’s nothing quite like Asus’s range of dual-screen laptops, and as each generation of the Duo moves forward it sorts out further niggles and refines the form factor. This year’s takes several steps forward in terms of performance and quality, but at the expense of battery life. It’s up to you to decide whether six hours of normal use away from the mains is enough.
The “good” news is that you have time to decide: supply chain squeezes mean we don’t expect to see stock arrive for sale until September. That will also give you time to weigh up the benefits of a Core i7 spec for £2,000 versus the Core i9 for £2,500. My take is that if you’re spending this much you might as well go all-in. But only if you have a clear use for that second screen.
“It’s impressive that Asus has packed so much power into a laptop measuring less than 20mm tall and weighing 1.8kg”
SPECIFICATIONS
14-core (6 P-core, 8 E-core) Intel Core i9-12900H processor 32GB LPDDR5-4800 RAM 4GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics 14.5in 2,880 x 1,800 120Hz OLED touchscreen 12.7in, 2,880 x 864 60Hz IPS touchscreen 1TB M.2 PCI-E Gen 4 SSD 720p webcam Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.2 HDMI 2.1 2 x Thunderbolt 4 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 microSD card slot 3.5mm combo jack 76Wh battery Windows 11 Home Asus Pen 2.0 324 x 225 x 17.9-19.6mm (WDH) 1.8kg 1yr RTB warranty