The Asus ZenBook Duo is the greatest dual screen laptop I’ve used
Gorgeous and ingenious
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Asus dual-screen ultrabook
🙌 A dual screen laptop with two gorgeously colorful 14-inch 3K OLED touchscreens
🧑🏻💻 Multi-task like a boss with a combined 19.8-inches of screen real estate
🫰 $1,500 price makes this dual-screen laptop a steal
It feels like every electronics company has been playing around with dual-screen laptops for a while but the new Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8406) feels like the best realized rendition I’ve ever used thus far — and it’s reasonably priced at $1,500.
The Asus Zenbook Duo is a dual-screen laptop with two 14-inch 3K 120Hz OLED touchscreens that give you a combined workspace of up to 19.8 inches. It also comes with a wireless keyboard that magnetically attaches to the bottom screen so you can use it like a traditional laptop.
But let’s be real, if you’re buying a dual-screen laptop, you’re probably going to want to use both displays as much as possible. The good news is it comes with a kickstand so you can stand the device up and use both screens horizontally. Alternatively, you can easily prop up the device like a completely open book and use its two screens vertically.
I prefer setting up the device with both screens positioned horizontally because I can easily window snap three or four applications at the same time and really take advantage of the combined screen real estate.
It helps the Zenbook has a gorgeous OLED screen too. It’s Dolby Vision certified and Pantone Validated, which Asus claims allows it to reproduce 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut for cinema-grade color rendering. In person, the screen looks lusciously colorful with pure blacks really can’t be beat.
The keyboard, meanwhile, can be used completely wireless no matter what mode you’re using the Asus Zenbook Duo, even if you have it across the room, since it connects to the device over Bluetooth. When the keyboard is clipped over the bottom screen it also physically connects and charges thru a pair of matching pogo pins.
Alternatively, you can use the Asus Zenbook Go sans any physical keyboard at all. It comes with a wonderfully intuitive digital keyboard you can summon by simply swiping up with six fingers.
Swiping up once will bring up a half keyboard, leaving you with a smaller screen area to work with. You can also swipe with three fingers from the side to slide in a small trackpad or swiping up again with six fingers brings up the full trackpad.
The heart of this laptop is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 or Ultra 9 H-series with up to 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM and up to a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. That’s enough power to make this dual-screen laptop a serious work/home machine and even game potentially thanks to its desktop-grade Intel Arc graphics.
It’s hard to say how battery life will fare with real life use, but Asus assures us its 75Wh battery will provide a full day’s usage in one charge.
The Asus Zenbook Duo UX8406 is due to arrive in Q1 2024, which should be roughly within the first three months of the year. The Asus Zenbook Duo also starts at a surprisingly reasonable $1,500 price.
Be sure to check out the rest of our CES 2024 coverage.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.
I'll wait a year until the price gets to around $700ish