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Asus ZenBook Pro Duo

 & Tom Brant Managing Editor

Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year to help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology.

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Is This the Big-Screen Future? Meet the Asus ZenBook Pro Duo

The Asus ZenBook Pro approaches big-screen laptops in a whole new way, with a 15.6-inch 4K OLED touch display where the laptop screen typically goes, and another 14-inch-wide display above the keyboard.

Choose Your Apps

The ScreenPad's customization options let you assign groups of up to three apps to open automatically (two on the main screen and three on the ScreenPad Plus).

Launcher View

The Launcher, accessed by tapping on the chevron icon on the left-hand side of the ScreenPad Plus, is the principal means of control. Here you'll find a customizable app drawer that will launch apps to run directly on the ScreenPad Plus.

Included Stylus

Artists can draw with the included stylus on the ScreenPad Plus while their main content canvas is displayed on the screen above.

Please Touch

Both the main display and the secondary ScreenPad Plus are touch-enabled.

Inky Blacks, Vivid Colors

The main 4K OLED display boasts many features that will appeal to digital artists, including HDR support, Pantone validation, a 100,000:1 contrast ratio that reflects OLED's extremely pure blacks, and the ability to display the entire DCI-P3 color gamut.

ErgoLift Hinge

The ErgoLift hinge tilts the keyboard and ScreenPad Plus toward you when the laptop is open, for a more ergonomic typing, viewing, drawing, and tapping position.

Large Cooling Vents

Four heat pipes conduct hot air away from the CPU and the GPU, while a fifth cools the power delivery hardware. Then, two 71-blade fans mounted near either edge blow the hot air out through massive vents on the sides.

No SD Card Slot

The lack of an SD card reader and an Ethernet jack are surprising on such an expensive machine, and that could be a major problem for artists who frequently import footage from cameras and then store it on a network drive.

Fantastic Midnight Blue

The ZenBook Pro Duo's Midnight Blue color scheme looks superb. It's a welcome break from the silver and dark-gray color schemes that are in vogue in the personal-tech world right now.

Good Ergonomics

To fit both screens into a single chassis, Asus moved the keyboard and touchpad to the bottom edge of the ZenBook Pro Duo's base. It's actually a comfortable position, ergonomically speaking, if you use the machine with the bundled wrist rest.

A Touchpad/Calculator Combo

The touchpad doubles as a calculator—hold your finger over the embossed calculator symbol for one second to activate the backlit numbers.

About Our Expert

Tom Brant

Tom Brant

Managing Editor

I’m a managing editor at PCMag.com focused on PC hardware. Reading this during the day? Then you've caught me testing gear and editing reviews of Wi-Fi routers, printers, laptops, and tons of other personal tech. (Reading this at night? Then I’m probably dreaming about all those cool products.) I’ve covered the consumer tech world as an editor, reporter, and analyst since 2015.

I've covered most major consumer tech events, including CES, Computex, Google I/O, and IFA. I've also appeared on CBS News, in USA Today, and at many other outlets to offer analysis on breaking technology news.

Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rainforests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University.

The Technology I Use

While most people buy a phone or laptop and stick with it for years, I’m lucky enough to use devices based on Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows daily as part of my job. As a result, I cycle through lots of tech in addition to my IT-issue work laptop. (Yes, that's a ThinkPad.) Personally, I’ve also owned a lot of tech products both cutting-edge and cringeworthy, from the Nintendo GameCube and the original MacBook to the Palm m105 and the CueCat.

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