Asus Zenbook Duo Review: A Wonder!

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Need-to-knows

• Dual display setup is so useful
• Both displays are bright and full of colour
• Surprisingly portable
• Keyboard is light but not the best typing experience

I used to be a Windows user. I never really understood the world of Apple until switching about four years ago. But now I’m fully locked into that ecosystem and these days, whenever I use a Windows laptop, I feel comforted that I made the right call.

I honestly couldn’t envision a scenario where the hardware and software would marry well enough to ever make me like a Windows machine again. Until the Asus Zenbook Duo landed on my desk and that all changed.

My week with this laptop has been so interesting to the point that I’m genuinely a bit sad to have to send the review unit back. There’s so much to like about the Duo, and some familiar downsides that aren’t really Asus’ fault. But I am now questioning whether this might be the best Windows laptop ever made. Let’s find out!

The basics

Let’s clear a few things up before we start talking specifics.

The Zenbook Duo is a dual display laptop with a detachable wireless keyboard. In normal laptop mode, the keyboard sits on top of the bottom display and you use the top display.

Related: M5 MacBook Pro review

Then, if you want to use both displays, you pull off the magnetically-attached keyboard, flip out the rear stand and bam, they both start working. Without any windows open, both displays present as two homepages. When you open some windows, you can freely move them between the displays as you wish.

When you’re done, the keyboard goes back on, you fold it down and away you go. Oh, and both displays are touch screens too. Capiche?

Ok…this is actually brilliant!

I can’t lie to you, when I first set eyes upon the Zenbook Duo a while back at a press event, I immediately questioned just how useful having a dual display would be. Now I’ve had my hands on it, I can safely say those suspicions were very wrong.

As soon as I booted the Duo up and removed the keyboard, I got a wow factor impact that I haven’t experienced in a long time with tech. Then I started setting up some workflows to see if I could make it fit and I was honestly blown away.

I’ve never used a dual display laptop like this before and I instantly felt like I’d been missing out. Just being able to have Slack and Google open on one screen, then still have an entire display below dedicated to writing is game-changing.

I am so often switching between tabs and trying to squeeze in multiple views on one small MacBook screen that using the Duo felt revolutionary. Whenever I switch tabs to check Slack or emails, it always breaks up my flow of work but with this setup, that was pretty much entirely gone.

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Obviously, the hardware to make this happen is impressive, but the software is what truly makes this a smooth experience. When you drag a tab, you get the option to snap it to a specific screen which is really handy, or simply drag it between the two to reposition. Or you can snap it to full-screen and the tab will use up both displays.

Then, on top of that, you can break each individual display down into four separate windows if you so desire, meaning you can view eight tabs at once! This kind of stuff is where Windows laptops genuinely outcompete MacBooks and it’s a huge tick in the box for productivity.

More: MacBook Neo review

The possibilities feel endless with the Zenbook Duo and I probably didn’t even scratch the surface. For video editors, graphic designers, illustrators, music producers or general creative professionals, this is a dream. Even if you just like watching YouTube whilst you read the news in the morning, the Duo does it so well.

Safe to say, I am fully sold on the dual display laptop design. Gimmick it very much is not.

Portability: can you actually use this on the go?

The short answer is yes.

Obviously, you sacrifice some portability with the dual displays. Asus has redesigned the hinge since last time round to be much less intrusive and smaller, but still large enough to fold over the keyboard. That means you get a bit of a chunky wedge that’s about an inch thick.

Compared to a normal laptop, that’s obviously quite big but it doesn’t feel that cumbersome when you get your hands on it. It still easily fits in a backpack and, thanks to the ultra-light keyboard, only weighs 1.65kg. For reference, the M5 MacBook Pro weighs 1.55kg so the difference is minimal.

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I personally had no issues taking the Duo around with me to work elsewhere and I don’t think you will either!

Are the displays any good?

Having two not very good displays would obviously be pretty useless. Thankfully those on the Duo are excellent. Spec-wise, you get two 14.0-inch, 3K OLED panels with a 16:10 aspect ratio that go up to 1000nits peak HDR brightness and a 144Hz refresh rate.

They are both beautiful to look at and just the fact that there are two of them means everything sort of beams at you when you look at it. It’s quite hard to describe until you get one of these in front of your face. Safe to say, there isn’t any scrimping in this department really. Both displays look great if you’re gaming, watching videos or just working.

Gaming

Now, this isn’t a gaming laptop (although Asus does make the ROG Zephyrus Duo which is), and there is no dedicated GPU, but the model I tested does have an Intel Core Ultra X9 processor inside plus 32GB of RAM.

I tried booting up some heavy-duty games like COD Warzone and didn’t have a great experience, but it could handle some less intensive titles like Minecraft perfectly well. The impressive thing is that the Duo had no issues with playing a game on one screen and doing other stuff on the other. That means you could have something like Discord open without it affecting your main display experience.

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Again, a very cool thing enabled only by the dual display setup that you can now take anywhere with you.

There are some problems…

The first of these is the keyboard. Now, Asus has to make the keyboard as light as possible in order to keep the weight down and the profile as slim as possible. And the keyboard is incredibly light.

But that does have a knock on effect. The super-sleek design means the key travel distance is small resulting in a type feel that isn’t the best. It’s responsive enough but quite firm. The trackpad, whilst definitely not the worst I’ve used on a Windows laptop, is also a bit spongy, especially when you don’t click nearer to the bottom.

This is nothing catastrophic and a largely unavoidable sacrifice if you want those displays.

Second is Windows. Above I said how much I loved the windows management system on Windows 11, but it is still Windows and that comes with flaws. Mainly the instability. In 2026 I still managed to experience numerous crashes whilst testing a very high-end laptop. That just doesn’t happen on Mac, at least not for me. The UI is just ugly in places in my opinion and doesn’t feel as optimised as it should do after so many iterations.

None of this is Asus’ fault of course, it’s just the quirk of the OS. If you don’t mind Windows, then no bother. Copilot is also, well, still Copilot so there’s that.

Third is the price, and I am a bit torn on this one. Obviously, you’re going to pay a premium for the dual displays, resulting in a whopping £2,799 price tag. But is that actually bad value? You get a lot of hardware here, notwithstanding the 32GB of RAM and 2TB storage, for less than a lot of other premium Windows laptops.

Check out Mark’s M5 iPad Pro review!

For the same money, you can get an M5 Pro MacBook Pro with 48GB of unified memory and 1TB storage. Yes, you don’t get two displays, but the performance difference is astronomical.

Weighing all of this up is tough as there are no direct competitors. But it comes down to the same conclusion as most other reviews…

Conclusion

Whether or not the Zenbook Duo is worth the money is entirely down to your needs. Just like when deciding between an MacBook Neo or MacBook Air for example, you have to ask yourself whether you actually need the extra power/specs.

Same here, would your working life, because this is a laptop aimed at productivity, be significantly improved by having two displays? Do you have a dual display setup at your desk but also need one when you travel? If ‘yes’ is the answer to these types of questions, then I’d say the Duo is worth it. Even I, a mere writer, found it pretty revelatory to be able to use two displays at once.

Removing all talk of cost, the Duo is a wondrous thing to use. There’s enough RAM inside to keep you going with most work tasks, it’s brilliant for leisure use and it travels well too. I would definitely go and test one out before you buy, but when you do, I think you’ll fall a little bit in love.